Opinion ID: 1907022
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The View of the Intersection

Text: [¶ 12] The trial court concluded that the information obtained by the juror who went to the intersection at issue did not have much of an impact on the jury's deliberations and therefore that the State had rebutted the presumption of prejudice. We conclude that the State offered no persuasive evidence that the extraneous information did not prejudice the case. [¶ 13] The stipulation demonstrates that one of the jurors went out of her way to locate and drive through the intersection at issue and determine whether it was necessary to make a wide turn from Congress Street onto Stevens Avenue. She then shared her conclusion  that a wide turn was not necessary  with the rest of the jury. Her conclusion confirmed the State's position that Coburn's operation of her car was unusual and therefore that she was impaired by alcohol. [¶ 14] This is not a case where jurors used their own knowledge about local geography or their common sense regarding driving patterns. Nor was this information obtained coincidentally during the course of the trial. Rather, a juror who was not familiar with the intersection went out of her way to see it on her own after hearing the State's evidence regarding the intersection. [6] A reasonable inference can be drawn from this act that the State did not provide sufficient evidence regarding the intersection to allow the juror to draw conclusions without an independent investigation. [7] Moreover, the jury's request for a read-back of the officer's wide turn testimony demonstrates that it played a role in the jury's determination. [¶ 15] In its effort to rebut the presumption, the State presented no persuasive argument that Coburn was not prejudiced by the juror's investigation except to rely on our decision in State v. Royal, 590 A.2d at 525. There, the evidence against the defendant suggested that he had bound his victim with duct tape, and there was testimony during the trial about the presence of residue from the tape on the victim's skin. See id. The jury was reported to have smuggled duct tape into the jury room and performed an experiment with it by wrapping it around [a juror's] wrists and leaving it there for 15 minutes before removing it to see if it left a residue. Id. We let stand the trial court's conclusion that the experiment did not have a prejudicial impact on the verdict. In contrast to the facts before us today, the experiment in Royal took place in the jury room, during deliberations, when all jurors were present and were apparently testing the State's conclusions. With the exception of the presence of the duct tape, such conversations and efforts to test the conclusions urged on the jurors by the parties are a natural part of the deliberation process. [¶ 16] Here, in contrast, a single juror went to an intersection and gathered additional facts about the scene of the events. She did so outside of the fact-gathering process of the trial, without other jurors, and under circumstances that could not be addressed by the parties or challenged by other jurors. She then gave the information she had gathered to the other jurors under circumstances where no advocacy could be brought to bear on the jurors' receipt of that information and the trial court could not give a curative instruction. We conclude that the State did not meet its burden of rebutting the presumption of prejudice.