U.S. v. Comey

Dist. Ct. did not abuse its discretion in denying defendant’s motion for new trial on sex-trafficking charges, even though defendant argued that he was unfairly prejudiced when certain documents taken from his cellphone and Facebook account that were admitted at trial, but not shown to jury was sent in computer with other documents to jury’s deliberation room. Record showed that: (1) after computer was sent to deliberation room, Dist. Ct. and defense counsel became aware that documents that had not been shown to jury had been included in computer; (2) Dist. Ct. immediately removed computer from jury room; (3) jury on same day announced that it had reached verdict; (4) Dist. Ct. told jury that it would have to re-deliberate with “proper evidence;” (5) when jury re-convened on following Monday, Dist. Ct. gave curative instruction telling jury to consider verdict only on evidence used at trial; and (6) jury came back with guilty verdict on all counts one hour later. No Remmer (347 U.S. 227) presumption of prejudice applied, where nothing outside record reached jury, and where there was no evidence that jury actually viewed any documents that defense counsel had identified as potentially prejudicial. Also, Dist. Ct. did not abuse its discretion in denying motion for new trial, where: (1) there was overwhelming evidence of defendant’s guilt; (2) of over 5,000 pages of documents incorrectly provided to jury, it was doubtful that jury actually viewed any of relatively few documents that had been identified by defendant as prejudicial, where jury had computer for less than three hours; and (3) subject-matter of documents identified by defendant was similar to other documents that were properly submitted for jury's consideration.