As Washington and Little Rock continue to react to the verdict in the Whitewater trial, Elizabeth Farnsworth gets a glimpse of how the jury reach its decisions. She talked with Sandy Wood, forewoman of the jury.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: The nine women and three men that sat in judgment of James and Susan McDougal and Governor Jim Guy Tucker sifted through more than 600 exhibits in coming to a verdict. The charges were complicated. James McDougal, for example, was convicted of 18 criminal counts, among them conspiring with Governor Tucker to arrange nearly $3 million in loans from two federally-backed banks via fraudulent real estate appraisals. The government also said McDougal helped a friend get a $65,000 loan and then used the proceeds to pay off his own debts. Susan McDougal was convicted on four counts related to obtaining a $300,000 federally-backed loan and then using it illegally for personal and some business expenses.

The jury spent more than a week sifting through the evidence on these and other charges, and that jury's forewoman was Sandy Wood, a small business owner. She joins us now. Thank you for being with us, Ms. Wood.

SANDY WOOD, Whitewater Jury Forewoman: (Russellville, AR) You're welcome.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: You had all these arguments and many counts to consider. How did the jury do its work? Take us step by step through your process.

MS. WOOD: The jury went in a very systematic process. The first thing that we did when we went to the deliberation room after electing a foreperson was to review the testimony and create a timeline, and we felt that that was very instrumental to us in being able to organize the data that we had received over the course of the testimony, umm, and just kind of get it in perspective for us. And then we got individual copies of the indictment and the jury instructions, umm, for each juror, and we took each defendant separately and went count by count discussing, reading the indictment, reading then the jury instructions, and discussing it until each of us felt comfortable with the verdict that we came up with. And we completed that before we moved on to the next count.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Were you mostly looking at documents at this point, real estate appraisals, for example, loan applications, that kind of thing?

MS. WOOD: We looked heavily at the documents. Umm, we also considered the testimony of the witnesses in conjunction with that to help us understand, umm, how important the documents were and how the documents were used in the normal course of business. Umm, but the documents weighed very heavily for us.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: How important was the President's testimony? We should remind people that he was brought as a defense witness by the McDougals. He was subpoenaed to testify because he--it had been charged that he had been there when the conspiracy was hatched to, to get these loans, although he was not in any way charged with being part of that conspiracy. How, how important was his testimony?

MS. WOOD: Well, his testimony really did not shed any light for us on the individual transactions. Umm, his testimony seemed very credible to me personally. I didn't have a problem with that. He just did not have any information and, therefore, we did not utilize it very heavily at all in our deliberations.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Well, he was there to impugn the testimony of David Hale, who was an important witness but that did not end up being a big part of your deliberation?

MS. WOOD: No. Because the areas in which they differed really turned out to be irrelevant. We had documents that showed us that the transactions took place, umm, and we proceeded from there.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: What did you consider in weighing the other testimony? There were other people that testified, Jim McDougal and others. What did you consider in looking at their testimony?

MS. WOOD: Well, Judge Howard gave us some very explicit instructions in, in how we should weigh testimony, and we used those written instructions, but some of the things that were included in those instructions were, umm, the demeanor of the person when they were on the stand, umm, we were allowed to examine their motives for testifying in one fashion or another, umm, and any prior inconsistent statements that they had made. So there were a number of criteria that we used to weigh those, those testimonies.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Were those the same criteria you used in looking at the President's testimony?

MS. WOOD: Yes.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And so you did discuss his testimony as part of your deliberations?

MS. WOOD: We did briefly. I remember one time that we discussed it briefly but it was not a--it just did not come into issue because it was not shedding any light on, on what we needed to know about those transactions.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: How well did the jury work together?

MS. WOOD: Oh, the jury worked very well together. I have never worked with a finer group of people in my entire life.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: How do you explain your cooperation?

MS. WOOD: Well, part--part of it was that we had three months to get to know one another and develop relationships and trust, umm, and so when we went in to deliberate, uh, we did so knowing each other very well and with a commitment that we would hang in there together until everyone felt comfortable with a verdict.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: You had this, this trial and you all have had a lot of spotlight all through this process. Did that affect you? Did it make you more stressful, more stressed? Did it make you think much more deeply about what you were doing, or what was the effect?

MS. WOOD: I think if it did anything, it made us even more committed that we wanted to remain a jury that was above reproach, that we would follow the judge's instructions to the very best of our ability, umm, and that we would--because we knew the eyes of the world were--was upon us--that we would try our very hardest, umm, to end up with doing a job that we could be proud of.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Did you discuss this tension, the fact that this could influence this electoral year, that kind of thing?

MS. WOOD: No. That, that portion of it we left outside of the jury room. We, we could not key in on that during the trial. We didn't listen to any media, publicity, news reports, and the like, so we really didn't know what was going on outside our courtroom.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Wasn't it hard not to listen? You weren't sequestered. Wasn't it hard not to be affected by the media at all?

MS. WOOD: No, not really. I mean, by the time you got home at night you were exhausted and you had things that you needed to do with your family. And for me, it was not difficult.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Had you been told not to listen to any media, or just not to listen to media involving the trial?

MS. WOOD: Just involving the trial.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Anything else you want to add?

MS. WOOD: No.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Thank you for being with us.

MS. WOOD: You're welcome.

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