Opinion ID: 197937
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The Incident Involving Juror C

Text: 36 The incident involving Juror C raises the unusual issue of the nature of a trial court's obligation (if any) to share with trial counsel a post-verdict communication from a juror. Proper resolution of this issue is not at all straightforward. On the one hand, the analogy the district court drew to our cases prohibiting counsel from communicating with jurors after a trial, see, e.g., Kepreos, 759 F.2d at 967, is far less than perfect because it was a juror, and not counsel, who initiated the post-trial communication at issue here. Moreover, by failing to make the letter part of the record, the court effectively made itself the final word as to whether the letter revealed anything that could call the legality of the verdicts into question. Finally, the fact that the court also received two rather unorthodox communications from jurors prior to the verdicts raises questions about whether the court properly exercised any discretion it might have had with respect to this situation. 4 In our view, there is much to be gained (and little we can see to be lost) in providing Rowe with concrete evidence that Juror C's concerns were, for example, entirely unrelated to the issues raised by Jurors A and B. 37 There are, on the other hand, also countervailing considerations. Despite knowing about the letter prior to sentencing, Rowe's counsel precluded any opportunity for reflective consideration of the matter by waiting until after the sentence was imposed even to raise it. Furthermore, at oral argument before us, Rowe's counsel conceded that he had some vague idea about the contents of the letter, which apparently was, at least in part, a plea for leniency at sentencing. All this leads us to conclude that there may well be less of a controversy on this issue than is first apparent. 38 In any event, we think it best at this point simply to leave this matter for further argument and record development following remand. Especially in view of the communications from Jurors A and B, we are hard-pressed to see how keeping the letter from Juror C out of the record would be within any discretion the district court might have on this issue. But if, on further reflection, the court sees compelling factual and/or legal reasons which both outweigh the very strong interests Rowe has in reviewing the letter and render inadequate the measures at the court's disposal for ensuring jury and juror confidentiality, the court should state those reasons with particularity to facilitate any further review we may be called upon to conduct.