Opinion ID: 197937
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Incidents Involving Jurors A and B

Text: 22 Rowe contends that the district court committed reversible error in denying his mid-trial motion to strike Juror A for cause. On appeal, he has abandoned his argument that Juror A lacked the mental capacity to sit on the case; but he continues to contend that Juror A's hard-on-the-witnesses comment demonstrates that the juror was prejudiced against his lawyer, and that the entire episode shows that the juror had decided to convict prior to hearing all the evidence. Why, Rowe asks, would a juror not want to look a defense attorney in the face if he had just acquitted his client? We see no reversible error in the district court's rejection of Rowe's arguments. 23 In cases involving possible juror misconduct or bias, the district court acts with broad latitude in determining the nature and scope of the inquiry it will conduct into the matter. See, e.g., United States v. Walsh, 75 F.3d 1, 7 (1st Cir.1996). Any findings the court makes as a result of such an inquiry will stand unless shown on appeal to be clearly erroneous, see, e.g., United States v. Ortiz-Arrigoitia, 996 F.2d 436, 443 (1st Cir.1993), and we will not intervene unless the trial court's denial of a cause-based challenge to a juror constitutes a clear abuse, United States v. McNeill, 728 F.2d 5, 10 (1st Cir.1984). 24 Here, there was no such abuse with respect to Rowe's challenge to Juror A. Accepting solely for the sake of argument the factual and legal premises of Rowe's first contention--that Juror A's apprehension about facing the lawyers during polling was a direct response to Rowe's lawyer's style of interrogation, and that a defendant is entitled to strike for cause a juror who becomes prejudiced against him because of his lawyer's courtroom conduct--we nevertheless think the court acted well within its discretion in declining to strike Juror A. The most that can be said about Juror A's sidebar comments is that they reflected concern about Rowe's counsel's style of interrogation and, perhaps, about being on the receiving end of such aggressive questioning. In our view, it simply stretches matters too far to infer from this that Juror A had become so prejudiced against Rowe's counsel that he had prejudged the case against Rowe. Our conclusion in this respect is bolstered by the fact that, at the conclusion of the first sidebar conference, the district court sought and received assurances from Juror A that the juror was and would remain an impartial juror. 25 Rowe's more general argument--that Juror A would not have been concerned about the jury poll at all unless he had already decided to vote guilty--similarly rests more on speculation than on compelled inference. To say that Juror A's having prefaced his question to the court with the phrase [w]hen we're polled is indicative of an already-made decision to convict would require us to ignore the larger context: that the juror, by his own subsequent admission, [didn't] really know much about the courtroom (meaning that he presumably didn't know that a jury poll only follows conviction). It also would require us to reject as untruthful Juror A's subsequent statement that he was and would be an impartial juror, even though the trial judge, after pointed questioning, came to the opposite conclusion. The applicable standard of review precludes such an outcome. 26 To be sure, it is fair to assume from Juror A's question that the possibility of conviction (and, derivatively, a potentially unpleasant encounter with Rowe's lawyer) was on the juror's mind prior to the conclusion of the case. Of course, many jurors may contemplate the possibility of conviction, and the unpleasantness it entails, as they listen to the evidence in a criminal case. But without more, evidence that a juror is feeling apprehension about the anticipated courtroom dynamics as the verdicts are returned is not to be taken as evidence that the juror has prejudged the case. Nor, obviously, does such evidence constitute a proper basis for striking the juror. 27 The district court's handling of the incident involving Juror B is also beyond reproach. As we read the record, Rowe's complaint concerning Juror B is governed by the rule that a defendant's failure to raise a claim of juror bias until after trial, when the issue of potential bias was known by the defendant during trial, amounts to a waiver of the claim. United States v. Costa, 890 F.2d 480, 482 (1st Cir.1989). Rowe knew at the time Juror B came forward that the juror had been caring for his wife's grandmother. Yet he declined to have the court ask Juror B whether she knew of the relationship between her patient and himself. Rowe must now live with the consequences of his decision. 28 Rowe's challenge to this line of reasoning--that he was placed in an untenable situation because further inquiry into the matter necessarily would have disclosed the nature of the relationship between Juror B's patient and himself--is anchored upon a false assumption. Further inquiry would not necessarily have disclosed the nature of the relationship; it quite obviously could have proceeded by means of a non-leading question such as Do you know of any connection between your patient and the defendant? In view of this, the anti-sandbagging rationale for our waiver rule would appear to apply to this case with special force. See Costa, 890 F.2d at 482 (Any other rule would allow defendants to sandbag the court by remaining silent and gambling on a favorable verdict, knowing that if the verdict went against them, they could always obtain a new trial by later raising the issue of juror misconduct.).