Opinion ID: 500657
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Did mid-trial publicity taint jury deliberations?

Text: 25 We now move to appellant's more substantial contentions. He claims that the jury may have seen what he characterizes as a highly prejudicial news article about him prior to or in the course of its deliberations, and the district court erred by failing to caution the jury adequately to disregard press accounts. He urges error also in the court's denial of his motion for leave to interview jurors about the press publicity and his motion for a new trial based upon the stories in the press. 26 July 14, 1986, was the day the jury heard final arguments and began its deliberations. That morning, the Dallas Times Herald published a front-page story concerning the trial which included the following sentence on the continuation page (p. 8A): 27 Zabaneh's arrest in November 1985 followed a series of debriefings with informants who told DEA agents that Zabaneh and his family were responsible for one-third to one-half of all the drugs smuggled into the United States from Belize--a total of about 100,000 pounds of marijuana and 3,000 kilograms of cocaine since 1978, according to court documents. 28 Jury deliberations continued until a verdict was reached the next day. Appellant suggests that jury members could have been exposed to the Times Herald article sometime between its publication and the time they rendered their verdict. The court did not admonish the jury on either July 14 or July 15. On July 21, six days after the verdict was rendered, appellant filed motions for leave to interview jurors, for an extension of time for filing a motion for a new trial to permit inquiry as to whether any of the jurors had read the article, and for a new trial. All were denied on July 22. Appellant cites numerous Fifth Circuit cases holding that a party claiming the jury was improperly influenced must be given opportunity to prove that claim, see e.g., United States v. Forrest, 620 F.2d 446, 457 (5th Cir.1980), United States v. Capo, 595 F.2d 1086, 1093 (5th Cir.1979), and particularly, United States v. Herring, 568 F.2d 1099 (5th Cir.1978). Further, as part of the opportunity to prove the claim, the trial judge must question jurors about their exposure to prejudicial publicity, see e.g., United States v. Attell, 655 F.2d 703, 705 (5th Cir.1981). 29 Taken out of context, the quoted sentence from the Dallas Times Herald could well be considered prejudicial. The article as a whole, however, appears sympathetic to appellant in that it focuses on the point that he was being prosecuted despite what it repeatedly calls his unlawful or illegal arrest. 4 We are not persuaded that the article as a whole would have so prejudiced the jury against appellant, had they read it, that a specific admonishing of the jury was necessary with respect to this particular article. 30 The district court had admonished the jury against exposure to outside information on July 7, the first day of trial: You ... may not consider any sources of information not presented to you in this court.... [D]o not read or listen to anything touching on this case in any way. The record does not show that the court again cautioned the jury not to read about matters involved at trial. It might have been better to have done so. But it also might have been better, as a matter of discretion, not to call attention specifically to the article. Appellant adduces no theory or evidence to support his intimation that the significance of the court's July 7th admonishment was lost upon the jury simply because the court did not repeat it later. 31 Moreover, appellant effectively waived his right to raise the issue of possible jury prejudice. Appellant concedes that he became aware of the newspaper article on July 14 at least while the jury was deliberating and perhaps before argument and instructions were completed. Yet, he waited nearly a full week before bringing the matter to the court's attention. He thereby relinquished the opportunity to have the court make further timely admonishment or jury inquiry. By this delay, appellant had substantially impaired the court's ability to conduct a meaningful inquiry into possible prejudice before the jury verdict or immediately after. Following release from jury service, the jurors were instructed that they were no longer bound by the court's instructions. They were then free to read or view any material pertaining to the trial which they previously would have been forbidden to examine. The delay thus served to reduce prospects for an accurate inquiry regarding what information members of the jury might have learned, when they might have learned or been exposed to it, and whether it had influenced their thinking about the questions before them. 32 The cases cited by appellant to support his contention that the court should have granted his motions for leave to interview jurors and for new trial all involve situations where the defendant raised the issue of possible prejudicial publicity during trial or during jury deliberations, when the court could have readily conducted an inquiry of the jury. Recently, in United States v. Birdsell, 775 F.2d 645 (5th Cir.1985), cert. denied, 476 U.S. 1119, 106 S.Ct. 1979, 90 L.Ed.2d 662 (1986), we addressed the kind of situation where the issue of possible prejudicial publicity was raised after the jury returned its verdict: 33 [Appellant] also asserts that the district court failed to safeguard the impartiality of the jury when it failed to ascertain whether the jury had read or been influenced by an allegedly prejudicial article which appeared in a local newspaper on the second day of trial. The record reflects that defense counsel never raised the issue of prejudicial trial publicity. In introductory instructions, the court cautioned the jury that they must not consider anything [they] may have read or heard about the case outside of the courtroom whether before or during the trial. [Appellant] has alleged no facts from which this Court could conclude that any of the jury members even read the article. Accordingly, he has shown no plain error in the trial court's failure to question the jurors about the newspaper article. 34 Id. at 652-53. 35 In summary the newspaper account was not clearly prejudicial, the court had properly admonished the jury against reading extrinsic information, and appellant knew of the article during jury deliberations but waited six days after the verdict was announced to raise the question of possible jury prejudice. We hold that the district court did not commit error by failing to repeat its admonition or abuse its discretion by denying appellant's post-trial motions relating to possible jury prejudice.