Jury Nullification and the Lone Black Female.

It appears that the sole Black juror on a panel deadlocked along racial lines lied to win a seat on the jury and then set out to exact revenge on law enforcement by serving as the spoiler in the trial of an alleged drug chief serving as his own lawyer, some of her fellow jurors said Monday.

Jurors in the trial of Johnnie "Bro" Martin walked out of U.S. District Court with nothing to show for nine days of work but a mistrial.

"She made a mockery of the system," one juror said of the Black woman whom members of the panel said refused to even consider what the rest of the group believed was overwhelming evidence of Martin's guilt.

Although they declined to be publicly identified, jurors outraged over the outcome of a trial in which Martin's defense rested on the notion that racist law enforcers had framed him confirmed the panel had split 11 to 1 in every vote cast during the roughly four days of deliberations.

The lone hold-out was a Black woman who, when questioned during the jury selection process, assured federal prosecutors that she harbored no ill will over the imprisonment of her sister in a drug case. Asked if her sister deserved her fate, the woman answered, "Absolutely."

Fellow jurors interviewed after U.S. District Judge Thomas Phillips declared a mistrial said the woman lied.
"She never should have been on there in the first place," one juror said. "From the beginning, she kept saying her sister was in jail for selling drugs and the cops set her up, and she could not believe any police officer no matter what."

Prosecutors sought to remove the woman from the panel after learning that her daughter had been arrested on a marijuana charge by the police in 2006. She did not reveal that arrest, for which she posted bond, during the jury selection process.

Phillips refused, saying there was "no evidence of misconduct on the part of any juror in this case."
He noted the woman revealed her sister's drug conviction. He did not address, however, Plowell's complaint that the woman failed to reveal her daughter's arrest.

Instead, Phillips chastised the newspaper for reporting a racial division among the jurors.
"That's not what the note said," Phillips said of a message from the panel to the judge on Thursday in which jurors reported claims of racism were contributing to the deadlock.

The judge insisted that the note's statement that claims of racism had been raised during jury deliberations did not mean the panel was divided along racial lines.

"I would ask the newspaper to be accurate in its reporting," Phillips said from the bench.
Jurors, however, said the woman accused white members of the panel of being racist, prompting the note to Phillips.
"It offended me," one juror said.
The woman at issue refused comment when approached by a reporter and walked out of the courthouse alone. Fellow jurors followed minutes later as a group.

Martin, a convicted drug dealer from Boston,MA had opted to serve as his own attorney on charges he moved his drug-peddling network to Knoxville,TN and set up armed stash houses serving a smorgasbord of drugs ranging from $500,000 in cocaine every month to marijuana to Ecstasy. He also was accused of plotting to kill a key witness against him.

He insisted he was being framed by racist cops and lying "degenerates." The voice on secretly recorded phone conversations authorities said he had with various underlings was not his, he told jurors.

The lone Black juror on the panel bought into Martin's defense hook, line and sinker, fellow jurors said.
"You bring up the wiretaps and she'd say it wasn't his voice," one juror said. "She said the (alleged co-conspirators) were lying, and you couldn't believe the police officers. The whole time she talked about how unfairly her sister was treated."

The panel did find Martin guilty of one of 17 charges against him, deeming him guilty of being a felon in possession of an assault rifle. It was the sole charge not directly tied to the drug conspiracy.

"Anything that had to do with the drugs, she wouldn't even consider it," a fellow juror said.
Although prosecutors have 30 days to decide whether to retry him, Jennings announced in court he and Plowell would file formal notice today of their intent to seek a new trial.

Martin, who has boasted from the day of his arrest that he would win the case and openly taunted Jennings at an earlier hearing, remains jailed. As he was led out of the courtroom by the U.S. Marshals Service, Martin looked back at Jennings, smirked and said, "Checkmate."

Jury nullification refers to a rendering of a verdict by a trial jury, disagreeing with the instructions by the judge concerning what the law is, or whether such law is applicable to the case, taking into account all of the evidence presented. Although a jury's refusal relates only to the particular case before it, if a pattern of such verdicts develops, it can have the practical effect of disabling the enforcement of that position on what the law is or how it should be applied. Juries are reluctant to render a verdict contrary to law, but a conflict may emerge between what judges and the public from whom juries are drawn hold the law to be, or the legitimacy of a law itself. A succession of such verdicts may signal an unwillingness by the public to accept the law given them and may render it a "dead-letter" or bring about its repeal. The jury system was established because it was felt that a panel of citizens, drawn at random from the community, and serving for too short a time to be corrupted, would be more likely to render a just verdict, through judging both the accused and the law, than officials who may be unduly influenced to follow merely the established law. Jury nullification is a reminder that the right to trial by one's peers affords the public an opportunity to take a dissenting view about the justness of a statute or official practices.
Notwithstanding perceived righteous applications of jury nullification, it bears noting that this verdict anomaly can also occur simply as a device to absolve a defendant of culpability. Sympathy, bias or prejudice can influence some jurors to wholly disregard evidence and instruction in favor of a sort of "jury forgiveness."
“ I consider trial by jury as the only anchor yet imagined by man by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution. ”
—Thomas Jefferson, 1789 letter to Thomas Paine