STAR JUROR: Caroline Kennedy yesterday goes to court, where she’s on Norman Chatman’s jury. (William Farrington)
STAR JUROR: Caroline Kennedy yesterday goes to court, where she’s on Norman Chatman’s jury. (
)
The worlds of Camelot and crack dealers converged in a Manhattan courtroom yesterday, as former First Daughter Caroline Bouvier Kennedy Schlossberg sat as Juror No. 7 in a mundane buy-and-bust trial.
Did one Norman Chatman, 31, sell four $5 crack rocks to an undercover agent on Dec. 1, 2012, at Lexington Avenue and East 129th Street?
Not exactly the stuff of Park Avenue society. Still, Kennedy listened along with her fellow jurors — including a hedge-funder, a magazine editor and a fashion designer — as a prosecutor insisted Chatman was guilty and a defense lawyer insisted they caught the wrong guy.
As crime-scene maps were entered into evidence and set on an easel, Kennedy, 55, watched attentively. Her eyes drooped a bit, as did those of her fellow panelists, as the afternoon wore on, and the faint sound of amplified Chinese music wafted up through the window behind her from Columbus Park 13 stories down.
It wasn’t entirely a passive, sit-and-watch affair for the author, who has stumped for President Obama and Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance Jr. At one point in the afternoon, Kennedy, a lawyer herself, interrupted the proceedings to ask the arresting officer to stop flapping the crime scene photos around as he testified.
“Can you just hold it still?” she asked, interrupting witness Detective Christopher Fleming of Manhattan North Narcotics. “You’re moving it around a lot,” she pointed out.
“OK,” answered the detective. And while he looked a bit taken aback, he stopped flapping.
No worries, Fleming said after court of the odd exchange — anything for a juror. “They need to know what they need to know,” he shrugged, “to come to a fair decision.”
Chatman, who has six prior robbery and drug- sale felonies in his record but was caught with no buy money or drugs on him, faces at least six years in prison if Kennedy and her peers convict. Testimony continues tomorrow.