Despite supporting jury nullification in my earlier posts, the absurd level of misconduct by the Michael Jackson jury gives me second thoughts.
LOS ANGELES - Jury deliberations in Michael Jackson's child-molestation trial were allegedly tainted by shocking misconduct that included smuggling in videotaped Court TV shows and secretly communicating with the pop star's mother, the Daily News has learned. ...# A juror sneaked a forbidden video of Court TV broadcasts featuring the prosecution-friendly Diane Dimond and Nancy Grace into the jury room, but a faulty VCR prevented a sneak peek.
# Juror Eleanor Cook says she smuggled a medical text into deliberations to show "Jackson fit the book's definition of a pedophile to a T." Other jurors later held it over her head to "intimidate" her into voting for acquittal, she says.
# Cook admits she frequently winked at Jackson's mother Katherine in court and "exchanged wardrobe tips" with the entertainer's mom, which resulted in them wearing the same colors on certain days. "She [Cook] intimated that she communicated with Katherine Jackson, in some manner, during the trial," said Brown.
# A gang of three female jurors were such rabid Jackson fans that they cooed, "Not my Michael . . ." when the panel discussed the felony charges against the pop idol. Both Cook and juror Ray Hultman "said these three women formed a bond, and their minds were made up about one-third of the way through the trial," Brown said.
Completely ridiculous. I have no reason to doubt the veracity of this report, since the source, Stacy Brown, is a writer who is now so disgusted with the jurors that s/he has refused to co-author books with them.
Maybe some of my laywer readers can enlighten me: are these kinds of behaviors routine for juries?
IANAL, but I've participated in trial teams on over two dozen jury trials, and that is absolutely not routine behavior for a jury. In every trial I have taken part in, the jury has been exceptionally professional and ethical. This is entirely out of the ordinary in my experience.
Actually, "exceptionally" doesn't make sense if it is all 30, but they have been astoundingly professional and ethical. How's that?
P: Well that's good to know.
Wouldn't the fact that three of the jurors were "huge Jackson fans" have come out at jury selection (which would have led to their disqualification by the judge or the prosecution team)? If not, then it's the prosecutors' fault for not digging enough into their bias, or the jurors' fault for misrepresenting themselves. And could the latter case be grounds to overturn the verdict and declare a mistrial?
It can be surprisingly difficult to get struck from a jury. I was a candidate for a capital murder case in which I was already familiar with the case and, more importantly, am opposed to the existence of the death penalty. But despite this and because I never said that I didn't think I could be fair, the judge never ruled me out. The prosecution, I assume, had to use a strike against me, which took away an opportunity to use that strike against someone that might be more sympathetic to the defense.
It's possible that the prosecution removed all the Jacko fans he or she could and ran out of strikes before he could get them all.