Judge Orders Anonymous Jury in Trump Civil Trial
In Carroll v. Trump, E. Jean Carroll is seeking civil damages from the former president for his allegedly raping and subsequently defaming her. U.S. District Lewis Kaplan last week issued an order requiring an unusual voir dire procedure in civil cases—the identities of the jurors will be anonymous. Specifically, (1) the names, addresses, and places of employment of prospective jurors on the voir dire panel, as well as jurors who ultimately are selected for the petit jury, shall not be revealed; (2) petit jurors shall be kept together during recesses, and the United States Marshals Service shall take the petit jurors to, or provide them with, lunch as a group throughout the pendency of the trial; and (3) at the beginning and end of each trial day, the petit jurors shall be transported together or in groups from one or more undisclosed location or locations at which the jurors can assemble or from which they may return to their respective residences.
Kaplan’s order cites news articles and the final report of the congressional committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Finding the case to be “unique,” Kaplan wrote:
Mr. Trump’s quite recent reaction to what he perceived as an imminent threat of indictment by a grand jury sitting virtually next door to this Court was to encourage “protest” and to urge people to “take our country back.” That reaction reportedly has been perceived by some as incitement to violence. And it bears mention that Mr. Trump repeatedly has attacked courts, judges, various law enforcement officials and other public officials, and even individual jurors in other matters.
In addition to Mr. Trump's past words and actions together with perceptions of them by many people, it is highly relevant that this case already has been the subject of widespread media coverage. Even the most modest developments have attracted a good deal of attention. That coverage is likely only to increase once the trial is imminent or in process.
In these circumstances, this Court is obliged to consider the likely effect on jurors of the matters just described, similar events in the relatively recent past, and the likely future course of events, including the inevitable extensive media coverage. And it cannot properly ignore the significant risk that jurors selected to serve in this case will be affected by concern that they could be targeted for unwanted media attention, outside pressure, and retaliation and harassment from persons unhappy with any verdict that might be returned. Accordingly, the Court sua sponte raised the question whether protection of jurors’ identities and addresses would be appropriate. As noted, the parties do not object to an anonymous jury. Only the News and the AP have done so on the ground that the identities of individual jurors is within the presumption of public access to court proceedings and that they must be provided to the media and the public.
Law Professors Lodge Complaint: Multiple New York Prosecutors Violated Batson Doctrine—Still on the Job with Pay Raises
The City newspaper and the Queens Daily Eagle report a group of law professors last week filed prosecutorial misconduct complaints against current and former prosecutors with the Queens district attorney’s office. Of the 10 prosecutors named in the complaints, two worked for the Queens district attorney’s office at the time of the alleged offense, and six currently work for the Queens district attorney’s office. The complaints include a case in which a prosecutor used a “jury guide” that detailed which races and which socioeconomic groups to keep on or fight to eliminate from a jury and multiple instances of prosecutors working to kick a Black Queens resident off a jury even though a plurality of criminal defendants in New York are Black, year after year.
Each of the complaints are based on rulings by judges in which prosecutorial misconduct was found. All 10 of the complaints were filed with the state’s Grievance Committee and published online by Accountability NY. The law professors say they believe none of the prosecutors named in the complaints were ever formally disciplined by either the Grievance Committee or the district attorney they served under despite the judicial rulings. “If in your job, if someone found that you were engaged in purposeful discrimination, and that's what a Batson violation is, I think you would be subject to some serious discipline,” said Steve Zeidman, a professor at CUNY Law School and a member of Accountability NY. “Yet prosecutors who engaged in this, as found by appellate courts, apparently suffered no discipline of any kind.” The City reports that some of the prosecutors have recently received pay raises.
Aussie Citizen Pleas to Serve on a Jury; His Wife Summoned Five Times
The Sydney Morning Herald published an entertaining piece written by 33-year-old Thomas Mitchell who, ever since turning 18 years of age, has wanted to serve on a jury. He humorously compares himself to his often-summoned spouse and his many acquaintances who brag about ways to get out of jury service.
The Case of a 12-Year-Old Batson Challenge
In The People v. Madrid, the Colorado Supreme Court grappled with two appeals of a Batson ruling that spanned two remands to a trial court over more than a decade. The high court determined it was legal error for the trial judge on remand to allow the prosecution to use new evidence to justify its peremptory strike of a Black juror. It approved an intermediate appellate court’s decision to vacate appellant’s conviction and order a new trial. In doing so the supreme court stated:
[W]e find it impossible to retroactively disentangle how the error affected the subsequent remand proceedings. We have no way of determining how the prosecution’s testimony would have unfolded if properly restricted to the justifications previously offered at trial. Further, the district court itself recognized that the prosecution’s stated reasons for striking J.T. “are all really interrelated,” which leaves us simply to speculate how the court might have ruled on Madrid's Batson challenge without factoring in the impermissible argument. On the unusual record before us, we find it impossible to determine whether a Batson violation occurred. Given the exceptional circumstances with which we're confronted and considering the importance of the constitutional rights at stake, we conclude that we must reverse.
Because we cannot confidently declare that the error injected by the remand order into the proceedings was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt, Madrid is entitled to a new trial.