Jury of nine women, three men picked in murder-for-hire trial

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Posted 8:02PM on Tuesday, February 19, 2002

BRUNSWICK - A jury of nine women and three men selected Tuesday will decide whether Dr. Carl M. Drury is guilty of trying to hire an undercover federal agent to murder his wife. Drury, a 62-year-old family physician and former Georgia legislator, faces up to life in prison if convicted in U.S. District Court. Prosecutors and Drury's attorneys spent hours Tuesday trying to select an impartial jury in this port city, where Drury practiced medicine for 23 years and where news coverage has been widespread since his arrest Aug. 24. Of more than 60 prospective jurors questioned individually, most said they had read or heard news reports. Many recalled friends and co-workers gossiping about the case. A few were former patients of Drury's. One dismissed juror was even his golfing buddy. Several potential jurors told U.S. District Judge Dudley H. Bowen Jr. they'd heard so much about the case as well as the mysterious death of Drury's first wife 13 years ago that they couldn't be objective. ``In a way, this is a small town,'' said one woman, who was excused. ``You hear things about people you don't know or you've heard of. ... Dr. Drury has been around a long time, and he has a long history too.'' Prosecutors say Drury asked longtime friend Steven Whatley, a firearms instructor at Brunswick's Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, to help him find a hitman to kill his second wife, Mary Drury. Whatley told the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms of Drury's request. ATF agents set Drury up with the cell phone number of an undercover agent who posed as a hitman. Prosecutors say Drury and the agent, Louis Valoze, hatched a murder plot between Aug. 7 and Aug. 24, when Drury was arrested after calling Valoze from a grocery store pay phone. Mary Drury was never harmed. Several jurors were dismissed after stating the unexplained death of Drury's first wife, Peggy Adams Drury, in 1989 made them suspicious of the doctor. Two medical examiners and a coroner's inquest failed to determine her cause of death after her body was found in her bathtub. No criminal charges were ever filed. Bowen refused to excuse jurors based solely on whether they were familiar with media reports on the case, noting that Drury himself signed a statement saying he wanted to be tried in Brunswick. ``I'm not looking for a bunch of deaf, dumb mutes who haven't heard anything about the case,'' Bowen said. ``We could go to Wyoming and find a jury that has not heard anything about the case, but we're not going to do that.'' Drury attorney Ed Garland argued that jurors would not fairly be able to put pretrial publicity out of their minds. ``Publicity has a way of creating false thoughts and false memories,'' he said. Drury's attorneys also protested seating a jury of mostly women, who make up nine of the 12 jurors and both of two alternates selected. Bowen ruled the jurors were chosen fairly for reasons other than gender. Opening statements are scheduled for Wednesday morning. Key evidence in the trial will be tape recordings of conversations between Drury and Valoze, who has said Drury told him he wanted his wife dead because she had ruined him financially. He said Drury gave him $250 and his wife's gun. The couple was divorcing at the time of Drury's arrest. He filed for bankruptcy soon after.