Jurors’ names are not usually reported during

a trial.

NEW YORK (AP) – At least three newspapers have broken with journalistic convention in naming a juror in the Tyco International corruption trial while deliberations continue.

But there was little that was normal in the story of Juror No. 4, who some news reports said flashed an “OK” sign to the defendants in court last week.

News media generally do not publish jurors’ names while a trial is under way for fear of putting undue pressure on them. Most news media continued to withhold the juror’s name on Monday even after it was reported Friday in the online edition of The Wall Street Journal and in weekend editions of the New York Post.

Byron Calame, a deputy managing editor at the Journal, said that the newspaper’s decision to publish the juror’s name electronically on Friday and in the Journal’s print edition on Monday was warranted by the unusual circumstances of the case.

“We regard what Juror No. 4 did as a very public and a very unusual action, and that makes it newsworthy,” Calame said. “We believe it was newsworthy enough that naming her, rather than simply describing her and her life in detail, was the best way to serve our readers.”

Calame declined to make further comment.

The New York Post went even further, running a cartoon of the juror on its front page on Saturday, and characterizing her in Sunday editions as “the holdout granny” in the Tyco case, and a “batty blueblood.”

“By her extraordinary behavior – signaling her thoughts to the defendant – she created public interest in her identity,” New York Post editor Col Allan said in a prepared statement. He declined to elaborate.

Whether the juror intended to make a gesture at all, was also in dispute Monday. An Associated Press reporter saw the gesture but did not interpret it as an “OK” sign.

The AP and most other media outlets refrained from publishing the juror’s name.

“We have elected to observe a journalistic convention under which jurors’ identities are not published during deliberations as a safeguard against bringing pressure on them that might disrupt a trial,” Catherine Mathis, a spokeswoman for The New York Times, said in a prepared statement.

However, Mathis added that the decisions are made on “a case-by-case basis.”

Jim Willse, editor of The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J., said his newspaper used the juror’s name deep down in a story Saturday, but only after it had been previously disclosed on the Journal’s Web site.

“I think the debate here would have been different had her identity not already been disclosed,” Willse said.

The Associated Press also withheld the juror’s name. “AP’s general policy is not to identify jurors by name during the course of a trial, and we don’t see a compelling reason to stray from that policy in this instance,” Kevin Noblet, deputy business editor, said.

From a legal point of view, there is little question that news outlets are well within their rights to publish the names of jurors, provided they are obtained in a legal manner.

Lee Levine, a first amendment lawyer in Washington and the author of a book, “Newsgathering and the Law,” said there was “no legal impediment” to publishing the name of a juror.

“In this context there was a news reason to report the name,” Levine said. “Good journalists can differ with each other over whether that was the appropriate editorial call.”

However, Eve Burton, general counsel for Hearst Corp., a media company which owns many newspapers including The Houston Chronicle and The San Francisco Chronicle, said she disagreed with the decision to publish Juror No. 4’s name.

Burton said it was “a bad area for the press to push the ethical boundaries” and could give ammunition to judges who want to restrict the news media’s access to jurors in future trials.

“There’s no bible here – it’s a gray area,” said Anthony Mancini, director of journalism program at Brooklyn College and a former reporter and editor at the New York Post. “As an editor I can see both sides of it.”

AP-ES-03-29-04 1737EST