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Case 1:20-cr-00330-PAE Document 614 Filed 02/24/22 Page 5 of 12

to profit by writing books.³ This has given rise to the so-called “stealth juror” who deliberately lies or evades full disclosure of bias to get on a jury. In the O.J. Simpson trial, for example, five jurors were dismissed for misstatements during voir dire, including “[o]ne juror [who] failed to reveal that she had been a victim of spousal abuse, despite alleging six years earlier that her husband had shoved her and forced her to have sex.”⁴

The trial of a person accused of a heinous or notorious crime places great pressure on jurors to convict to achieve personal acclaim for convicting a despised defendant or to avoid scorn for an acquittal. Here, for example, Juror 50’s social media posts expressed appreciation for the statements of gratitude he received for bravely telling his personal story of abuse and convicting Ms. Maxwell. With so many advocacy groups demanding that victim witnesses be “believed,” jurors may fear condemnation, or worse, if they acquit. Following the acquittal of the officers who beat Rodney King, for example, riots took place in Los Angeles and jurors received death threats.⁵

To counter the heightened concern with juror bias in high-profile, sensational trials, NACDL believes that courts must vigorously protect the integrity of this process on the front end, through questionnaires and extensive voir dire, and on the back end by refusing to allow a conviction where a juror, by his false answers to core questions relating to his ability to be fair, has impaired the Court’s ability to exclude biased jurors from the panel.

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³ See, e.g., Believing In The Truth (2012) (book by juror in trial of polo mogul John Goodman); Hung Jury: The Diary Of A Menendez Juror (2018); We, The Jury: Deciding The Scott Peterson Case (2007) (book written by seven of Scott Peterson’s jurors); Madame Foreman: A Rush To Judgment (1996) (book by three O.J. Simpson jurors, with interviews with five additional jurors); The Private Diary Of An O.J. Juror: Behind The Scenes Of The Trial Of The Century (1995). The Goodman book revealed that the juror lied to get onto the jury, which led to a new trial. See Joshua Dubin, Juror Misconduct In The Age Of Social Technology, 41 Champion 20, 26 (2017).
⁴ When Jurors Lie: Differing Standards For New Trials, 22 Am. Crim. L. Rev. 733, 734 (1995).
⁵ “Let It Fall”: Rodney King Juror In His Own Words, ABC News (Apr. 28, 2007).

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