In early 2023, Mark Jensen was sentenced to life in prison without parole for the 1998 murder of his wife. Today, WTMJ’s Libby Collins sits down with that trial’s jury, Ken Humphrey. Ken goes deep into the jury selection process, gives us the inside scoop on how a jury operates, and talks about his new book, which is loosely based on his experiences with the trial. It’s all ahead on this thrilling edition of WTMJ Conversations! Listen in the player above.
A partial transcript is provided below, courtesy of eCourt Reporters.
LIBBY COLLINS: At any point when you were writing The Breakfast Jury, did you start to think, “Could this come back at a later date where somebody’s going to try once again to overturn the verdict because of what I’ve written in this book”?
KEN HUMPHREY: That actually was very much a concern of mine. Before I even started, I actually consulted with a couple of different lawyers that specialize in a literary realm. And I said, “Here’s what I want to do, what should I avoid?”
So, one of the things I did was I fictionalized all the names for everybody in there, and I took care to really walk wide of any defamation. Because that’s really where you run into dangerous territory. That’s why I really stuck to the courtroom facts of what went on, because that right there is public record. I tried to keep myself safe within that to say, okay, I’m just repeating or I’m just rewriting what actually happened. I’m not giving an opinion. I’m not making statements on anybody that participated in it that portrays them in a defamatory light.
