a public defender

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Via Deliberations (which is quickly becoming a must-read) comes this California Court of Appeals opinion vacating a conviction on the grounds that a juror deliberately lied during voire dire and then blogged about it and other parts of the trial, including jury deliberations.

I quickly shot out, ‘I recommend we take a quick poll to see where we stand.’

A woman interjected, ‘No, let’s wait. I don’t feel comfortable doing that so early.’  I had hoped popular sentiment would lead us to decide this thing quickly, but underestimated the apparent sympathies among some of the jurors. I decided it best to let others speak.  They were wanting to speak, so I let them speak.

… [I]t’s Juror No. 8, blogging the California burglary trial of Donald McNeely in 2006.  He blogged at such length and with such gusto that he sent McNeely’s conviction — to which, by his account, he guided the jury with powerful insight and skill — to the California Court of Appeals, where it was vacated this week.

The blog posts started in mid-trial, not after the verdict — and they revealed that No. 8 had lied in voir dire, claiming he was his office’s “project manager” and omitting the more accurate term “lawyer.”  (”More neutral than lawyer, don’t ya think?” he crowed in the blog.)  “This is a situation where a manipulative person, who unbeknownst to other jurors and the trial court was also a practicing attorney, deliberately maneuvered himself into the position of foreperson and potentially hastened the jurors to a verdict,” said the troubled Court of Appeals.

I have always been fearful of the jury that deliberates on a Friday afternoon. As confirmed by Juror No. 8, no one wants to come back to the “small dingy room” on Monday morning. Deadlocked juries routinely receive Chip Smith charges, urging them to consider each other’s positions and think through the evidence again. If that isn’t pressure, I don’t know what is.