Opinion ID: 1268223
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Implied or Concealed Bias

Text: i. Pretrial Conversations [1] Gholston omitted from her voir dire responses any mention of a pretrial conversation she had with a neighbor regarding Hamilton's suggestion that a Canadian had murdered his wife. In answering the voir dire questions, however, Gholston acknowledged her basic familiarity with the circumstances of the crime. In fact, when asked whether the material she had read caused her to form an opinion regarding the guilt or innocence of the defendant, she answered: No, it really didn't. Moreover, the record confirms that Gholston's omissions on voir dire were inadvertent, not intentional, and that even if Gholston's voir dire answers understated her pretrial awareness and impressions about the case, particularly with respect to petitioner's claim of a Canadian killer, her omissions did not lead to the seating of a biased juror. In re Hamilton, 975 P.2d at 616. ii. Newspaper Clippings [2] Gholston testified at the 1997 hearing that while her husband clipped some newspaper articles to be saved for her sister, she did not personally make any clippings. The California Supreme Court noted that the referee did not make a finding regarding whether Gholston actually clipped any articles during the trial, but concluded that even if such misconduct had occurred, any presumption of prejudice is rebutted because the clippings contained mere neutral and evenhanded accounts of the trial. Id. at 617 n.21. We agree. Moreover, as the California Supreme Court observed, [n]o strong inference of bias arises simply because a juror failed to resist the temptation to read news articles, and [t]here is no evidence that Gholston discussed these articles with other jurors or otherwise employed them in her deliberations. Id. Therefore, the clippings do not support a claim of implied or concealed bias. iii. Uncle Frank Gholston testified at the 1997 hearing that as she was considering how to get out of serving on the Hamilton jury, she experienced a clearing of conscience, or a clearing of the mind, that led her to conclude that she should not fabricate an excuse to avoid jury service. In her own words: it was just my mind cleared up and I said well, I have no excuse. At another point, Gholston testified that Uncle Frank may have caused her to have this clearing of conscience, but she also stated that he never spoke to her and she never felt his presence. Any potential inconsistency in this testimony is easily resolved through the possibilities that Gholston attributed her clearing of mind to Uncle Frank after she experienced it, or that thinking about her uncle triggered her clearing of mind. Accordingly, the record fairly supports the California Supreme Court's finding that Gholston experienced no direct encounter with her Uncle Frank's spirit, and that the fact that she in some sense felt the uncle's presence, and was thereby reassured to serve and to render her verdicts, did not cause her to prejudge the case. Id. at 618. iv. The 1994 Declaration The referee did not resolve the question of whether Gholston actually reviewed and approved the 1994 declaration prepared by the CAP investigators, although the referee did determine, and the California Supreme Court agreed, that the declaration's extreme statements regarding Uncle Frank did not accurately convey the experience Gholston was trying to describe. Id. [3] Hamilton argues that the enthusiasm with which Gholston repudiated all signatures and initials attributed to her, even those from the 1996 declaration prepared by the California Attorney General, as well as her extreme position that she never even saw the 1994 declaration, indicates willful deceptiveness on Gholston's part. The scope of Gholston's repudiation may have been excessive, but her vehemence at the 1997 hearing does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that all of her testimony should be discredited. Further, while the testimony of CAP investigator Scarlet Nerad did conflict with Gholston's testimony, the record demonstrates why the referee credited Gholston's testimony over Nerad's. Specifically, the 1997 hearing transcript supports the conclusions that (1) Gholston did not understand the purpose of the investigators' 1994 visits; (2) Gholston did not pay attention to what she was signing; and (3) Gholston's 1997 testimony about her experiences in 1994 and during Hamilton's trial was generally reliable, though tinged at times by exaggerated, overemphatic denials. The State accurately distinguishes the cases Hamilton offers in support of this claim. In Dyer v. Calderon, we explicitly found not only that the facts were not properly developed by the state court, but also that the potentially biased juror had plainly lied in answering certain questions and that no rational trier of fact could find otherwise. 151 F.3d 970, 979 (9th Cir. 1998) (en banc). Specifically, the juror stated on voir dire that no member of her family had been the victim of a homicide, when in fact her brother had been murdered. Id. at 972-73. When questioned during trial about this omission, she stated she thought the killing was an accident, although the circumstances of the crime actually confirmed that the killing was deliberate. Id. at 974. Nonetheless, after a brief in camera hearing, the judge concluded the juror was not biased. Id. at 975. We disagreed, finding implied bias where a juror chose to conceal a very major crimethe killing of her brother in a way that she knew was very similar to the way [the petitioner] was accused of killing his victims. Id. at 982. In contrast to Dyer, California provided Hamilton with a two-day evidentiary hearing on the issue of juror misconduct. Further, Gholston's incomplete voir dire answers were not plain lies, and Hamilton has failed to demonstrate the necessary excess of zeal that led the Dyer panel to infer the impermissible taint of bias. Id. Similarly, in Green v. White, the allegedly biased juror did not disclose a prior assault conviction. We found it hard to imagine that [the juror] could have forgotten about the six months he spent in the brig for the past assault, no matter how much time had passed. 232 F.3d 671, 676 (9th Cir. 2000). In contrast, it is not hard to imagine that, several months after briefly discussing the Hamilton murder with a neighbor and reading about it in multiple newspapers, Gholston only recalled her primary source of information.