HOLIDAY SCHEDULE 
Just what happened inside the jury room during the murder trial of John White has been the subject of much speculation. The African American man from Long Island was found guilty of manslaughter for shooting a white teenager who’d gotten into a fight with his son. Sunday’s Newsday offers a detailed account from two jurors who say they were coerced into producing a guilty verdict in time for the Christmas holiday. Francois Larche’s says his capitulation to the verdict (followed quickly by another juror’s) happened in a cafeteria shortly after Suffolk County Supreme Court Justice Barbara Kahn said that the jury would continue deliberating on the Sunday before Christmas if no verdict were reached. Larche says he switched positions. “We asked him several times if he wanted to change his mind [to vote guilty], and he said yes,” juror Richard Burke told Newsday. “He changed his mind over our dinner break.” That’s not how Larche remembers it. A day after Larche says he told Kahn the jury was deadlocked because of him, he says he voted guilty only after determining that the process was “a joke.” He added, “That's when I said, ‘I’m out of here.’ It was a joke. There’s nothing further I can say then, ‘OK, it’s a mockery, let’s go home.’ ” Said defense attorney Marie Michele, “We've learned from these two jurors that the other jurors never even deliberated on the justification issue, and they completely discounted Mr. White's state of mind. It was as if we never even put forth a defense. . . . It didn’t matter. It was just that this kid died and someone had to pay for it.”

SOVEREIGN (SULLIED) NATION 
The New York Sun has a story about a lawsuit filed against Saudi Arabia’s royal family by insurance groups alleging ties to Al Qaeda. Though the suit has proceeded the furthest among the myriad legal proceedings against several countries alleged to have abetted the 9/11 terrorists, it faces the challenge of circumvention through an exemption under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, which a District Court judge previously ruled prevents insurance companies from suing the kingdom. “This is the first terrorism case to involve dozens of defendants,” said a lawyer representing many of those killed in the attacks. “You can't point to one single defendant and say that is the cause. But what we say is that 9/11 could not have happened unless Al Qaeda was able to grow into a large, sophisticated, well-funded terrorism enterprise, and to do that it needed a huge amount of support.”

HUD'S FASTTRACK 
The New York Law Journal reports on Eastern District Judge Frederic Block’s ruling that it is unconstitutional to evict residents of government buildings scheduled for demolition without a hearing. Block has called for such a hearing later this month, when at minimum he will seek a clear statement that the residents’ four apartment buildings — three in Manhattan and one in Brooklyn — were in such disrepair as to need “substantial rehabilitation.” According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, throughout New York City some 514 HUD-owned buildings, containing 2,200 units, are in need of rehabilitation at an approximate cost of $167 million. A HUD rule governing the renovation program says the agency does not have to give a reason when it orders residents of foreclosed buildings to leave. Block took issue with the streamlined procedure process, allegedly used to find buyers quickly. “It is beyond cavil,” he wrote, that due process bars the taking of property, including poor people's homes, “without telling them why and without affording them a meaningful opportunity to be heard.”

DON'T JUMP AROUND HERE NO MORE 
Last January, daredevil base-jumper Jeb Corliss was let off lightly by Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Michael Ambrecht, who dismissed criminal charges stemming from his attempt to parachute jump from the Empire State Building — which police prevented — because Corliss did not act with a depraved indifference to human life because his “training, planning and use of a parachute negated this outcome.” The New York Post (belatedly) reports on an appeal of the decision by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. (Mayor Bloomberg had previously said, “I don't know where the judge is coming from.) “It took a number of security guards, police officers, two pairs of handcuffs, and the actual removal of a portion of the fence to keep defendant from performing this dangerous stunt,” the appeal reads.

LANGUAGE BARRIER 
Finally, The Journal News has a story about the busy schedules of courtroom interpreters in New York, and the often crucial role they play in cases involving illegal immigrants who speak little or no English. Since 2000, the Lower Hudson Valley’s Hispanic population has grown 20 percent. “I've had 26 cases myself in one day,” said Sylvia Castellano, an Argentinian-born interpreter in Westchester Family Court. “Every day I'm running all over the place. It’s all day long.” New York employs 330 staff court interpreters who speak more than 30 languages, including sign language. If necessary, an additional 1,300 private interpreters can be called to interpret two dozen other languages.