I don't understand these many posts. Are we now blaming the defense lawyer for the alleged criminal conduct and civil rights violations of a court official? I missed any reporting where the defense attys were engaged in inappropriate exparte meetings with the jury.
jmo
For my part, I’m not
blaming the defense lawyer or excusing any inappropriate action by the clerk of courts.
I totally believe that IF IT IS PROVEN that the clerk either made ANY comments to the jury
about the trial (witnesses or evidence or guilty verdict) or suggested they shouldn’t take long deliberating, etc that she should be held accountable and at the very least charged with contempt of court and removed from office for misconduct according to the SC Code regarding removing elected county officials from office.
Now, if her private conversations with the foreperson turn out to have not been about the trial and it is not proven that she made statements to the jury about the trial and verdict, then perhaps she should not be removed from office but perhaps sanctioned some other way. And regardless of what was said at Moselle if she did have any conversation with the foreperson or any other juror then she directly violated the court’s order and should still be charged with contempt of court.
There’s a lot of “ifs” in there because I do think it has to be more than accusations - must be proven in court - and I would not want to be the one who has to determine who is telling the truth as I do expect conflicting testimony when they have that hearing.
I also believe it was inappropriate for her to go with the jury members who went to NY for the NBC interview and to write the book and I believe if nothing else is proven, voters should hold her accountable for putting her 15 minutes of fame above the integrity and interests of the court when and vote for someone else in next year’s election.
BUT I also think the defense attorney - any attorney - has a responsibility to report a violation of a judge’s order. The judge had clearly stated there was to be NO conversation at Moselle. If an attorney witnessed that he should have immediately reported it to the court. I‘m not a lawyer but I’m pretty sure the ABA Code of Conduct has a section on a lawyer’s responsibility to report misconduct of another lawyer so surely the role of an officer of the court incudes the responsibility to report misconduct of court officials.
And I think the rules regarding motions for new trials must be followed and if the rule says the defense can only use information that was not available during the trial then they should not be allowed to use the alleged Moselle conversation since they were aware of it during the trial. They should have brought it to the courts attention during the trial and asked for a mistrial before the conclusion of the trial.
And I still have questions as to whether or not the defense team questioning of the jury members was done in such a way that it may have lead to certain responses and whether those affidavits will stand up in court under cross examinations.
So I’m not yet convinced that the motion for a new trial will be or should be granted or what part of the alleged actions of the clerk will be considered in the hearing and I think that determination will answer the question of whether or not a different outcome would have been likely as I am still unclear on that requirement.
But my concerns regarding whether or not a motion for new trial should be granted or even remanded to the circuit court by the appeals court in no way diminish my concerns regarding the actions of the clerk of courts and the need to hold her accountable if any of these accusations hold up in court.
thelawdictionary.org
