Opinion ID: 222406
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Allegations of Jury Bias Based on Post-Trial Juror Comment to Newspaper

Text: Gabrion next contends that the District Court abused its discretion in refusing his post-trial request for a hearing pursuant to Remmer v. United States, 347 U.S. 227, 74 S.Ct. 450, 98 L.Ed. 654 (1954), after the jury foreperson was quoted in a post-trial argument in the Grand Rapids Press as saying of Gabrion: I read your paper religiously. I knew he was off the wall [before the trial]. Finding no abuse of discretion, we reject Gabrion's argument. The District Court is obligated to conduct a Remmer hearing whenever the defense raises a colorable claim of extraneous influence on a juror. United States v. Owens, 426 F.3d 800, 805 (6th Cir.2005) (giving as examples of extraneous influences: prior business dealings with the defendant, applying to work for the local district attorney, conducting an out-of-court experiment, and discussing the trial with an employee). As the District Court recognized in rejecting Gabrion's argument below, this is not the classic Remmer situation, where a juror has engaged in unauthorized extraneous communications during trial. Instead, the extraneous communications here occurred pre-trial, consisted entirely in the foreperson's reading of media accounts of Gabrion's pre-trial behavior, and were fully disclosed during voir dire, where the foreperson indicated that he was capable of setting aside what he had gleaned from media reports and would decide the case based entirely on information presented in the courtroom. Preexisting knowledge concerning a case, or even some preexisting opinion as to the merits, does not give rise to a presumption against jury impartiality. DeLisle v. Rivers, 161 F.3d 370, 382 (6th Cir.1998). We decline to hold that contact with media coverage that a juror has disclosed during voir dire rises to the level of extraneous communications requiring a Remmer hearing. As the District Court realized, to reach the opposite result would make it impossible for a District Court to seat any juror with any pre-trial knowledge concerning a case, for fear of the verdict's being disturbed by a post-trial hearing on the effect of that pre-trial knowledge on deliberations. Further, it is unclear what purpose a Remmer hearing would serve in this context, given that the relevant communications had already been disclosed during voir dire, and that the juror would be barred from testifying about their effect on deliberations by Federal Rule of Evidence 606(b) (limiting juror testimony about extraneous influences to whether extraneous prejudicial information was improperly brought to the juror's attention or whether any outside influence was improperly brought to bear upon any juror). The District Court did not abuse its discretion in rejecting Gabrion's request for a Remmer hearing.