Opinion ID: 2715888
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Activated Cellphone

Text: After deliberating for several days and sending multiple notes to the court, the jury sent a note asking: “Are the electronic contacts on Alex Dickens’s cell phone admissible, such as contact lists etc.?” Before responding, the court conferred with the parties, none of which had reviewed the contents of Dickens’s cell phone prior to trial because the phone’s battery was dead. Everyone agreed that they needed more information. The court brought the jury to the courtroom and asked the foreperson whether the jury had already accessed the electronic contacts and was told that the jury had “gone through them.” Counsel and the court talked further about what the next step should be, in the course of which appellant’s counsel said “I think my request is to ask further questions about what exactly they’re – what discussions have –” and the court interrupted “I can’t ask them about their discussions. I think that would be an improper intrusion on the jury deliberations.” The court suggested that the next step should be to retrieve the phone and find out what exactly its contents were, to which all parties agreed. At appellant counsel’s suggestion, the court recalled the jury and posed an additional 6 question: “[w]ith regards to the cell phone, beyond the contacts, did the jury look at any other part of the cell phone?” The foreperson responded, “Yes, yes.” The court then decided to allow the parties to figure out how to charge the phone and examine its contents overnight. The next day, the court began by asking the parties what relevant information they had found on the phone. The parties determined that the only contents of potential interest to the jury were: (1) two e-mails from a person named “Larry,” “in the nature of a mass e-mailing advertising a restaurant/bar on Benning Road and a specific date of an event” sent on December 4th; (2) a contact named “Larry” in the cell phone’s contact list; and (3) a phone call listed in the phone’s call records, showing that co-defendant Dickens’s phone received a call from “Larry’s” number at 3:09 p.m. on the date of the offense. There was no response to either of the e-mails, and there was no last name attributed to “Larry” anywhere on the phone. The court then asked counsel what prejudice would result from the jury’s exposure to this information. Appellant’s counsel immediately asserted that the phone’s contents were not in evidence and the jury should not have been allowed to consider them, and he asked for a mistrial. Co-defendant Dickens’s counsel 7 explained that the “Larry” contact and communications were troubling because the jury could easily assume it was Larry McMichael, the alleged mastermind behind the drug-deal robbery, contrary to the assertions during trial that “there was no connection to any Larry.” Appellant’s counsel explained that had he known of this evidence, he would have moved for severance, and spent more time addressing codefendant Dickens’s role in the offense. At the suggestion of co-defendant’s counsel, the court decided to make still further inquiry of the jury to determine precisely what categories of information the jurors accessed on the phone. The jury responded with a note stating that it had reviewed Dickens’s emails, texts, call logs and contacts list and denied having accessed any other categories. The court then stated that in its view, the only question remaining was whether to give a limiting instruction. At that point, codefendant’s counsel joined appellant in requesting a mistrial, noting the particular prejudice imposed on his client by the Larry phone number. Appellant’s counsel said that, without abandoning his motion for a mistrial, he was requesting the court in the alternative to “issue a strong curative instruction and instruct [the jury] not to consider this evidence.” Neither counsel asked the court to engage in any further inquiry of the jury. The court then denied a mistrial without prejudice and penned 8 a proposed instruction that both parties agreed to “in light of the court’s ruling on the mistrial.” The court gave the following instruction. Government Exhibit Number 76, the telephone, was introduced for two purposes only – its location where it was found and the telephone number that belongs to it. The other contents of the phone are not in evidence. And you may not consider the other contents at all in reaching your decisions in this case. Appellant’s counsel renewed his motion for a mistrial after the jury delivered its partial verdict shortly before 3 p.m., the same afternoon that the court gave the limiting instruction. The court reiterated its conclusion that the evidence on the cell phone did not “actually detract[] from your client’s situation” and denied the renewed mistrial motion.