jury deliberations
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Appeals court rules anti-police bias alleged in jury deliberations is not basis for overturning verdict
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Colorado’s second-highest court ruled last week that allegations of a juror’s anti-police statements during deliberations in a civil trial cannot trigger an inquiry into whether the juror’s bias requires a new trial. Generally, jurors cannot be made to testify about statements made during deliberations when a party challenges the validity of a jury’s verdict. There…
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Lawyer who brought outside legal information into jury room triggers new sex assault trial
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A man serving a potential life sentence for sexually assaulting a woman will receive a new trial after Colorado’s second-highest court agreed an attorney who served on the jury injected damaging, outside legal information into deliberations. In 2016, a jury convicted Damon D. Newman of raping a woman at gunpoint at Sloan’s Lake. Investigators linked Newman…
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Colorado justices find Denver judge appropriately subbed in alternate juror mid-deliberations
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The Colorado Supreme Court concluded on Monday that a Denver judge did what he needed to do to ensure a defendant received a fair trial after one juror became ill in the middle of deliberations and had to be replaced with the alternate. Ricardo Castro’s jury deliberated for 11 hours total until it recessed on…
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Colorado Supreme Court ponders what to do when substituting alternate jurors mid-deliberation
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When one juror in Ricardo Castro’s criminal trial became incapacitated 11 hours into the jury’s deliberations and could not continue, there was broad agreement afterward that the trial judge did everything he could to emphasize the need for remaining jurors to begin anew — with the alternate juror replacing her stricken counterpart. The question now…
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Boulder County judge potentially coerced verdict, appeals court finds in reversing convictions
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A Boulder County judge potentially coerced jurors into a verdict when she directed them to keep deliberating even though they were at an impasse, Colorado’s second-highest court ruled last month. When a jury indicates it is deadlocked, judges may advise jurors, in what is known as a “modified-Allen” instruction, to “reexamine your own views” and…
