Jury scorns the 'other woman'

Instead, Mrs Hutelmyer turned to the civil courts to wreak her revenge on the secretary - and has just walked off with a US$1 million (HK$7.74 million) in damages.

The eroding institution of American marriage has been discussed in this column before, most recently with the news that Louisiana has adopted a more meaningful marriage covenant in order to reverse the skyrocketing divorce rate.

But despite the efforts of many states to restore some old-fashioned notions about the sanctity of marriage, Mrs Hutelmyer's record payout is likely to do more than any amount of law-making in sending a wake-up call to those thinking of having an affair and destroying their partnership.

What the North Carolina jury did was award $500,000 in compensatory damages and another $500,000 in punitive damages after the scorned wife sued the secretary, Margie Cox, for deliberately seducing her husband and breaking up their home.

The jury took only three hours to decide on the handsome payout after hearing a week's worth of evidence in which Ms Cox was described as a former 'matronly' woman who suddenly took to wearing sexy skirts in a successful campaign to get James Hutelmyer into bed.

The jury's huge payout - a similar case in the state this year saw a damages award of only $86,000 - is not necessarily going to send lawyers in every corner of this most litigious of lands scurrying to file similar suits on behalf of every deserted woman.

North Carolina is one of only a dozen states where statute books still permit what are known as 'alienation of affection' lawsuits against a third party.

But analysts still believe this jury spoke out about what is seen as the inadequacy of most divorce settlements, which rarely give an aggrieved spouse the chance to claim fault on the other half's part.

So should future marriage-wreckers be on the lookout for more of the same? Mike McManus, president of Marriage Savers counselling group, said: 'The amount seems excessive. But I'm delighted she won this suit.

'Our culture has seemed to say in the past that there is nothing wrong with breaking up a marriage.' And a clerk in the North Carolina court remarked: 'We see cases like this once every two or three years usually. But I've a feeling we're going to have a run on them now.' An outsider's view of the United States' capital punishment system tends to see it as a thriving industry, exemplified by southern states like Texas and Georgia, where the electric chairs and lethal injection tables are kept busy clearing the backlog of death row inmates.

In fact, 12 of the 50 states have no death penalty and of those that do, no less than 10 have not executed a prisoner since the Supreme Court revived capital punishment as being constitutionally valid in 1976.

Even in the most populous state, California, where there is no shortage of crimes requiring the death penalty, only four people sentenced to death have met their maker in two decades.

The reason, of course, is the labyrinthine appeals process, designed to protect a prisoner's right to a fair process but which is routinely exploited by lawyers, leaving hundreds of convicted men and women on death row for an average of at least 10 years before all legal avenues are exploited.

New Jersey is one of the states which, despite severe crime problems, has not been able to execute a single prisoner since it brought back the death penalty 15 years ago.

Although 46 were sentenced to death, more than 30 cases were overturned and the state has managed to keep eight of them on track.

This being an election year, New Jersey's governor Christine Todd Whitman has called together a commission to look at ways of speeding up the appeals process. Civil liberties groups are naturally outraged.

Even the newest convert to capital punishment, New York, is having trouble tying the hangman's noose.

After Governor George Pataki fought to introduce the death penalty two years ago, some district attorneys decided on principle to avoid ever asking for it.

And now the very first capital case to come to court has been thrown out by a judge ruling it is unconstitutional.

New York's mistake, it seems, was to introduce a system in which a defendant can avoid the death penalty if he agrees to enter a guilty plea to murder.

The judge ruled that by guaranteeing his right to avoid death by doing a plea bargain, he is effectively being stripped of his right to a jury trial.

What about all the innocent defendants who fear being convicted by a jury (and thus face death) and so plead guilty, the judge asked.

Dead man walking? Not nearly as often as you thought.

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