Opinion ID: 2736649
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Juror Encounters

Text: Mathis next argues that three occurrences during the course of the trial involving jurors could have affected the impartiality of the jury and rendered his trial unfair. First, Mathis contends the juror who potentially overheard the AUSA tell Sergeant Evans that she worked late into the night could have felt sympathy for the AUSA and, by extension, the Government’s case. Second, Mathis maintains the jury could have been influenced or affected by the fact that a juror potentially overheard Agent Gonzalez in a coffee shop say into her cell phone “we need to get him.” Third, Mathis argues that the two jurors whom Mathis’s aunt overheard saying “oh, I just love her” could have been expressing a preference for the Government and bias toward the defense. We presume that the jury was impartial, and neither Mathis’s speculation nor the record establishes that the jurors in the elevator and the coffee shop actually overheard the statements of which he complains, or that any of the jurors were biased against him. See United States v. Siegelman, 640 F.3d 1159, 1182 (11th Cir. 2011). Mathis has failed to make a colorable showing that the jury was 34 Case: 13-13109 Date Filed: 09/24/2014 Page: 35 of 42 exposed to extraneous information, see id., and the district court did not err by declining to interrogate each member of the jury in response to such fleeting, innocuous events. Furthermore, the district court instructed the jurors that their decision had to be based on the evidence presented during trial and that they should not be influenced in any way by sympathy or prejudice against the defendant or the Government. The district court also instructed the jurors that they should not discuss the case among themselves until the court gave them the case to decide. We presume the jury followed the district court’s instructions, and Mathis has provided us with no basis for disregarding that presumption. See United States v. Stone, 9 F.3d 934, 938 (11th Cir. 1993) (“Few tenets are more fundamental to our jury trial system than the presumption that juries obey the court’s instructions.”).