was responsible.
Hoekja also showed Adamo a local newspaper story, written at the time Bello’s and Bradley’s recantations were first made public in 1975, which stated that, according to “authoritative sources,” Carter and Artis had “failed” their lie detector tests. As a result Adamo felt that if the authorities were willing to leak false stories, their case must have been shaky. Before he agreed to come forward, however, Adamo decided to talk to the juror who had told him about the lie detector results. When the other juror admitted that the conversation took place, that juror also expressed fear that he and his wife, who had told him about the test results, could be held in contempt for talking about the case. At that Adamo also got cold feet. Even after a second conversation in which the juror hesitantly agreed to back him up, Adamo held back—that is, until Hoekja said she could no longer keep silent.
Hoekja didn’t have to force the matter. Adamo contacted Judge Leopizzi himself. After questioning Adamo, Leopizzi called Myron and me, as well as Humphreys, and ordered all of us to come to court on October 5, 1978. After giving us a transcript of Adamo’s remarks, Leopizzi told us that because our appeal from the convictions was pending before the appellate division, we could make any applications we wanted to that court. In the meanwhile he sealed Adamo’s charges and said he would do nothing further unless instructed to do so.
As the misconduct Adamo brought to Leopizzi’s attention was grounds for a new trial, we asked the appellate division to order a hearing. When the court turned us down, we asked the New Jersey Supreme Court to allow us to appeal the issue immediately. On November 21, 1978, the supreme court denied our request. Frustrated, we turned to the U.S. district court for relief under the age-old legal principle that persons convicted in state courts were entitled to seek a federal review of their constitutional claims after they had exhausted their state appeals. Initially the federal judge assigned to our case, Herbert Stern, was concerned because the state courts still had not decided our main appeal from the trial. After some back-and-forth regarding the need for a hearing on Adamo’s charges sooner rather than later, Stern suggested to Deputy Prosecutor John Goceljak that he voluntarily agree to a hearing in front of Judge Leopizzi. The other option was a hearing in front of Stern himself.
h“Make up your mind,” Judge Stern said, knowing full well that the prosecutors would choose Leopizzi.
Judge Leopizzi held closed hearings for three days. At the hearing Myron and I were little more than disheartened observers. Far from commending Adamo for coming forward about the misconduct he had observed, Leopizzi treated him with contempt. But with the other four jurors, he transformed himself into a kindly, understanding father figure.
Sadly, the juror Adamo had named as his informant was less than forthcoming. He no longer remembered the lie detector conversation, but admitted that he had asked his wife if she had ever told him that Carter had failed a lie detector test. That was all Leopizzi needed. He ruled that Adamo was so emotionally disturbed about becoming an alternate right before the jury deliberated that he made up the lie detector story.
As for the “melanzan” remarks that the jurors had been exposed to on the bus rides to and from their sequestered motel rooms, the juror who used the epithet readily agreed that it was a word he used from time to time. The problem was that he didn’t recall doing so on the bus trips to and from court, but even if he did, it would have been in reference to the black population of Paterson, and not the defendants.
“Melanzana means nothing else than ‘eggplant,’” the juror testified. It could not be equated with any derogatory term, he claimed.
Leopizzi had heard enough. In his fifty-page opinion he ruled that the “melanzan” comment had no racial undertones, and went the extra mile by singling out Barbara Hoekja for being a troublemaker: “It is certainly regrettable that Adamo’s vulnerability arising from his deflated ego permitted him to be manipulated by Hoekja,” Leopizzi wrote.
The message was clear: Attack this conviction at your peril, which was why we were so distressed by the news that the New Jersey Supreme Court assigned Leopizzi the task of holding the Harrelson lie-detector-test hearing. Four years had passed since Harrelson’s original revelations, but at least we had immeasurably strengthened our ability