The Letter Of The Law And A Bridge Too Far

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court affirmed a criminal conviction

In these gang-related retaliatory murder cases, a juror did not disclose that she had a half-brother who was serving a sentence for a similar crime. The posttrial discovery of this information eventually led to so-called Fidler, see Commonwealth v. Fidler, 377 Mass. 192, 200-201 (1979), and to motions for a new trial. The main question presented here is whether the judge, who had also been the trial judge, erred in denying the motions for a new trial after crediting the juror’s explanation, made under oath during an evidentiary hearing, for her nondisclosure. In addition, the defendants argue that the judge should have disqualified herself from hearing the motions because she had written a letter in support of the lead trial prosecutor’s application to become a Superior Court judge, and because of her interactions with him after he was appointed to the bench. We conclude that the judge did not err in denying the motions for a new trial given the judge’s credibility determinations concerning the juror’s testimony at the Fidler hearing, and given the judge’s other findings of fact. We also affirm the judge’s order denying the motion to disqualify. The performance of the prosecutor was not at issue in any of the matters pending before the judge.

The letter

The defendants argue that the judge should have recused herself from ruling on their 2017 renewed Fidler motions and their motions for a new trial. They contend that an objective observer would reasonably believe that the judge’s impartiality may have been compromised by the fact that she had written a letter of support for the trial prosecutor before he was appointed to the bench and that, after his appointment in 2017, the judge (in her capacity as chief justice of the Superior Court) had had significant professional contact with him.

We see no abuse of discretion in the judge’s careful decision to deny the motion for disqualification here. To begin with, as the judge noted, the defendants’ Fidler motions and motions for a new trial raised no claim of prosecutorial misconduct. Instead, the focus was entirely on the misconduct of the juror. Second, no claim of prosecutorial misconduct had been suggested — even by codefendant Goode — before the motions had been decided. For both of these reasons, the situation here is entirely different from that in Cousin, 484 Mass. at 1045-1046, on which the defendants rely

Justice Henry dissented in part

The juror knew Karl’s experience with the law and yet she made a deliberate decision not to disclose this on the jury questionnaire. She then “violated” an express instruction from the judge “to disclose all responsive information regardless of the juror’s view of relevance.” The juror got caught applying her own erroneous relevancy filter to her own criminal record. Still, she did not share the criminal history known to her, persistently refusing to disclose the information requested. At some point, for the integrity of the system, we reach a bridge too far. This is a bridge too far for me.

(Mike Frisch)