I have a 9-by-12 watercolor picture of Jesus Christ on file at my home. It is signed by Jim Traficant. On the back it says, “Don – God Bless! JAT ’09.”

It was painted by Jim while he was in prison.

I was given this portrait of Jesus by Jim Traficant as he arrived at our Howland Rotary meeting to give his talk a bit later in 2009.

In the spring of 1983 I served as a juror at the Cleveland Federal District Court for the bribery trial of Mahoning County Sheriff James A. Traficant Jr. with Federal District Court Judge Ann Aldrich presiding.

Rather than go into the legal details of that trial, let me tell you about some of the experiences I had while serving as a juror.

After I was selected as a juror, I was called into the chambers of Judge Aldrich. With her were Traficant, who would serve as his own defense attorney – he said he could not afford to hire an attorney – and Federal Prosecutor Stephen Jigger Jr. Judge Aldrich asked me in their presence if I would object to the use of coarse language that may be spoken during the trial. I assured Judge Aldrich that I would be perfectly at ease with any language that would be used.

In Jim Traficant’s opening remarks, he stood directly in front of me as I sat in the jury box, no more than 4 feet away. Looking me straight in the eye, he said, “I —-ed the mob.”

Yes, it was that four-letter, Anglo-Saxon verb (in the past tense) meaning connubial bliss. Behind me sat three lady jurors. I was so shocked and surprised that I could feel myself blushing the granddaddy of all blushes right in front of everybody.

Oh, I had used and heard that word many times, but this was in a formal setting in the presence of ladies. Oh, well.

All the jurors had a choice of staying at a hotel close to the court or going home after each session. We would be reimbursed either way. The ladies all chose to stay at the hotel. The men all chose to drive home every day. It made sense. According to the ladies, they would have a vacation from housework. The men confessed that they would prefer to go home to their own bed and board.

We spent many hours in the jury room waiting for the bailiff to take us into the courtroom to hear more testimony. We could not, under any circumstance, leave the jury room during the day except for going to the courtroom. In the jury room was a door, behind which was a small lavatory for our use. Its door had ventilating louvers on the bottom half. If you had to visit the lavatory, the jurors could hear every sound you made. It may be my imagination, but it seemed that all conversation stopped when I went in there.

During testimony, and while Jim Traficant or one of his witnesses was speaking, those at the prosecutor’s table would talk back and forth to each other – not in hushed tones, but in their everyday speaking voices. I don’t think that any of the prosecutors took Traficant seriously until it may have been too late.

We complained to the bailiff that we could not hear the testimony. At the next session, Judge Aldrich chastised the gallery for being too noisy, and she promised to dismiss all of them if this kept up.

When we were escorted back to the jury room by the bailiff, we told him that it was those at the prosecutor’s table who were making all the noise. Judge Aldrich never said a word about this, but at the next session, those at the prosecutor’s table spoke in hushed tones.

The prosecutor’s table was right in front of the jury box. An FBI agent, the one who had listened to the allegedly incriminating tapes dozens and dozens of times, sat at the far end of the prosecutors’ table. These tapes were said to have included Traficant’s voice.

Each day, the agent would pick one of the jurors to stare at. He would fix his gaze on that particular person all day. Some of the ladies felt so intimidated by this action that, when they returned to the jury room, broke down in tears.

Incidentally, the jurors learned that all the men sitting at the prosecutor’s table and Traficant had “junior” after their names. Interesting

All the jurors, as I recall, were a bit annoyed at what happened when Traficant tried to present his closing remarks. Every time Jim would try to utter a sentence, the prosecutor would yell, “Objection!” In his vast knowledge of the law, the prosecutor could easily cite many infractions that the amateur defense lawyer, Traficant, made in his closing remarks. We jurors had difficulty listening and understanding what the defense had to say because of all the interruptions.

During our four days of deliberations, we listened to the highly vaunted tapes. They were fifth-generation tapes with many inexplicable pauses. Fifth-generation tapes meant that what we heard was the re-recording of the original tapes four times. Why couldn’t we have heard the originals?

In the end the jurors came to the conclusion that the prosecution had not proven its case. We couldn’t put that man – or any man – in prison for 23 years with a $30,000 fine based upon what was presented to us during that trial.

Perhaps Traficant thinks that I may have been the guy who pushed hard for acquittal, which may explain that gift picture of Jesus. I know that jury foreman Joe Christopher spoke to Jim, praising me for my thoughtfulness. The truth is, I tried to be as logical and unbiased as possible about what was presented to us by both sides.

The prosecution presented a very interesting fact to us. They told us that the wooden stakes used for the Traficant sheriff’s campaign signs came from Wisconsin. The reason, and I believe the only reason, this became a federal case was that these wooden stakes came from another state!

The decision for acquittal finally became what we all ultimately wanted. Men and women jurors alike, while still in the courthouse, wept after we were dismissed. The stress of the involvement was that intense.

In the six-plus weeks of my involvement with the trial, I put more that 4,000 reimbursed miles on my car. Meanwhile, back at work, nobody was doing any of my duties, so during the trial I would spend all my Saturdays and Sundays at work, trying to get caught up. We had never been sequestered.

When I did get back to work after the trial was over, my boss was quite angry with me for voting to acquit Traficant. All I said to her was, “I was there, and you weren’t.”