Word: juror
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...prosecution e-mail describes how jurors repeatedly contacted the government's legal team during the trial to express, among other things, one juror's romantic interest in a member of the prosecution team. "The jurors kept sending out messages" via U.S. Marshals, the e-mail says, identifying a particular juror as "very interested" in a person who had sat at the prosecution table in court. The same juror was later described as reaching out to members of the prosecution team for personal advice about her career and educational plans. Conyers commented that the "risk of [jury] bias ... is obvious...
...Further undisclosed evidence of prosecution team members speaking with jurors following the verdict emerges in Grimes' written statement to the DOJ. In it, she says a member of the team prosecuting Siegelman had spoken with a juror suspected of improper conduct - apparently at the time the judge was due to question the juror about that conduct. Grimes quotes the lead prosecutor in the case as saying someone had "talked to her. She is just scared and afraid she is going to get in trouble...
...letter to Mukasey, Conyers calls this additional juror contact "important information," noting, "It is startling to see such repeated instances of federal prosecutors failing to keep the defense apprised of key developments in an active criminal case." He might have added that the judge was, in some instances, apparently not in on the secret either...
...been convicted of anything," despite the federal court result. But Alaskans may have bought his contention that the case, decided thousands of miles away in Washington, D.C., was a noxious mix of prosecutorial misconduct and a runaway jury. Helping Stevens' argument was the revelation this week that a juror who vanished during the trial ostensibly to attend a family funeral had actually skipped out to watch a horse race in California. While the incident may not clear Stevens' legally, it could have obscured matters in the court of public opinion...
...sudden end to what had been a lurching trial: at first fast-tracked at the defense's request (featuring an ill-advised appearance on the witness stand by an impatient Stevens), the trial threatened to get bogged down in jury deliberations, particularly when a juror left for personal reasons. But a replacement juror arrived, and in less than a day there was a unanimous guilty verdict, which could - but likely won't - result in up to five years in prison for each count...