Federal District Judge Amy Berman Jackson spent 81 pages denying the motion of Roger Stone for a new trial based on the fact that the forewoman of the jury, Tomeka Hart, was clearly biased against him as amply demonstrated by her social media history. (Among other charming observations she made was her comment that all Trump supporters are racists.) Go here to read about her social media history. Go here to read the decision. The decision is a laughable exercise in hand waving but is completely expected due to the animus that the Judge herself has manifested against the Defendant and against President Trump. Time for a pardon, since justice is clearly of no concern to the Judge in this case.
These are the people the Democratic Party put on the bench. It’s one reason I wish the Democratic Party would just disappear and be replaced with something vaguely civilized.
What’s interesting about this is that it’s not difficult to find 12 people who have no involvement in politics and they ended up with a foreman who’d actually run for office recently. Pull 100 names at random off the voter rolls and you’ll discover that 65 of them give no thought to public life 10 months of the year (and not a whole lot the other two months). It’s amazing how ineffective the thicket of procedural rules can be. The quality of the jury pool and the bench might be improved if you retroceded the District to Maryland or if you amended the geographic boundaries of the federal district court’s jurisdiction to include the suburban counties, but Congress never does any sort of constructive housekeeping like that.
How did this woman make it past Stone’s lawyers during jury selection? It seems that an examination of potential jurors’ social media would be SOP during jury selection.
Last time I was a juror in a criminal trial, during selection I was asked if my Catholic faith would prevent me from rendering a guilty verdict. Another man in the pool, also selected, was asked if he could explain what ‘encryption’ meant. As he told me later, he had been the man in charge of encrypting Donald Rumsfeld’s communications during the Bush presidency—“something I don’t even discuss with my wife”, he said. He had no idea how the lawyers knew what they did about his work.
My point is that the lawyers on both sides have tremendous access to the backgrounds of potential jurors, and a potential jurors’ social media would be one of the first things Stone’s team should have gone over. How did this woman make it through selection? Someone in Stone’s team might need to lose their job.
I thought Stone had a court appointed lawyer because he was broke by the time his case came to trial. If he did have a public defender that could explain how the juror slipped through.
No, he had private counsel. I would note that they did ask that the juror be stricken for cause, but the judge refused.
I would note that they did ask that the juror be stricken for cause, but the judge refused.
That should be reversible error. Or, it would be if justice were something but an odd accident in court proceedings. That judge is simply unfit.