'We were as fair as we could be,' Lamberth jurors say

Some called it one of the most important decisions of their lives.

Twelve people, Jereme A. Lamberth’s peers, were picked from more than 300 prospective jurors to decide what would be fair and just.

Fair for a widow.

Just for a thrice-convicted felon.

The decision came down to this: Did Lamberth gun down Colorado Springs police detective Jared Jensen in cold blood? Did he commit first-degree murder?

Ten said yes. Two said no.

Several jurors didn’t want to talk, but three spoke of a painful process in which two people can sway 10 others.

For 58 hours, from Feb. 6 through Friday, 12 jurors picked apart 17 days of witness testimony spread over five weeks, hundreds of pieces of evidence and hours of attorney arguments.

“I knew in my mind that he had knowingly killed detective Jensen in cold blood, and I was not going to go lower than second degree,” said Ulrike Madison, a 49-year-old housewife and mother of grown children.

“It was a fight just to get to second (degree),” said Bessie Smith, 43, a Colorado Springs teacher. “A lot of us wanted first degree.”

“There was a frustration because we were at the same level of vote for a week,” said Carl Koellhoffer, a Peyton farmer and father of five.

“I didn’t know if we were going to break through.”

Photo makes a mark

All three said they were surprised to be among the 14 selected to hear Lamberth’s case in the Feb. 22, 2006, killing of Jensen.

The gravity hit home when Chief Deputy 4th Judicial District Attorney Diana May showed a picture of Jensen’s face after it had been pierced by a .44-caliber bullet.

“The hardest part of this was the first time they showed the picture of officer Jensen dead. The blood still hadn’t dried on him yet,” Koellhoffer said. “I looked at the picture. I looked at the widow (Natalie Jensen), and I started to break down.”

“I felt like I could feel her pain,” Madison said. “When I first realized what he did I was in as much shock as that I got picked for this jury. It was like a bolt of lightning. . . . But I was determined to stay objective.

“As a Christian, I prayed and asked the Lord to separate emotion from what I was aware of that happened to detective Jensen.”

Smith added that the defense attorneys were effective at creating reasonable doubt.

“Mr. (Bill) Martinez did a good job. Very persuasive. It was hard to make a choice. That’s why it took so long,” she said.

During the trial, Martinez pricked his finger and splattered blood on a white paper. He wanted to show jurors that it was possible a firefighter could have gotten the blood on Jensen’s badge after it was pulled from his neck — creating doubt that Jensen wore his badge outside his sweat shirt.

That possibility was important to jurors. If Lamberth knew Jensen was a police officer, jurors could apply the concept of self-defense only if they felt Jensen used unreasonable force when grabbing Lamberth’s arm.

Koellhoffer and Madison said they thought Lamberth knew Jensen was a cop. Smith wasn’t so sure.

“We weren’t there, so we don’t know what conversation was had” between Jensen and Lamberth, Smith said. “The first shot I could see him maybe trying to scare him away. But the second shot — no.”

Lamberth stood over Jensen’s body, fired a second shot less than 9 inches from Jensen’s nose, and walked away.

‘Very stressful’

Deliberations dragged on for more than a week. They felt cut off from the outside world — told not to read newspapers or watch local television news. Told not to talk to each other or to loved ones about the case.

Three were smokers. All welcomed the breaks from the jury-deliberation room.

“The hardest part was being away from my family and life and not being able to talk about it,” said Koellhoffer, who worked his job on weekends.

“I felt sick inside that two people, over 10 reasonable people, could make this a hung jury,” Madison said. “This really affected most people in the jury. Our sleep and even our health.”

“It was very hard,” Smith said. “Very stressful.”

Jury foreman Robert Jackson helped the process. Jurors — seven engineers, one teacher, a housewife, a business owner, two nurses — took turns speaking, sometimes very loudly. He controlled the group, making sure everyone’s voice was heard, and that there were no “wallflowers,” Koellhoffer said.

But they kept coming back to that second shot.

Mulling over the prosecutors’ re-creation of it, showing how the gunpowder burned Jensen’s nose and forehead and how the bullet barely missed. It swayed these three from doubts about self-defense.

“Some people wanted less — reckless manslaughter — but that second shot did it,” Smith said.

Koellhoffer agreed.

“I believe justice was done,” he said.

“No one wanted a hung jury,” Smith said.

“In the last minute when I thought it would be hung because of these two a miracle happened,” Madison said.

Second-degree murder means they think Lamberth knowingly killed Jensen, but might have done so in a heat of passion. It carries a maximum sentence of 48 years, which could be boosted to 144 years because of Lamberth’s three previous felonies and Colorado law deeming him a habitual criminal.

A different jury will make that decision starting Tuesday.

“I really hope they (the Jensen family) find closure on this and that they feel justice was served,” Madison said. “Also the whole police department.”

“We would like (the community) to know we went in there with open minds and open hearts,” Smith said.

“We were as fair as we could be with the evidence we had to work with.”

CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0110 or dennis.huspeni@gazette.com