Texting juror gets murder defendant a new trial

Judges always tell jurors to behave themselves. Jurors cannot talk about the case before the trial is over. Jurors cannot read news accounts of the case when the trial is pending. Jurors cannot do this, jurors cannot do that. In this case, a juror in a prominent murder trial in upstate New York violated all the rules, and that means the murder conviction is vacated and the defendant gets a new trial.

The case is People v. Neulander, a New York Court of Appeals ruling issued on October 22. Defendant was a prominent doctor in the Syracuse area who was accused of murdering his wife and tampering with evidence. Juror Number 12 sent and received hundreds of text messages about the case during trial. You read that right: hundreds of text messages. The juror also accessed news coverage about the case and, when the court inquired about this behavior, Juror 12 lied under oath, provided a false affidavit and even tried to erase the incriminating evidence from her cell phone.

Defendant gets a new trial. The Appellate Division Fourth Department held as such, and the New York Court of Appeals agrees. The Fourth Department noted that “every defendant has a right to be tried by jurors who follow the court’s instructions, do not lie in sworn affidavits about their misconduct during the trial, and do not make substantial efforts to conceal and erase their misconduct when the court conducts an inquiry with respect thereto.”

These cases are fascinating because I am sure that jurors pull stuff like this from time to time, but no one ever finds out about it. Juror 12 got caught because someone grew suspicious. During trial, this juror lied to the court when it inquired about her improper behavior. After the guilty verdict came in, an alternate juror told the court what Juror 12 had been up to during trial.

The defendant's appellate brief quotes from some of the incriminating text messages:

As soon as Juror-12 was selected to serve on the jury, she told her father about her selection. He replied: “Oh lucky you!” and “Make sure he’s guilty!”

That same day, Juror-12 told her friend Tiff Sampere that she had been selected as a juror. In the ensuing text exchange, Sampere twice referred to Neulander as “scary,” asking “Is he scaryyyy” and “Did you see the scary person yet.” Juror-12 responded that she had “seen him since day 1.”

Juror-12 exchanged messages with Sampere throughout the trial.

The day Jenna Neulander testified as a defense witness, Juror-12 exchanged dozens of messages with her friend Lindsay Flanagan about the trial. Flanagan’s messages started during a break in Jenna’s testimony, while Juror-12 was in the jury room. Flanagan asked whether the court “check[ed Juror-12’s] texts.” Juror-12 responded no. Flanagan then said she was following the trial “live on Twitter” and was “obsessed.” Flanagan said she thought Jenna was not credible. Flanagan said that she had “read so[] much” about the case that she knew “every possible detail that the public is allowed to know,” and that she was “so anxious to hear someone testify against Jenna.” In a message that Juror-12 later deleted, Juror-12 responded that “[n]o one will testify against her!” and explained that the only opportunity for the prosecution to question Jenna would come on cross-examination.

Following Jenna’s cross-examination, Flanagan wrote to Juror-12 that her “mind [was] blown that the daughter [was not] a suspect.” In a playful back-and-forth, Juror-12 sent Flanagan a “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” emoji and Flanagan asked, “[or] is she?” with an accompanying emoji.

Flanagan continued to express her suspicions about Jenna, advising that she had “so many questions [she] would ask if [she] was one of the prosecutors or stuff [she] would look into if [she] was an investigator.”

The brief goes on to state that "Juror-12 deleted some of her text exchanges, including those with her father and Sampere, in their entirety. At the hearing, she was unable to explain why. . . . She first said that she had deleted the exchanges with Sampere because Sampere had moved, but moments later claimed not to remember why she had deleted the messages. Juror-12 also selectively deleted some of her exchanges with Flanagan, including: (1) Flanagan’s message asking whether the court reviewed Juror-12’s texts; (2) Flanagan’s message explaining that she had read so much about the case that she knew “every possible detail that the public is allowed to know”; and (3) Juror-12’s response to Flanagan’s message expressing a desire to hear someone testify against Jenna. Juror-12 had to delete these messages one-by-one and, once again, was unable to explain at the hearing why she did so."