Opinion ID: 78313
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Exposure to the Unredacted Second Superseding Indictment

Text: During trial, the district court granted the government's motion to cure what the court had determined was mutiplicitous charging of the federal funds bribery counts by removing reference to Siegelman in Count 4 and to Scrushy in Count 3 of the Second Superseding Indictment. [32] The district court provided the jury with a copy of the resulting redacted Second Superseding Indictment for its deliberations. Based upon its questioning of the jurors, the district court found that Juror 7 and Juror 40 accessed a copy of the unredacted Second Superseding Indictment early during the jury's deliberations. They each obtained the indictment from the court's website in order to be able to review the allegations outside of the jury deliberation room. Additionally, some other members of the jury became aware that Jurors 7 and 40 had spent time outside of the jury room reviewing the content of this document. While the jury did not discuss this fact at length, it did discuss it. There was no evidence, however, that any members of the jury other than Jurors 7 and 40 actually read the unredacted Second Superseding Indictment, or that either Juror 7 or Juror 40 ever realized that there was any difference between the two indictments. The district court found that the two jurors had been exposed to the unredacted indictment, which was extrinsic information, and that other jurors had been exposed to the fact that those jurors had obtained a copy of the document from the internet. Considering the totality of the circumstances, including the substantial evidence of defendants' guilt on the counts of conviction, the district court concluded that the jury's exposure to this extrinsic information was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt and it denied them a new trial. We agree. This extrinsic evidence was the charging document itself. The district court specifically found that, prior to the redaction, the jurors had been repeatedly exposed to comment by the court and all the parties on the contents of the Second Superseding Indictment. Exposure to the original indictment, including the duplicitous charging, was, therefore, innocuous and cumulative of information properly before the jury. The district court specifically found that the exposure of any juror to the unredacted indictment would not have provided that juror with factual information to which the juror did not already properly have access, nor would it have provided that juror with any legal knowledge different from that provided to the jury as a whole. Furthermore, the jury was repeatedly instructed that the indictment was not evidence of guilt, and that it must decide the case solely on the evidence properly admitted during the trial. The jury is presumed to follow the district court's instructions. See United States v. Shenberg, 89 F.3d 1461, 1472 (11th Cir.1996). Based upon the district court's investigation of this claim, its careful review of the nature, source and use of the extrinsic information in the context of the substantial evidence of defendants' guilt, we hold that the district court did not abuse its discretion in denying defendants a new trial for this reason.