Court upholds convictions in 2007 Dorchester gang murder even though one juror didn't think it mattered she had a relative behind bars and in a gang

The Massachusetts Appeals Court today upheld the second-degree murder convictions of three men for beating and stabbing a teenager to death at Blue Hill Avenue and Wilcock Street in 2007, rejecting arguments that a juror who answered "no" to questions about relatives involved in criminal cases or the court system meant the three couldn't get a fair trial.

In a 2-1 decision, the court concluded the juror should have answered "yes," because her half-brother was in jail - and associated with a gang in an alliance with the victim's gang - while her half-sister had served as a witness in a murder trial a year earlier. The court also agreed she should have disclosed she had been fined in a "a minor motor vehicle criminal matter" in Dorchester court in 2008.

But, the court continued, it didn't affect the case because while she did know he had some sort of criminal involvement, because she remembered reading a Herald story about him a couple years earlier, she did not know either of her half-siblings well at the time and her half-brother's affiliation with the Lucerne Street Doggz never came up during the recitation of the case particulars during jury selection. And at the time, she did not know her half-sister had testified in a murder case.

Neither defense attorneys nor prosecutors, both of whom agreed to put her on the jury, knew any of this at the time, the court said in its summary of the case.

The defendants had learned about the juror's connection to Karl [the half-brother] after the trial when defendant Ortiz and Karl had exchanged words while incarcerated at the same prison, and Karl had said something to the effect that "that's why my sister convicted you."

According to the court summary, Pedro Ortiz and Terrance Pabon, of Dorchester, and Markeese Mitchell of Brockton, along with a fourth man who was convicted but who did not join the appeal, lured Terrance Jacobs, 16, to what he thought would be a one-on-one fight on May 22, 2007.

[T]he defendants were friends and relatives of Jaleek Leary, whose face had been slashed by Terrance Jacobs, who was associated with the M.O.B. gang. In retaliation for that event, a fight was arranged between a group associated with the Wilcock Street area, which included the defendants, and Jacobs, who was lured to the spot. The defendants stabbed and beat Jacobs to death.

Suffolk County prosecutors brought first-degree murder charges, but the jury in the 2010 case convicted the four of second-degree murder, which also carries a life sentence, but with the possibility of parole.

In today's ruling, the majority on the court said that the juror in question, even as she disregarded some very specific instructions from the judge about answering questions, was ultimately trying to be honest, that "honesty in this context is not the same as accuracy," and that the men got a fair trial.

The court first dismissed the argument about her half-sister's testimony at a murder trial, because "juror bias is not established when a juror fails to disclose a material piece of information if the reason for the nondisclosure is that she did not know it."

As for her half-brother's gang involvement:

Of critical importance, the judge credited the juror's explanation for why she answered the juror questionnaire as she did. The juror explained that she did not disclose information about Karl both because he was not a member of her household and because she did not "think he had any relations to this case." It bears noting in this regard that the juror filled out the questionnaire before coming to the court room and before knowing anything about the case, and that this timing supports the judge's finding that the juror's nondisclosure was due to a mistaken idea that she need not disclose information she considered irrelevant. Although the juror subsequently heard a description of the case during empanelment, that description did not mention the Lucerne Street Doggz, any connection between M.O.B. and the Lucerne Street Doggz, or that the case involved gangs. Thus, any connection between Karl's activities and the case at hand would not have been readily apparent, let alone explicit, to the juror. These facts, too, support the judge's credibility determination.

The court continued:

Undoubtedly, the juror should not have filtered her answer on the questionnaire based on her view of whether responsive information was relevant, in contravention of the judge's instruction. But the question here is not whether the juror provided incorrect answers, but whether the judge's finding that the juror did so honestly is clearly erroneous. Given the judge's subsidiary findings, which are well grounded in the evidence she credited from the [juror bias] hearing, we see no error in the judge's conclusions that the juror answered the questionnaire inaccurately but honestly and that, as a result, the defendants failed to establish that the juror was actually biased.

Associate Justice Vickie Henry, however, strongly dissented from the ruling, arguing it might even be time for a rule that simply states that if a person withholds information during jury selection, no matter how "honest" they might be in their belief to do so, that's enough to warrant a new trial if that person gets on the jury and participates in a guilty verdict:

As unpalatable as it is to re-do a murder trial, there comes a point where we cannot deny a new trial without damaging the integrity of the system. The juror lived within "blocks" of this violent murder. She had a family member convicted of similar crimes in the same neighborhood who was incarcerated at the time of [jury selection] in this case. Her family member was reported to be the leader of a gang that was "cool with" M.O.B. (the gang in which the victim was a member). The theory of the Commonwealth's case was gang retaliation against a member of M.O.B. In the light most favorable to the Commonwealth, the jury verdicts were based on the theory that the victim came or was lured to Wilcock Street and the defendants and others at Wilcock Street killed the victim, who was a member of M.O.B., in retaliation for him having severely sliced the face of a fourteen year old relative of one of the defendants. The juror knew Karl's experience with the law and yet she made a deliberate decision not to disclose this on the jury questionnaire. She then "violated" an express instruction from the judge "to disclose all responsive information regardless of the juror's view of relevance." The juror got caught applying her own erroneous relevancy filter to her own criminal record. Still, she did not share the criminal history known to her, persistently refusing to disclose the information requested. At some point, for the integrity of the system, we reach a bridge too far. This is a bridge too far for me.