Court Opinion

ID: 9499454
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:48:35.650357+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:59:30.659650
License: Public Domain

GREGORY, Circuit Judge,
dissenting in part and concurring in part:
Although I concur with the Court’s denial of relief on three of McNeill’s claims, I respectfully dissent from the judgment denying an evidentiary hearing for one of McNeill’s juror misconduct claims.1 In my opinion, McNeill has made a viable claim that his right to a fair trial may have been impaired by the introduction of an improper external influence into jury deliberations. We should grant McNeill an evi-dentiary hearing so that the district court may consider the extent of the prejudice caused by Juror Sermarini’s introducing into deliberations a dictionary definition that undermined the legal concept of mitigation.
*228I.
Late on November 17, 1992, John Davis McNeill knocked on the door of a Fayette-ville, North Carolina, apartment. Melissa Jones, the neighbor of McNeill’s on-and-off-again girlfriend, Donna Lipscomb, answered. McNeill asked Jones for the spare key to Lipscomb’s apartment. Jones, knowing that McNeill and Lipscomb were dating and having seen McNeill in the apartment several times, retrieved the key for him. After she had given him the key, Jones noticed that he had a knife. She retreated into her apartment to call the police, but her phone was not working.
McNeill then went to Lipscomb’s apartment, unlocked the door, and pushed it open, despite Lipscomb’s efforts to keep it closed. Her two sons, Nate, 13, and John, 11, saw that McNeill had a knife. While McNeill and Lipscomb argued, Nate attempted to call the police, but the Lipscomb phone also was not working. The argument escalated, and McNeill stabbed Lipscomb in the chest, back, arms, abdomen, and breast, producing twelve wounds. Nate managed to stop McNeill. McNeill then ran outside to call the police.
When the police arrived, they found McNeill covered in blood and apparently intoxicated. He directed them to Lipscomb’s apartment and admitted that he had stabbed her. He told police that he “didn’t mean to do it,” but she had been “dissing him.”
At trial, McNeill testified that he had gone to Lipscomb’s apartment to try to resolve some issues in them relationship. He explained that he had taken the knife with him because he expected to find a man in the apartment, and he wanted to be prepared to scare him away. He admitted to pulling the telephone wires out of the junction box behind the apartments because he needed to make sure that nothing interrupted their conversation. McNeill reiterated in his testimony that he never intended to kill Lipscomb.
II.
The fact that the jury may have substituted a dictionary definition of mitigate for the legally understood meaning of the term compels me to disagree with Judges Shedd and King in their dismissal of McNeill’s second juror misconduct claim. Because it is of the utmost importance in a death case that a jury understand the legal definition of mitigate, I would grant an evidentiary hearing so that McNeill could explore the prejudice caused by Juror Ser-marini’s introduction of a dictionary definition of mitigate during deliberations.2
A.
The consideration of mitigation evidence in a capital sentencing is unique in criminal procedure. In Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U.S. 586, 98 S.Ct. 2954, 57 L.Ed.2d 973 (1978), the Supreme Court emphasized that the importance of mitigation in a capital sentencing proceeding arises from the vastly different and permanent nature of a death sentence and the need to consider each capital defendant in a particularly individualized way: “The need for treating each defendant in a capital case with that degree of respect due the uniqueness of the individual is far more important than in noncapital cases.” 438 U.S. at 605, 98 S.Ct. 2954. The Court held that a jury should be able to consider all evidence that would allow a single juror to find any reason to spare the defendant’s life: “The *229Eighth and Four-teenth Amendments require that the sentencer ... not be precluded from considering, as a mitigating factor, any aspect of a defendant’s character that the defendant proffers as a basis for a sentence less than death.” Id. (emphasis in original).
B.
Judge King has effectively spelled out the reasons why Juror Sermarini’s consultation of a dictionary constituted the introduction of an improper external influence and resulted in juror misconduct, but his unwillingness to see the prejudice resulting from this act compels me to disagree with his concurrence. We stated in United States v. Duncan, 598 F.2d 839, 866 (4th Cir.1979), that a juror’s consultation of a dictionary constitutes juror misconduct. When that consultation involves the legally defined concept that is the crux of the sentencing process, we should investigate its potential for prejudice as thoroughly as possible.
Because of the importance of the concept of mitigation in the capital sentencing context, we cannot pass lightly over the jury’s misconduct in this case. A capital jury is required to consider mitigation evidence not only as it affects their evaluation of the crime of which they have found the defendant guilty, but also as it affects the defendant himself. Lockett instructs us that the jury must consider each defendant as an individual. 438 U.S. at 605, 98 S.Ct. 2954. Because a jury must decide whether to sentence that individual defendant to death, we require counsel to present mitigation evidence independent of the crime, and we hold counsel ineffective who fail to investigate and present this type of evidence. See Rompilla v. Beard, 545 U.S. 374, 385, 125 S.Ct. 2456, 162 L.Ed.2d 360 (2005); Wiggins v. Smith, 539 U.S. 510, 524, 123 S.Ct. 2527, 156 L.Ed.2d 471 (2003); Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 120 S.Ct. 1495, 146 L.Ed.2d 389 (2000). Juror Sermarini’s introduction of a nonlegal definition of mitigate likely prevented the jury from properly weighing mitigating factors that reached beyond the crime and likely prevented McNeill from having a fair sentencing.
C.
