Lawyer Seeks New Trial for Client After Luckily Finding Out Juror Wasn't a US Citizen
It looks like a Pennsylvania man convicted of selling $40 worth of cocaine to an undercover officer might have a chance of winning a retrial because his lawyer happened across helpful information about a juror.
Attorney Thomas Shaffer, who represented Troy Mannery, fortuitously was in the courtroom when one of the jurors who convicted him was questioned as a potential juror in another trial later that same day, reports the Associated Press.
Although the woman apparently didn’t intend to do anything wrong, she hadn’t spoken up when the judge in Mannery’s case asked a question along the lines of whether any of the potential jurors was not a resident of Pennsylvania or Fayette County, according to Shaffer.
When questioned concerning the next trial, however, she told the judge, after he asked whether anyone wasn’t a citizen, that she is a citizen of Canada.
Officials responsible for compiling the pool of potential jurors apparently overlooked the citizenship issue, according to the AP.
Whether Mannery gets a new trial could hinge on the apparent lack of intent by anyone involved to place a noncitizen on the jury, says law professor Bruce Antkowiak of Duquesne University, noting that he has never heard of such a situation.
New trials, he says, “are not commonly granted unless there is some evidence of some misconduct by the prosecution or someone else and it doesn’t seems like anyone would knowingly permit someone who is not a citizen to serve on the jury.”
