Patrick Swayze’s widow was the holdout juror in a controversial south Florida shooting case, one of her fellow jurors claims.
Lisa Niemi Swayze sat on a nine-person jury for the case against Michael Custer — a sergeant with the Palm Beach County sheriff’s office. The case resulted in a mistrial after the jurors couldn’t break an 8-1 deadlock, with Niemi Swayze resisting the conviction.
“The lady would just not capitulate in any way,” juror Thomas Goe told local ABC affiliate WPBF. “She was bound, determined. She was going to vote for him not to be responsible.”
Jurors were trying to determine if Custer used excessive force in the May 2012 shooting of 24-year-old Seth Adams.
Most of the jury decided that Custer had used excessive force in shooting Adams outside the nursery his family owned.
“Absolutely nothing to back up the story,” Goe told the channel. “That bordered on buffoonery I think. I wasn’t buying very much of his testimony after all.”
Members of the jury spend three days deliberating before Judge Daniel Hurley sent them home in a mistrial.
Custer said Adams tried to chock him on May 17, 2012, and began rummaging through his truck despite the cop’s orders, according to WPBF. He thought Custer was going for a weapon, but he was unarmed.
Goe told the channel he and his fellow jurors — except for Niemi Swayze — weren’t buying Custer’s story.
“We were trying to convince Lisa to look at the evidence, look at this evidence, look at this testimony,” Goe told WPBF. “She said she didn’t hear this, she didn’t hear that.”
Adams’ parents were seeking $10 million to $20 million from the government over their son’s shooting, according to the Palm Beach Post.
Niemi Swayze has a home in Boca Raton, Fla., as well as one in Los Angeles.
She married the “Roadhouse” star in 1975 until Swayze died of pancreatic cancer in 2009. In 2014, she married jeweler Albert DePrisco at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla.
She didn’t immediately return a call for comment.
