Habeas Corpus – juror bias

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United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit

Criminal

Habeas Corpus – juror bias

Where there is no evidence whether a state court prisoner was prejudiced by extraneous information that reached the jury, the district court should not have issued a writ of habeas corpus.

“[T]his is information that we do not have and, due to our appellate status, cannot obtain. Thus, while we agree with the district court that the Court of Appeals of Indiana acted contrary to clearly established federal law, we are uncertain as to whether he was actually prejudiced by the state courts’ constitutional error, given the dearth of information before us. It may be a significant challenge for the State to convince the district court that such highly prejudicial information might not have had an impact on the jury’s verdict, but this is a matter better addressed by a trial court. We therefore must vacate the district court’s grant of Hall’s habeas petition and remand to the district court. It is there that the State will have an opportunity to show, despite the strong evidence of prejudice already presented by Hall, that countervailing facts would have alleviated concerns of a prejudiced jury.”

Reversed and Remanded.

11-3911 Hall v. Zenk 

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Indiana, DeGuilio, J., Flaum, J.