PHILADELPHIA _ The holdout juror removed mid-deliberations from the panel that convicted former U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah in his federal corruption case this summer told a court clerk shortly before his dismissal that "he was going to hang this jury no matter what," according to court records unsealed for the first time Friday.
U.S. District Judge Harvey Bartle III's decision to remove the man once the discussion began will now likely loom large in the appeals of the congressman and his four co-defendants.
The judge decided to unseal records surrounding the removal of juror Timothy Miller, 47, of Lancaster County after a request from Philadelphia Media Network, parent company of the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Daily News and Philly.com.
The records include two notes from jurors and transcripts of conversations between the judge and lawyers for both sides.
In one of the jury notes, nine members of the panel wrote that they felt Miller had become an impediment to their deliberations.
"We feel that (Juror 12) is argumentative (and) incapable of making decisions. He constantly scream (sic) at all of us," it read.
In a June order accompanying his decision to take Miller off the panel, Bartle wrote:
"There have been only approximately four hours of deliberation," the judge wrote. "There's no way in the world he could have reviewed and considered all the evidence in the case and my instructions on the law."
But in the months since the conviction, Fattah, a Pennsylvania Democrat who was sentenced to 10 years in prison Monday, and his supporters have criticized the decision and suggested that the congressman should receive a new trial as a result.
Miller said in an interview with the Philly Voice earlier this year that he was the only one on the panel who was not convinced by prosecutor's case against the congressman and was willing to stick by his decision to acquit even if it resulted in a mistrial. After the panel took several votes, Miller said he refused to vote again.
"It was 11-1 for five hours straight waiting for me to change my mind," Miller told the Philly Voice. "I said, 'I'll hang the jury. I'm not going to change my mind.'"
Since the trial, other members of the panel have declined to discuss their deliberations or Miller's account of what happened.
Lawyers for both sides had also declined to comment, saying the judge had instructed them not to discuss the matter publicly.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit laid out guidelines for judges dealing with potentially problematic jury deliberations with a 2005 ruling in another high-profile corruption case, the conviction of former Philadelphia Treasurer Corey Kemp.
In that case, a juror was dismissed after several colleagues on the panel told the judge she was not deliberating in good faith and had made statements such as "the government always lies." Asked by her fellow jurors to review certain pieces of evidence in the case, she reportedly replied, "Show it to someone who cares."
The Third Circuit upheld Kemp's conviction and, in deciding the appeal, set a standard for federal courts within its jurisdiction for dealing with the dismissal of jurors due to bias or refusal to deliberate.
Under those rules, a judge may not dismiss a juror if a refusal to deliberate stems from doubts held in good faith about the evidence in the case. If there is no "reasonable possibility" that the juror's unwillingness to participate is based on the evidence, however, the juror may be dismissed even after deliberations have begun.
