Opinion ID: 1684647
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Questioning of Former Jurors

Text: Marshall first argues that the trial court erred by failing to adequately question former jurors about alleged jury misconduct and by restricting the scope of its inquiry. Florida appellate courts have uniformly held that a court's decision on whether to allow an interview of jurors after trial is subject to review for an abuse of discretion. See, e.g., Boyd v. State, 910 So.2d 167, 178 (Fla.2005) (concluding that the trial court did not abuse its discretion by refusing to question the jury about allegations made by a friend of the defendant that she had overheard jurors discussing extrajudicial information during the guilt phase of a capital trial); Baptist Hosp. of Miami, Inc. v. Maler, 579 So.2d 97, 101 (Fla.1991) (holding that a trial court abused its discretion in authorizing an inquiry of jurors based on matters that inhered in the verdict); Shere v. State, 579 So.2d 86, 94-95 (Fla.1991) (finding that a trial court did not abuse its discretion in refusing to grant a capital defendant's motion to interview the jury, which was based on allegations contained in an anonymously written letter to a newspaper); Melrose Nursery, Inc. v. Collinsworth, Alter, Nielson, Fowler & Dowling, Inc., 832 So.2d 891, 892 (Fla. 3d DCA 2002) (recognizing that trial courts have broad discretion to grant or deny a motion to interview jurors); Roland v. State, 584 So.2d 68, 70 (Fla. 1st DCA 1991) (stating that the appropriate standard of review for a trial court's ruling on a motion to interview jurors is abuse of discretion); Schofield v. Carnival Cruise Lines, Inc., 461 So.2d 152, 155 (Fla. 3d DCA 1984) (explaining that the standard of review for an appellate court is whether the trial court abused its broad discretion to permit or disallow jury interviews). In the instant case, the trial court's discretion was specifically limited by the express directions on remand issued by this Court when it determined that while further proceedings should be conducted on Marshall's claim of juror misconduct, those proceedings should be limited and sharply focused on the matters set out in the Smith affidavit. In our opinion, we specifically instructed the trial court about the appropriate scope of the hearing on remand by directing that [t]he scope of the hearing on remand is limited to attempting to obtain the identity of the female juror who spoke to Mr. Smith, to interview that juror, and then to conduct further interviews only if the court determines that there is a reasonable probability of juror misconduct. Marshall II, 854 So.2d at 1253. In remanding for an evidentiary hearing on the claim of juror misconduct, we further directed that the trial court may wish to conduct most or all of the questioning of the jurors, thereby ensuring that unnecessarily intrusive questions will not be asked of the jurors and to prevent questioning on matters that inhere in the verdict. Id. A review of the record below reveals that the trial court conducted further proceedings and interviewed the jurors in strict accordance with our instructions. The trial court interviewed all of the surviving ten jurors from Marshall's trial. Further, even though the trial court did not have an opportunity to interview juror Cunningham, who was deceased, this juror had previously supplied an affidavit alleging possible juror misconduct, but that affidavit contained no reference to the type of misconduct alleged in the Smith affidavit. See id. at 1239-40 (discussing juror Cunningham's allegations). Moreover, as this Court directed, the court's questioning of each juror focused on attempting to discover the identity of the person who spoke to attorney Ronald Smith. While Marshall argues that the trial court should have directly asked the former jurors about the allegations of juror misconduct based on the allegations of the unidentified caller in Smith's affidavit, such an inquiry would have contravened our specific instructions that the trial court first attempt to find and interview the unidentified juror who had called Smith before proceeding further. See id. at 1253. In addition, the trial court questioned all of the surviving jurors, rather than limiting the questioning to the female jurors, one of whom had allegedly called Smith. As we noted in our prior Marshall II opinion, there is a very fine line that the courts must walk in investigating claims of juror misconduct without invading the confidentiality of juror deliberations. We attempted to maintain that line in our prior decision to allow further proceedings in this case while cautioning the trial court to exercise care in conducting those proceedings. We can hardly fault the trial court here for adhering to our instructions. Accordingly, we find that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in interviewing the former jurors in compliance with our mandate.