One juror’s definition of research and how the U.S. District Court defines research led Judge Malcolm Howard to set aside two of former state Rep. Stephen LaRoque’s convictions from his fraud trial in June.
According to an order released Thursday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Dennis Duffy alerted the court to possible juror misconduct, which he found out after the jury declared its verdict on June 6.
Duffy wrote in his notice that two jurors, accompanied by a court security officer, met him to thank him for the prosecution’s work, and one juror mentioned in passing that another member of the jury conducted research on the Internet regarding S corporations to better inform himself on LaRoque’s two tax fraud charges.
Howard contacted counsel for both parties in the case and scheduled a meeting at the federal courthouse in Greenville for June 19 to address the matter. Jurors No. 4 and 7, who talked to Duffy, were subpoenaed to testify at the closed hearing, along with Juror No. 3, who conducted the research.
The jurors were placed in separate rooms awaiting their testimony. Internal Revenue Service Special Agent Diane Taggart went on the stand first, stating she met Duffy and Jurors No. 4 and 7 outside the clerk’s office on the second floor of the courthouse, and then followed them inside the U.S. Attorney’s Office. The court security officer did not follow the jurors inside.
Taggart’s testimony closely followed the narrative Duffy gave in his notice to the court.
Juror No. 4 took the stand second, and said, “There was a jury member the last day of deliberations that said, which I don’t know if this is wrong or not, that he went online just to see what it would be like to start an S Corp. …”
She went on to say Juror No. 3 told the jury, shortly before starting the last day of deliberations, that the research helped him render his opinion on the charges as to what LaRoque would have known at the time of the alleged crime.
Juror No. 7 reiterated much of Juror No. 4’s testimony, but added she didn’t pay attention to most of what Juror No. 3 said. She told the court she heard the research was, “to help him understand or clarify something. I didn’t pay much attention to what — he was sitting at that end of the table. I know I heard him say something about a computer and he looked something up on the computer.”
In his turn on the stand, Juror No. 3 said he recalled Howard’s instruction to the jury not to conduct any outside research, but he thought that pertained only to a specific person in the case. He said what he looked up on the IRS website was “general knowledge that was available to anybody at any time because it was on the government website and it was general information, it wasn’t specific to any person.”
Juror No. 3 said he didn’t print anything out, nor did he share specifics of what he learned with the rest of the jury.
Howard, citing the “presumption of prejudice” standard made in U.S. Supreme Court case Remmer v. United States (1954), and Internet research deemed prejudicial in U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals case United States v. Lawson (2012), said LaRoque’s Sixth Amendment right to an impartial jury.
“Because the outside research done by the juror related to the filing of taxes, the court finds that it may have been material to Counts Eleven and Twelve,” Howard wrote. “As the court is not able to say that the misinformation obtained by Juror Number Three was immaterial to those counts, the court determines that a presumption of prejudice arises.”
Howard granted LaRoque the right to a new trial on the counts, but whether there will be one is uncertain. It’s up to the U.S. Attorney’s Office as to whether seek a new trial on the charges or drop them altogether.
Contacted Friday, LaRoque referred The Free Press to his attorneys; LaRoque attorney Elliot Abrams said neither he nor lead counsel Joe Cheshire could comment on the ruling at this time.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office typically doesn’t comment on ongoing or pending litigation.
Wes Wolfe can be reached at 252-559-1075 and Wes.Wolfe@Kinston.com. Follow him on Twitter @WolfeReports.