Opinion ID: 1199597
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 9

Heading: Allen Peoples

Text: Peoples was a member of petitioner's jury. In 1994, he was contacted by telephone for an appointment to interview him about his jury service. Thereafter, two women came to his home. They indicated they were investigators for the Appeals Court in San Francisco and were saving jurors a trip to San Francisco by asking questions the appellate judge would have asked. The investigators gave Peoples a business card but did not disclose they were working for petitioner's defense. Peoples told them he was reluctant to say anything that might compromise the verdict. They assured him that was not their purpose, and [t]here was no way that would happen. Peoples would not have spoken to them had he known they represented petitioner. He felt they did not deal with him honestly. The investigators interviewed him on one day, taking notes. Among other things, they asked about whether he had violated jury admonitions, including the warning to avoid media reports.' On the second day, as arranged, they returned with a typed draft declaration. He was permitted to read the draft himself. Changes he requested were made by handwritten interlineation, after which he signed the declaration and initialed each paragraph, as instructed, to verify its accuracy. He considered even the final version embellished to some degree, and not entirely correct, but he signed it anyway in the belief that any inaccuracies were immaterial. As indicated in his 1996 declaration obtained by the Attorney General, the only clear error in his 1994 declaration, one he overlooked when signing and initialing that document, was that his jury service in a child molestation case occurred after, not before, he served on petitioner's jury.