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Potential application to one of our arguments.
______________________________________________________________________________ www.MarkZaid.com From:
MWELA-Mail@softlinkcorp.com [mailto:MWELA-Mail@softlinkcorp.com] On Behalf Of Alan Kabat
The Supreme Court, in ruling on Jeff Skilling’s prosecution for Enron-related fraud, held that the pre-trial publicity in that case, even though extensive, did not preclude seating an unbiased jury in Houston.
Given that there was, indeed, much negative publicity in Houston about the collapse of Enron, this decision is a high-water mark in allowing a jury trial to go forward notwithstanding publicity about the case that may have affected the jury pool.
Incidentally, as to the merits, both Skilling and Conrad Black (Lord Black, formerly a newspaper publisher) saw their convictions vacated and remanded, but that’s beyond the scope of MWELA!
Some excerpts from the synopsis follow:
Skilling v. United States, No. 08-1394 (U.S. June 24, 2010).
http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-1394.pdf
Held: 1. Pretrial publicity and community prejudice did not prevent Skilling from obtaining a fair trial. He did not establish that a presumption of juror prejudice arose or that actual bias infected the jury that tried him. Pp. 11–34. (a) The District Court did not err in denying Skilling’s requests for a venue transfer. Pp. 11–19.
. . . .
(3) Important differences separate Skilling’s prosecution from those in which the Court has presumed juror prejudice. First, the Court has emphasized the size and characteristics of the community in which the crime occurred. In contrast to the small-town setting in Rideau, for example, the record shows that Houston is the Nation’s fourth most populous city. Given the large, diverse pool of residents eligible for jury duty, any suggestion that 12 impartial individuals could not be empaneled in Houston is hard to sustain. Second, although news stories about Skilling were not kind, they contained no blatantly prejudicial information such as Rideau’s dramatically staged admission of guilt. Third, unlike Rideau and other cases in which trial swiftly followed a widely reported crime, over four years elapsed between Enron’s bankruptcy and Skilling’s trial. Although reporters covered Enron-related news throughout this period, the decibel level of media attention diminished somewhat in the years following Enron’s collapse. Finally, and of prime significance, Skilling’s jury acquitted him of nine insider-trading counts. Similarly, earlier instituted Enron-related prosecutions yielded no overwhelming victory for the Government. It would be odd for an appellate court to presume prejudice in a case in which jurors’ actions run counter to that presumption. Pp. 16–18. (4) The Fifth Circuit presumed juror prejudice based primarily on the magnitude and negative tone of the media attention directed at Enron. But “pretrial publicity—even pervasive, adverse publicity—does not inevitably lead to an unfair trial.” Nebraska Press Assn. v. Stuart, 427 U. S. 539, 554. Here, news stories about Enron did not present the kind of vivid, unforgettable information the Court has recognized as particularly likely to produce prejudice, and Houston’s size and diversity diluted the media’s impact. Nor did Enron’s sheer number of victims trigger a presumption. Although the widespread community impact necessitated careful identification and inspection of prospective jurors’ connections to Enron, the extensive screening questionnaire and follow-up voir dire yielded jurors whose links to Enron were either nonexistent or attenuated. Finally, while Causey’s well publicized decision to plead guilty shortly before trial created a danger of juror prejudice, the District Court took appropriate steps to mitigate that risk. Pp. 18–19. (b) No actual prejudice contaminated Skilling’s jury. The Court rejects Skilling’s assertions that voir dire did not adequately detect and defuse juror prejudice and that several seated jurors were biased. Pp. 20–34. (1) No hard-and-fast formula dictates the necessary depth or breadth of voir dire. Jury selection is “particularly within the province of the trial judge.” Ristaino v. Ross, 424 U. S. 589, 594–595. When pretrial publicity is at issue, moreover, “primary reliance on the judgment of the trial court makes [especially] good sense” because the judge “sits in the locale where the publicity is said to have had its effect” and may base her evaluation on her “own perception of the depth and extent of news stories that might influence a juror.” Mu’Min v. Virginia, 500 U. S. 415, 427. The Court considers the adequacy of jury selection in Skilling’s case attentive to the respect due to district-court determinations of juror impartiality and of the measures necessary to ensure that impartiality. Pp. 20–21.
(2) Skilling failed to show that his voir dire fell short of constitutional requirements. The jury-selection process was insufficient, Skilling maintains, because voir dire lasted only five hours, most of the District Court’s questions were conclusory and failed adequately to probe jurors’ true feelings, and the court consistently took prospective jurors at their word once they claimed they could be fair, no matter any other indications of bias. This Court’s review of the record, however, yields a different appraisal. The District Court initially screened venire members by eliciting their responses to a comprehensive questionnaire drafted in large part by Skilling. That survey helped to identify prospective jurors excusable for cause and served as a springboard for further questions; voir dire thus was the culmination of a lengthy process. Moreover, inspection of the questionnaires and voir dire of the seated jurors reveals that, notwithstanding the flaws Skilling lists, the selection process secured jurors largely uninterested in publicity about Enron and untouched by the corporation’s collapse. Whatever community prejudice existed in Houston generally, Skilling’s jurors were not under its sway. Relying on Irvin v. Dowd, 366 U. S., at 727–728, Skilling asserts the District Court should not have accepted jurors’ promises of fairness. But a number of factors show that the District Court had far less reason than the trial court in Irvin to discredit jurors’ assurances of impartiality: News stories about Enron contained nothing resembling the horrifying information rife in reports about Leslie Irvin’s rampage of robberies and murders; Houston shares little in common with the rural community in which Irvin’s trial proceeded; circulation figures for Houston media sources were far lower than the 95% saturation level recorded in Irvin; and Skilling’s seated jurors exhibited nothing like the display of bias shown in Irvin. In any event, the District Court did not simply take venire members at their word. It questioned each juror individually to uncover concealed bias. This face-to-face opportunity to gauge demeanor and credibility, coupled with information from the questionnaires regarding jurors’ backgrounds, opinions, and news sources, gave the court a sturdy foundation to assess fitness for jury service. Pp. 22–30.
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