Did a California Judge dismiss a juror because the juror was standing in the way of a guilty verdict?
Pasadena, CA -The U.S. Supreme Court will consider the habeas claims of a woman convicted of murder only after the trial judge dismissed the lone juror standing in the way of a guilty verdict.
Tara Sheneva Williams had been the driver for two friends planning a robbery. While casing out stores one afternoon in October 1993, one member of the trio went into a liquor store alone, emptied the cash register, and shot and killed the store's owner.
As one juror who seemed inclined to acquit Williams on murder charges, against objections from other jurors, the trial court replaced him with an alternate. The alternate and his peers convicted Williams of special circumstances murder and a firearm enhancement.
On appeal in Pasadena, Calif., the 9th Circuit said that the action taken against that holdout juror violated Williams' rights.
The May 2011 decision opens by juxtaposing interviews with the jury in Williams' case against the fictional jury-room debate in "Twelve Angry Men," the 1957 Academy Award-winning film.
When the jury foreman in Williams' trial reported the holdout, the court questioned each juror at length and dismissed Juror No. 6 because it found that he was biased against the prosecution and had lied in court.
Writing for the three-judge panel, Judge Stephen Reinhardt said the decision to remove may have impermissibly stemmed from Juror No. 6's views of the merits of the case. It seems likely that the trial court did not rely on good cause to remove the juror, in violation of Williams' Sixth Amendment rights, the appellate judges added.
"The only good cause relied upon for dismissal of Juror No. 6 was 'actual bias,'" Reinhardt wrote. "The court did not find, however, that Juror No. 6 was 'biased' in any traditional sense of the term, as would have been the case if, for example, he had stated that he could not be impartial or had accepted a bribe related to the case. Nor did it find that he had 'implied bias,' such as might have resulted from Juror No. 6 having a connection to one of the parties, or being related to someone who had either committed or been a victim of some similar crime."
http://www.courthousenews.com/2012/01/16/43073.htm