Justice Delayed: The Robert Marshall Story

Trial and Error

On January 7, 1986, Rob Marshall's trial began. He was tried along with the man whom McKinnon had named as the alleged shooter. From the very beginning, prosecutors in Ocean County had acknowledged that they planned to seek the ultimate sanction if Marshall was convicted: death by lethal injection. Because of the intense publicity surrounding the case in Ocean County, the trial had been moved to Atlantic County, an hour or so to the south. All the same, it remained a major media event.

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It ended two months later on March 5. The jury, which found the alleged shooter not guilty of murder, found that the testimony from Beth and at least some of the statements made by McKinnon, together with testimony detailing Marshall's financial woes and his seemingly monumental insurance policies on his wife, compelling enough that they convicted Marshall of murder and conspiracy to murder.

It probably didn't help his case when the prosecutor got Marshall, who claimed that despite everything he still had deep affection for his late wife, to admit on the stand that even then, nearly a year and a half after her death, his wife's ashes still remained in a cardboard box, collecting dust on the shelf of a nearby funeral parlor. Marshall insisted that he planned to bury her remains under a palm tree in Florida as soon as he was free, though by all accounts, it's doubtful that the jury bought that argument.

The verdict was announced about 11:30 a.m. Moments later Marshall collapsed on the steps outside the courthouse. He was taken to a nearby hospital where he was observed and released.

What happened next, has for nearly two decades been the subject of intense legal debate, both within New Jersey and beyond. At the heart of the debate is this question: When a criminal defendant is fighting for his very life, just how far is a lawyer required to go to persuade even one juror to spare his life?