State: Justice is fleeting in shamed man's eyes

WAUCHULA -- After a one-day trial, the lawyers kept their closing arguments mercifully short, and now the case would be decided by three women and three men who reflected the growing diversity of rural Hardee County.

Four of them were white and one Hispanic. The lone black juror, a former sheriff's deputy, would be the foreman.

Normil Normius, the 33-year-old Haitian immigrant who had filed the lawsuit, told his attorney he believed they would "do the right thing."

He wanted damages for a degrading search that took place when two employees suspected him of shoplifting at an Eckerd drugstore in this town of 3,200 people southeast of Tampa Bay.

After deliberating two hours, the jury sided with Normius, awarding him $110,000.

But the victory would be momentary.

Calling the verdict "clearly outrageous," Eckerd Corp. attorney Sam Henderson asked County Judge Robert Earl Collins to reduce the award, and the judge obliged.

"I'm going to amend it and award Mr. Normius $100," Collins said.

Normius' attorney, Edward M. Murphy, was stunned.

"What was that, your honor?"

His client had still won; the judge agreed a wrong had been committed. He just didn't think the company was $110,000 in the wrong.

It was the judge's way of saying the jury got carried away, an option available to him under state law.

Four months later, it is Normius and his attorneys who are outraged, along with the jury foreman, who says the judge dishonored a sincere effort by the panel to reach a fair verdict.

To be sure, the case is staler than a Christmas cookie in January. The trial was in September, and the incident occurred on a hot August afternoon in 1994. Even the judge has moved on. He was voted out of office in the fall primary.

For Normius, however, the case remains painfully fresh for reasons that involve Haitian culture.

"It affects me a lot, because, from my country, if you're a thief, people are not allowed to talk to you," Normius said in a recent interview.

The Haitian culture's strong condemnation of stealing was a key element in the pleadings filed by Normius' attorneys.

It goes back to the legend of Henry Christophe, who ruled Haiti as king from 1811 to 1820, said Bryant C. Freeman, a Haitian scholar at the University of Kansas. To discourage stealing, Freeman said, the king circulated a story that he left pots of gold out by the roadside, but also decreed that anyone trying to take them would be harshly punished.

Today, if you ask Haitian parents whether they want their daughter to be a prostitute or a thief, they will answer prostitute, Freeman said. "That's the traditional Haitian attitude toward stealing," he said. "Stealing is really a no-no."

Kennedy Legler of Bradenton, one of Normius' attorneys, said his client continues to press the case because Haitians would think he was guilty of stealing if he didn't.

"I cannot let it go," Normius said.

On the day of his alleged theft, it had been only three months since Normius left Haiti to start a new life in Florida, picking citrus with his parents in the orchards of Hardee County. He had returned from English class at an adult education center in Wauchula and wanted to take a shower, but there was no soap in the house. With $5 from his mother, he rode a bike to the Eckerd store, paid $4.75 for two bars of Tone bath soap and some Cutex nail polish, and walked out the door.

The alarm sounded, but, new to the United States, Normius said he didn't know what it was. He continued walking and got on his bike before he was stopped by two female Eckerd employees, including the manager.

He said the women grabbed his bag, ordered him back into an office, and used hand signals to tell him to empty his pockets. He said they searched his wallet, then motioned to remove his shirt, shoes, socks and pants -- all in view of other customers.

Normius rode home humiliated and depressed. That night, his father took him to the emergency room after he coughed up blood. He says the problem persisted for months.

Eckerd says Normius was hurriedly pedaling away, and that the manager simply "asked" him to return to the store. The company says the manager patted her pockets to ask whether he had anything in his pockets. When she signaled to ask if he had anything in his socks, Normius removed them and she "quickly contested," saying that was not necessary.

When she told Normius he could go, he misinterpreted her again and opened his shirt and pulled down his pants, according to the company's pleadings.

The company also contends that Normius' illness was never proved at trial.

Normius has appealed the $100 award to the 2nd District Court of Appeal, which likely will deal with two opposing currents under state law. One is the notion that the "reasonable actions of a jury" are fundamental to the justice system and should only be reversed with great caution. The other is the idea that juries can abuse their power, become too emotionally involved in a case or misperceive the evidence. With the latter thought in mind, state law allows a judge to reduce an award under certain circumstances.

Former Judge Collins could not be reached for comment, but his final order said the jury's decision was not supported by the evidence, was "grossly excessive" and "shocked the conscience of the court."

Most judges are loath to substitute their judgment for a jury's, but it does happen, according to several Tampa Bay area lawyers interviewed for this story.

At the trial, jurors heard from one Eckerd employee, as well as Normius and his parents. They also were given statements from Normius' doctors.

Kelvin Lindsey, the jury foreman who feels "let down" by the ruling, said he and his fellow jurors did not base their verdict on emotion. "It was a struggle," he said. "We put our minds to it. What if this was you?"

They felt Eckerd did not present enough evidence, Lindsey said. They noted that Normius didn't resist the store manager. And they didn't buy the employee's testimony that no one wanted Normius to undress, he said.

They saw it as a civil rights violation and wanted, he said, to send a message: "If you've got security equipment in your establishment, make sure it works and follow your procedures." A former deputy for the Osceola and Hardee county sheriff's offices, Lindsey added: "When you're doing procedures that even law enforcement can't do, there's a problem here."

Eckerd spokeswoman Tami Alderman said in a statement: "We feel the judicial process ran its course and the judge's actions were part of that process. Eckerd respects the process and the judge's actions."

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Lucy Morgan

From the Times state desk