Opinion ID: 1199597
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 18

Heading: Incident in alley behind Gholston's home

Text: As indicated above, Gholston's 1994 declaration stated, and she confirmed at the reference hearing, that once during the guilt phase of petitioner's trial, Gholston saw petitioner's sister and the sister's boyfriend parked in an alley behind Gholston's home, that the two sped away when they saw Gholston, and that Gholston did not report the incident to the court but did telephone her friend Patterson, a police dispatcher, to request increased patrols near her residence. No independent corroboration of the alley incident was introduced at the hearing. Patterson testified she recalled no such report from Gholston and would remember or know if it occurred. The referee found from this evidence that it is doubtful Gholston saw petitioner's sister in the alley behind her residence, but even if she did, the incident did not affect Gholston's guilt or penalty determination. Again, we agree. [24] Petitioner urges that whether Gholston's belief she saw petitioner's sister lurking in her alley was correct or mistaken, Gholston committed misconduct by failing to report this perceived outside contact to the trial court. In any event, petitioner suggests, the evidence indicates that the incident, whether real or imagined, played upon Gholston's self-acknowledged fear of petitioner and his family, and thus caused or exacerbated Gholston's actual bias against petitioner. At the outset, we question whether a convicted person can ever overturn the verdict on grounds that persons acting in his behalf deliberately sought to influence the jury. Certainly no such claim could ever be valid where the accused himself had instigated the incident; a party cannot profit by his or her own wrongdoing. But even where, as here, there is no evidence petitioner was directly involved, recognition of such a claim suggests tempting opportunities for the accuseds' allies to manufacture challenges against subsequent convictions. [25] We need not resolve that issue, however. For several other reasons, we conclude that the incident in Gholston's alley affords petitioner no basis for relief. In the first place, there is no evidence Gholston's failure to tell the trial court of her experience was misconduct. A sitting juror commits misconduct by violating her oath, or by failing to follow the instructions and admonitions given by the trial court. A lay juror cannot be expected to conform to standards of behavior of which she has not been informed, or to make unguided personal judgments about what the court needs to know. Her failure to do so cannot place at risk a presumptively valid verdict. Petitioner insists the court's admonitions were sufficient to apprise Gholston that she should report any incident outside the courthouse involving a person connected to the trial. The record before us does not support this contention. Petitioner has culled the trial transcript for all juror instructions and admonitions that might indicate such an obligation. These disclose that the jury was told to avoid media reports and discussions about the case, and to avoid any contact or conversation, even social, with anybody connected with the trial. In one instance, jurors were also advised that such persons were required to stay away from them as well. However, no passage cited by petitioner, and none we have discovered from our own review, expressly or impliedly stated a juror's duty to report the juror's mere observation of a relative of the accused near the juror's residence. (Cf. Carpenter, supra, 9 Cal.4th 634, 641, 646-647, 38 Cal.Rptr.2d 665, 889 P.2d 985 [jurors admonished to immediately report any attempt by a nonjuror to discuss the case].) [26] Any claim of direct jury tampering, real or imagined, appears to fail at the threshold under California law. [W]hen the alleged misconduct involves an unauthorized communication with or by a juror, the presumption [of prejudice] does not arise unless there is a showing that the content of the communication was about the matter pending before the jury, i.e., the guilt or innocence of the defendant. [Citations.] ( Federico, supra, 127 Cal.App.3d 20, 38,179 Cal.Rptr. 315; see also Cobb, supra, 45 Cal.2d 158, 161, 287 P.2d 752.) As described by Gholston, the alley incident included no communication about the trial, only a brief, nonverbal observation of persons parked outside her home. Finally, if the incident, real or imagined, might be interpreted as an improper attempt to intimidate Gholston by silent menace, the result is no different. The objective circumstances give rise to no substantial likelihood that the encounter resulted in Gholston's actual bias against petitioner. The episode described by Gholston was brief, isolated, and ambiguous. The people Gholston saw parked in her alley did not approach or speak to her. Gholston mentioned no display of weapons or threatening gestures. According to Gholston, the two individuals simply sat in their car, and they drove away rapidly the instant they realized that Gholston had seen them. By Gholston's own account, it never occurred to [her] to report the incident to the trial court. She further insisted she never discussed the incident with other jurors, and there is no contrary evidence. (Cf., e.g., Nesler, supra, 16 Cal.4th 561, 583, 66 Cal. Rptr.2d 454, 941 P.2d 87 [juror's repeated reference during deliberations to information heard outside trial suggests bias]; Carpenter, supra, 9 Cal.4th 634, 657, 38 Cal.Rptr.2d 665, 889 P.2d 985 [evidence that juror did not discuss extraneous information with other jurors tends to negate inference of bias].) That Gholston even made a police report, as she claims, is in substantial dispute. This state of the record weighs against any assumption that Gholston found the incident sufficiently unsettling to affect her trial impartiality. Like the referee, we thus find no substantial likelihood that the alley incident described by Gholston caused her to develop actual bias against petitioner. It follows that the episode affords no basis for relief on habeas corpus.