Opinion ID: 223527
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Juror Misconduct Allegations

Text: After the jury returned its verdicts on the Defendants (and reported that it could not reach a verdict as to Perez), the district court received a note from one of the jurors. Juror 107 alleged that, for about three weeks during the government's case-in-chief, some of the jurors had violated the district court's instruction not to discuss the case among themselves prior to deliberations: I spoke to some of the loud & boisterous jurors ... about making remarks about witnesses, attorney's [ sic ] and discussing the case.... Jokes and other inferences about the case were made. The Defendants moved for an immediate mistrial, and the district court denied the motion, recommending that defense counsel file a written motion and that the district court would then decide whether a hearing would be necessary. After considering written submissions from the government and defense counsel, and the Defendants' accompanying motion for a new trial based on jury misconduct, the district court declined to hold a hearing and denied the Defendants' motion. The district court reasoned that there was no allegation of external influence on the jury and that no circumstance in the case justified departure from the general rule that post-verdict interrogation of jurors is inappropriate when only internal pressures or premature deliberations are involved. The Defendants appeal the district court's decision to not hold a hearing, claiming that the jury's alleged premature discussions denied them a fair trial. While the Defendants acknowledge that the district court could not inquire into the jury's or a juror's thought process, see Fed. R.Evid. 606(b), they argue that a hearing to discover whether premature deliberations occurred and, if so, the extent of those deliberations would not invade any territory protected by Rule 606. See United States v. Resko, 3 F.3d 684, 692 (3d Cir.1993) (Although the district court expressed concern that if it engaged in any colloquy with the jurors it might invade their deliberative process, the court could have easily tailored a colloquy to elicit information about the jurors' impartiality without so intruding.). We review a district court's handling of allegations of premature deliberations and juror bias for an abuse of discretion. United States v. Moore, 641 F.3d 812, 830 (7th Cir.2011); United States v. Vasquez-Ruiz, 502 F.3d 700, 704 (7th Cir.2007). The Defendants compare their case to two federal cases, suggesting they compel a reversal here. First, they liken their case to Oswald v. Bertrand, a habeas corpus case in which we held that the trial court's failure to investigate pervasive allegations of bias among venire-persons was erroneous. 374 F.3d 475, 483-84 (7th Cir. 2004). The Defendants argue that the trial court's refusal to inquire further of one panel member and others in Oswald parallels the district court's refusal to question jurors in their case. Second, they liken their case to Resko, in which the Third Circuit reversed the appellant's conviction because the district court did not investigate the nature and extent of jurors' pre-verdict discussions of the case. Resko, 3 F.3d at 686. There, a juror alerted a court officer on the seventh day of a nine-day trial that members of the jury had been discussing the case. Id. The reviewing court noted six (somewhat overlapping) policies behind prohibiting premature deliberations in criminal cases, including both potential bias toward the prosecution due to the presentation of the government's case first and also the risk of jurors crediting one side's evidence over the other due to the natural human tendency to remain committed to a view already expressed to others. Id. at 689-90. The district court addressed the jury as a whole and distributed questionnaires meant to gauge whether each juror had discussed the case and whether each had formed an opinion as to guilt or innocence of either defendant. Id. at 688. The Third Circuit ultimately determined that, given the discovery that the jurors had all engaged in premature discussions of the case, ... this method was inadequate to enable the [district] court to fulfill its responsibility of providing an appropriate cautionary instruction and of determining whether prejudice resulted from the jury misconduct. Id. at 691. The Defendants argue that the district court's failure to voir dire jurors in this case after receiving the note compels a new trial, just as circumstances in Oswald and Resko did. We disagree. The Defendants overlook two fundamental distinctions between their case and those they cite. First, the misconduct allegation here arose after the general verdicts had been returned, whereas every case they cited dealt with pre-verdict allegations and concomitant opportunities to investigate the circumstances before the juries retired to deliberate. Second, the majority of their cited cases involved far clearer indications of juror bias than were present here, where any potential bias is a matter of sheer speculation. As a preliminary matter, the government and the Defendants agree that Juror 107's note neither alleged nor implied any external influence on the jury's deliberations. Accordingly, no presumption of prejudice arises, see Remmer v. United States, 347 U.S. 227, 229, 74 S.Ct. 450, 98 L.Ed. 654 (1954) (external communication, contact, or tampering with the jury rebutably presumed to be prejudicial to the defendants), and no hearing or investigation in which jurors are questioned was absolutely required, see United States v. McClinton, 135 F.3d 1178, 1186 (7th Cir.1998) (If outside contacts may have affected the jury, due process requires some form of hearing.). We evaluate this case as a matter of alleged intra-jury influence or misconduct. See Vasquez-Ruiz, 502 F.3d at 705 (distinguishing the scope of inquiry necessary based on lack of clarity whether source of message was external or internal to the jury); United States v. Kimberlin, 805 F.2d 210, 243-44 (7th Cir. 1986) (no per se abuse of discretion found in district court's decision not to conduct a hearing where only intra-jury communications were alleged). The allegations of intra-jury misconduct in this case arose only after the jury returned its general verdicts as to each of the Defendants. The Supreme Court has warned against pervasive post-verdict inquiries into juror misconduct: There is little doubt that postverdict investigation into juror misconduct would in some instances lead to the invalidation of verdicts reached after irresponsible or improper juror behavior. It is not at all clear, however, that the jury system could survive such efforts to perfect it.... [F]ull and frank discussion in the jury room, jurors' willingness to return an unpopular verdict, and the community's trust in a system that relies on the decisions of laypeople