PROVIDENCE -- Jeffrey Scott Hornoff, the Warwick police detective who was wrongfully convicted of murder, was summoned for jury duty yesterday in the same courthouse in which he was found guilty.
According to Jury Commissioner Eugene McMahon, Hornoff, 41, was the first of 93 jurors who showed up at the Licht Judicial Complex yesterday morning. He arrived about 8:15, "about 15 minutes early," McMahon said.
Whether the former prisoner will serve on a jury won't be known until the end of today. Only one jury was selected in the courthouse yesterday so the bulk of the jury pool, including Hornoff, was sent home early, shortly after 2 p.m.
If Hornoff is not chosen to serve on a case by the end of today he will be excused from further jury service, in accordance with the state's two-day or one trial system.
Hornoff is still involved in legal proceedings in Superior Court here over the issue of his reinstatement to the Warwick Police Department and back pay, both of which were ordered last week by Presiding Justice Joseph F. Rodgers Jr. He declined yesterday to be interviewed about the prospect of serving as a judge of another person's fate.
Hornoff spent 6 years, 4 months and 18 days in the Adult Correctional Institutions for the murder of Victoria Cushman, a woman with whom he had a brief affair shortly before her slaying in 1989. A jury convicted him in 1996. He was released just over a year ago only after another man, Todd J. Barry, a Cranston carpenter, confessed to the crime 13 years after the murder. The courts exonerated Hornoff on Jan. 6, 2003.
Last March, two months after his exoneration, Hornoff was sent a notice informing him that his name had been randomly selected to serve as a juror in Providence County and that he might be summoned to serve sometime between July 2003 and June 2004.
Yesterday was the day he was told to appear.
Hornoff's occupation is listed as "detective" on the court's official list of jurors -- which was his position in the Warwick Police Department at the time he was charged with the Cushman murder. He is recorded as having a Cranston address.
According to McMahon, all of the jurors summoned yesterday were given a brief set of instructions by Superior Court Judge Edward C. Clifton. Then, along with the 92 other prospective jurors, Hornoff returned to the fourth-floor jury lounge to await being called for a trial.
Many of the jurors elected to sit in a room and watch television. But McMahon said that Hornoff chose to sit in "the quiet room" where jurors can read undistrubed. Hornoff spent the first part of the morning reading the jurors' handbook that is given to each juror upon being qualified to serve, according to McMahon.
The manual explains a juror's duties and how the criminal and civil justice systems work. It concludes with The Juror's Creed, which tells the jurors that they are seekers of the truth, that they must lay aside all bias, prejudice and emotion, and that the verdicts they render "must do justice."
Jury pools are randomly selected by computer each time a judge signals that he or she needs one. According to McMahon, judges this week will hold jury trials in both criminal and civil cases, and Hornoff's name could be randomly selected for either type of case.
But even if Hornoff is seated in the jury box, he may not get to serve since lawyers have the right to exercise peremptory challenges to disqualify jurors, without stating a reason for doing so.