Judge King looks to the Tenth Circuit for guidance on how we should approach the potential prejudice caused by Juror Sermarini’s substitution of a dictionary definition of mitigate for the legal definition provided by the court. As Judge King noted, a reviewing court should consider:
(1) The importance of the word or phrase being defined to the resolution of the case. (2) The extent to which the dictionary definition differed from the jury instructions or from the proper legal definition. (3) The extent to which the jury discussed and emphasized the definition. (4) The strength of the evidence and whether the jury had difficulty reaching a verdict prior to introduction of the dictionary definition. (5) Any other factors that relate to a determination of prejudice.
Mayhue v. St. Francis Hosp., Inc., 969 F.2d 919, 924 (10th Cir.1992).
All of these factors illustrate the reasons why we should grant McNeill an evidentia-ry hearing so that he can further develop his juror misconduct claim. Factor one leans most heavily in McNeill’s favor because mitigate, as discussed above, may be the most important word in the jury’s determination of whether to sentence a defendant to death. Factors three and four would best be explored in an evidentiary hearing to discover precisely what happened when Juror Sermarini introduced the dictionary definition.
*230Judge King would rule that the jury’s misconduct did not prejudice McNeill because, under factor two, the dictionary definition of mitigate did not differ substantially from the definition the judge provided to the jury. The definition of mitigate that Juror Sermarini introduced was, “to cause to become less harsh or hostile.” J.A. 1085-86. Judge King compares that definition with one of the mitigation instructions given to the jury:
A mitigating circumstance is a fact or group of facts which do not constitute a justification or excuse for a killing or reduce it to a lesser degree of crime than first degree murder, but which may be considered as extenuating or reducing the moral culpability of the killing or making it less deserving of extreme punishment than other first degree murders.
J.A. 900. Judge King states that “nothing in the dictionary definition proffered by Juror Sermarini is incompatible with the court’s instruction on mitigation” and concludes, therefore, that McNeill has not shown prejudice resulting from Sermari-ni’s misconduct.
Admittedly, the dictionary definition and the jury instruction are similar, but Judge King neglects to consider the remaining jury instructions that should have indicated to the jury that they were to consider mitigation not only in the context of the crime but also in regards to McNeill himself. After giving the above-cited definition of mitigation, the trial court went on to detail twenty-one specific mitigating factors, sixteen of which did not relate directly to the commission or circumstances of the crime. That the jury found eight of these mitigating factors but determined that they did not outweigh the one aggravating factor that McNeill committed the murder while engaged in the commission of a burglary suggests that the jurors indeed focused on mitigation of the crime itself and not on mitigation as defined by law in the context of a capital sentencing hearing.
A jury that understood mitigation as only causing “to make less harsh or hostile” might improperly focus only on the harshness or hostility of the crime itself. This singular focus would undermine the jury’s duty to consider the characteristics of the defendant that might make him less worthy of a death sentence. . For this reason, I would grant McNeill an evidentiary hearing to explore the prejudice caused by this juror’s misconduct,
D.
Judge King argues that McNeill should not be entitled to an evidentiary hearing on this claim because courts are generally barred from peering into the minds of jurors with respect to their deliberative processes. He cites Federal Rule of Evidence 606(b) in support of the proposition that no juror “can testify about any effect the extraneous influence may have had on the verdict or the jury deliberations.” He states that McNeill must prove prejudice resulting from juror misconduct “without result to an inquiry into the effect [external influence] may have had on the jury’s deliberations.”
Judge King’s interpretation of this rule effectively hamstrings any defendant who could make a viable claim of juror misconduct, no matter how egregious, but who cannot prove prejudice resulting from that misconduct without the evidence that he might develop in a hearing. If we were to grant McNeill an evidentiary hearing on this claim, we would not be requiring jurors to reveal the secrets of their deliberative processes. Instead, McNeill could develop evidence, beyond the two student affidavits and Sermarini’s own attested statement, that Juror Sermarini did bring *231in a dictionary definition of mitigate, that other jurors consulted or discussed that definition, and that the jury concluded its deliberations shortly after the introduction of the non-legal definition. McNeill could thus prove prejudice without violating the federal rule and the principle that a juror’s deliberative process is inviolable. I believe that we should give him the opportunity.
III.
For the foregoing reasons, I respectfully dissent from the judgment denying McNeill an evidentiary hearing. Because of the importance of mitigation in the capital sentencing context, I would grant McNeill an evidentiary hearing so that he may develop evidence of juror misconduct and the prejudice caused by that misconduct.

. McNeill received certificates of appealability for two ineffective assistance of counsel claims and two juror misconduct claims. One ineffective assistance claim concerned counsel's concession of guilt to lesser-included offenses; the other concerned counsel’s mitigation case. I agree with the Court’s rejection of both claims. One juror misconduct claim concerned Juror Lee's failure to reveal that his half-sister had been murdered by a jealous lover; the other concerned Juror Sermarini’s use of a dictionary to define mitigate for the other jurors. I disagree with Judges Shedd and King on the latter claim.

. Because Judge King has so thoroughly and expertly discussed the reasons that the procedural bar should not apply to this claim, I will only consider the claim on its merits in this dissent.