would all be undermined by a barrage of postverdict scrutiny of juror conduct. Tanner v. United States, 483 U.S. 107, 120-21, 107 S.Ct. 2739, 97 L.Ed.2d 90 (1987). Federal Rule of Evidence 606(b) flatly prevents many inquiries of jurors intended to impeach the jury's verdict. [6] The Defendants acknowledge that none of the three areas of permissible testimony specified by the rule apply in their case, but they cite Kimberlin for the proposition that the district court nevertheless could have asked jurors about the alleged premature deliberations without violating Rule 606(b). See Kimberlin, 805 F.2d at 243-44 (We recognize that these communications between jurors were allegedly made during the course of trial. Hence, they are not literally included in the prohibition of Rule 606(b) against testimony by a juror as to a statement during the course of the jury's deliberations.). [7] The Defendants may be correct that the district court could have inquired about whether the discussions occurred and whether they constituted premature deliberations. But they ignore the remainder of Rule 606(b) and our holding in Kimberlin when they state that the issue was whether there were premature discussions of the evidence and then whether those discussions prejudiced the defendants. (Appellants' Joint Br. at 64 (emphasis added).) Any inquiry as to bias arising from the alleged premature deliberations would run afoul of the Rule's clear proscription: after the verdict is entered, a juror may not testify as to ... the effect of anything upon that or any other juror's mind or emotions as influencing the juror to assent to or dissent from the verdict ... or concerning the juror's mental processes in connection therewith. Fed.R.Evid. 606(b). As we held in Kimberlin, any hearing would be fruitless unless these statements, if made, would be presumed to be prejudicial. 805 F.2d at 244. For reasons we discuss below, we decline to presume prejudice under the circumstances of this case. Our determination comports with the holdings of this and other courts to have considered district courts' obligations when allegations of jury misconduct arise after the verdicts have been entered. In United States v. Stafford we determined that a post-verdict motion for a hearing regarding jury bias was too late, as the defendants would have been seeking testimony from a juror designed to impeach the jury's verdict without any basis for supposing that the jury had been subjected to outside influences. 136 F.3d 1109, 1113 (7th Cir.1998). In a Sixth Circuit appeal with allegations of premature deliberations, the court noted that if the case involves an internal influence, [Rule 606(b)] does not permit the post-verdict interrogation of jurors. United States v. Logan, 250 F.3d 350, 380 (6th Cir.2001). See also United States v. Caldwell, 83 F.3d 954, 956 (8th Cir.1996) ([Rule] 606(b) generally precludes the testimony of any juror regarding intrajury communications, as well as the testimony of a nonjuror regarding an intrajury statement.). Tellingly, the Defendants cite no case demonstrating the necessity of ordering the hearing they seek here based on intra-jury misconduct that comes to light after the verdict has issued. We also consider that Juror 107's note only suggested the possibility of premature deliberations (as opposed to jokes, idle comments, or other generalized discussions), and it contained no suggestion that the jurors were in any way biased. By prohibiting premature deliberations, we seek to protect a defendant's right to a fair trial by assuring jury impartiality, [8] and that is the ultimate inquiry of our analysis here. McClinton, 135 F.3d at 1186. The standard of impartiality is whether a juror can set aside an impression or opinion and decide a case solely on the evidence presented in court. Id. at 1188. The intrajury discussions of the case certainly violated the district court's order, but that does not necessarily mean that the jury's objectivity was compromised. See Resko, 3 F.3d at 690 ([W]hen there are premature deliberations among jurors with no allegations of external influence on the jury, the proper process for jury decisionmaking has been violated, but there is no reason to doubt that the jury based its ultimate decision only on evidence formally presented at trial. (emphasis added)). As we held in Oswald, the adequacy of the judge's actions in the face of allegations of misconduct is a function of the probability of bias; the greater that probability, the more searching the inquiry needed to make reasonably sure that an unbiased jury is impaneled. 374 F.3d at 480. This is not a case like Oswald where the circumstances strongly suggested that the [venire] had made up its mind that Oswald was guilty before the jury was even selected. Id. at 479. Rather, the note in itself could hardly be considered conclusive evidence of prejudice. Stafford, 136 F.3d at 1112. And when the district court considered these allegations, it had before it the jury's general verdicts that ran the gamut from guilty through hung to not guilty. These split verdicts imply that the jury reached independent conclusions as to each defendant without making up its mind before the close of the evidence. See United States v. Cuthel, 903 F.2d 1381, 1383 (11th Cir.1990). In light of both the differential verdicts and the vagueness of the note  either of which might suffice to belay the need for a hearing in a given case  the allegation of jury misconduct in this case was not sufficiently substantial to warrant questioning the jurors about the content of the discussions. See Stafford, 136 F.3d at 1112-13 (Not every allegation of jury misconduct is sufficiently substantial ... to warrant putting the jurors on the spot.); Logan, 250 F.3d at 378-79 ([T]rial judges are afforded considerable discretion in determining the amount of inquiry necessary, if any, in response to allegations of jury misconduct.). Because Rule 606(b) prohibits the very inquiry the Defendants requested, and because there was no clear indication of juror prejudice in the circumstances of their case, we cannot conclude that the district court abused its discretion in declining to hold an evidentiary hearing after it received Juror 107's note. In summary, the district court erred when it empaneled an anonymous jury without specifying its reasons for doing so, but that error was harmless because the circumstances clearly allowed for the use of an anonymous jury. The district court did not abuse its discretion when it denied the Defendants' myriad severance motions. Likewise, it was not an abuse of discretion to deny their request for a hearing based on alleged juror misconduct. Accordingly, none of the issues jointly presented by the Defendants lead us to conclude that new trials are warranted. As Barbosa brings no other issues on appeal, we will affirm his conviction. We next consider the other Defendants' independent issues.