EUGENE, Ore. (AP) — A 59-year-old University of Oregon custodian says he’s the lone juror who refused to vote for conviction in the murder trial of a 24-year-old hotel clerk accused of killing her newborn son.
George Bruce tells The Register-Guard that he disagreed with the jury’s other 11 members, who believed that Angelica Swartout fatally smothered a baby shortly after giving birth.
Swartout was accused of suffocating the baby in an employee bathroom at the hotel where she worked and putting the remains in a garbage can. Investigators searched the county landfill, but didn’t find any remains.
Bruce says he believes the Springfield woman told the truth when she testified at her Circuit Court trial that she had faked an advancing pregnancy after an apparent miscarriage to continue receiving support from her family.
