Did juror's crush on prosecutor affect verdict? Defense lawyer mulls appeal options
No one else knew that Juror No. 6 had an unrequited crush on the prosecutor, it seems, before a guilty verdict was rendered earlier this year in a Toronto-area drug case.
But afterward she made her feelings known in a series of notes to Robert Johnston, who is married, and provided him with her phone number, the Toronto Star reports.
“I absolutely enjoyed you and this experience,” she said in one note, adding: “When you said ‘thank you’ to us after the verdict was read and we were walking away, I wanted to say ‘you’re most welcome’ but honestly, I was so nervous and my stomach was in knots.”
Johnston apparently provided the notes to opposing counsel (he did not respond to requests for comment, the newspaper notes).
News of the prosecutor’s heartthrob status to Juror No. 6 prompted a request by one defendant’s lawyer for a judicial inquiry into how deliberations in the Brampton Superior Court case may have been affected.
Judge Leonard Ricchetti denied the request for an inquiry by attorney Ehsan Ghebrai, and sentenced Ghebrai’s client, Ewah Godwin, 46, to an 11-year prison term earlier this month.
Ghebrai told the Star he is now considering appellate options in the case.
A criminal defense lawyer who is not involved in the case said he doubted that Juror No. 6’s “‘feelings’ for the Crown—which were never expressed or acted upon during the trial—unfairly impacted that juror’s verdict or indeed the verdict of the other 11 jurors who unanimously reached their collective decision.”
But, at the same time, attorney Edward Prutschi, expressed “great sympathy with an accused——now convicted—who will forever wonder if he’s sitting in jail because a juror had a crush on the Crown. On the basis of that whiff of impropriety,” Prutschi said, “I could certainly see an appeal having legs to run with.”
