Jesse Brooks’ attorneys had requested a change of venue for his trial due to three years of intense pre-trial publicity surrounding his case. This reasonable request was denied. Jury selection for Jesse’s trial occurred during a dire economic downturn in New Hampshire and it was not possible for prospective jurors to have escaped the constant drum beats from the media about the “Millionaire Murder Case”. More than 1,000 newspaper, television and radio reports flooded Rockingham County with negative stories about Jesse. It instilled a hatred and fueled a “hang ‘em all” mentality within the prospective jury pool. The media and therefore the public was determined to convict Jesse Brooks regardless  of the fact that he played no role and had no involvement in the killing of Jack Reid.  His last name was Brooks and he was going to pay the price for his family’s past success. The Judge recognized this and reminded jurors during her instructions that they shouldn’t be influenced by “wealth and power”. This served as an exclamation point for the panel which had previously heard the prosecutor Janice Rundles say the   crime couldn’t have been accomplished without “money and power” during her closing argument. The media coverage followed suit. The intent of news editors was to sensationalize the case as father & son when Jesse’s picture was shown next to his father on the front page instead of the actual killers of Jack Reid - Michael Benton and Joseph Vrooman. Jesse’s case was based on conjecture and no evidence so instead, they muddied the waters with stories of motive, opportunity, wealth and drugs.

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How were Jesse Brooks jurors selected?

 

Jury selection is now done electronically but in 2009, New Hampshire combined the list of licensed drivers provided by the Department of Motor Vehicles and the lists of registered voters provided by cities and towns to create a master list of jurors. Names were randomly selected from that list. It seems hard to believe a random selection could have produced a jury any more supportive of the state and its’ policies. Nearly half the jurors were directly related to law enforcement. One juror was the wife of Epping, New Hampshire’s chief of police. Another juror said the chief’s wife had admitted that she had a strong opinion that Jesse Brooks was guilty. It certainly appeared to be a case of “stacking the jury” by any standard. Jesse’s trial was also in the same courthouse after the two highly publicized plea deals and two high profile trials along with the same court officers who openly voiced their opinions. One officer, Glen Nesbitt actually wrote to the Concord Monitor newspaper to compliment the reporter’s coverage claiming it was well-written, factual and in-depth after the John Brooks trial. A court officer’s duty is only to assist jurors during the trial and to protect the jury from outside influences. That surely was not the case for anyone of these trials.

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Jurors were not disqualified for having followed the case and in fact, one of the alternates actually attended the crime scene preview in the John Brooks trial and he was still selected. It seems the rules were stretched in every direction. Even the standardized juror summons informed the jurors they had been selected for the JESSE BROOKS CASE which no doubt gave them an opportunity, at the very least, to look into the case.  In addition, the jurors were never sequestered during the trial and Jesse’s case was the top story on the nightly news so it would have been hard for the jurors not to tune in. 

Prosecutor Janice Rundles was a master at interchanging names and referring to John Brooks as “Brooks” and making no distinction between father and son or simply stating the “Brooks family”.  It was impossible to follow because the case was nothing but a repeat of the John Brooks trial and only about 10% related to Jesse Brooks and according to the police chief’s wife, she believed that the judge wanted them to consider the John Brooks and Jesse Brooks’ cases as ONE, not separately. 

There was so much repetition and confusion driven by the prosecutor that jurors were falling asleep. Two jurors slept through most of the trial and eventually one of them was excused but the other remained in spite of having slept through testimony. The numerous instances of jurors’ sleeping deprived Jesse Brooks of his right to have 12 attentive jurors decide his fate and violated his right to due process.

Jesse Brooks’ trial was a travesty of justice from day one.