Supreme Court justices asked to rule that racial bias trumps jury secrecy

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

The American jury room is a bit like Las Vegas: What happens there is supposed to stay there.

But a Supreme Court appeal from a Hispanic defendant in Colorado raises the prospect that a juror’s comments during deliberations can be so offensive that they deprive a defendant of a fair trial.

The justices could say as early as Monday whether they will take up a case in the fall involving competing tenets of the legal system: a defendant’s constitutional right to trial by an impartial jury, and the need for secrecy in jury deliberations.

After a jury convicted Miguel Angel Pena Rodriguez of attempted sexual assault involving teenage sisters at a Denver-area horse race track, two jurors provided his lawyer with sworn statements claiming that a third juror made derogatory remarks about Mexican men before voting guilty.

In another comment, the juror is said to have cast doubt on an alibi provided by a Hispanic witness for Pena Rodriguez because the witness was “an illegal.” The witness testified that he was in the country legally.

But three separate courts in Colorado said those statements could not be used to upend Pena Rodriguez’s conviction because of a long-standing rule that prohibits jurors from testifying about what happens during deliberations. The rule, found in both federal and state law, is intended to promote the finality of verdicts and to shield jurors from outside influences.

The Supreme Court also has been unwilling to intrude on deliberations.