California Reverses Inmate’s Death Penalty Conviction On Juror Issue

A man convicted of murder over 15 years ago and facing the death penalty had his conviction and sentence reversed Thursday by the California Supreme Court, which said a lower court improperly removed a juror during deliberations, Courthouse News reports. A Los Angeles County jury convicted Timothy Joseph McGhee, 51, on three counts of murder and four counts of attempted murder. A leader of the Toonerville gang, McGhee was accused of involvement in five gang-related shootings in Los Angeles between October 1997 and November 2001. Caught in 2003, McGhee went to trial years later. The jury was deliberating when two jurors sent a note to the judge about a colleague. They claimed he relied on speculation in his arguments and believed prosecution witnesses were lying. That led the judge to interview jurors individually and hear that some of them thought the juror had an anti-police bias. Others disagreed. Ultimately, the judge dismissed that juror over defense objections. An alternate juror replaced him, and days later, the jury convicted McGhee.

“We ask whether the trial court’s conclusion that the discharged juror was unable to perform his or her duty appears in the record as a ‘demonstrable reality,’” Associate Justice Goodwin Liu wrote. “To uphold the discharge of a juror, however, a reviewing court ‘must be confident that the trial court’s conclusion is manifestly supported by evidence on which the court actually relied,’ considering that evidence and the court’s reasons for discharging the juror in light of the entire record.” The lower court based the decision to discharge the juror on his failure to deliberate and obvious anti-police or prosecution bias. Neither is supported in the record, the supreme court said. According to Liu, the lower court stopped jury deliberations and began questioning jurors individually after receiving the note. While a judge has the authority to dismiss a juror, it’s “a delicate matter” and shouldn’t be intrusive. Instead of interviewing jurors, the judge could have instructed them on their duty to deliberate. The juror dismissed by the judge expressed skepticism at some prosecution witnesses, Liu wrote. Some of those witnesses were current or former gang members, with a few having criminal convictions. “Some of the witnesses also admitted to being under the influence of drugs or alcohol at the time of the shootings or when McGhee told them about his involvement in the crimes,” Liu wrote.