By: Dorothy Giobbe FED UP WITH a deluge of telephone calls from reporters, an Arkansas woman with the same name as a Whitewater juror lied and told the media that she was on the jury and had been influenced by pretrial publicity.
Janice L. Greer, a 33-year-old convenience store clerk, spoke to reporters hours after the jury's decision to convict former Clinton business partners Gov. Jim Guy Tucker and Jim and Susan McDougal on fraud and conspiracy charges. Greer said that an article she saw before the trial "probably played a little bit of a part" in the guilty verdict. However, she was not connected to the trial at all. In fact, the actual Whitewater juror is named Janice R. Greer, and is a 47-year-old nurse. She has not made any public comment on the Whitewater verdict.
Jim Jackson, a lawyer for the non-juror Greer, said that his client tried to refer the numerous media calls to the hospital where the real juror worked. However, she could not be reached and someone at the hospital told the non-juror Greer to simply pretend she was part of the trial.
"She was just told to tell them whatever they wanted to hear and that would make them go away," Jackson told the Associated Press. Jackson added that he isn't sure if his client falsely told reporters that she was the real juror. "She isn't sure what she said," he said.
However, a reporter for the New York Daily News said that when he asked whether Greer had served on the jury, she replied, "yes sir."
? Dorothy Giobbe
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