Federal Appeals Court Overturns North Carolina Death Sentence for Juror Misconduct Based on Improper Consultation With Pastor During Deliberations

A fed­er­al appeals court has vacat­ed the death sen­tence imposed on a North Carolina death-row pris­on­er, find­ing that one of his jurors improp­er­ly con­sult­ed her pas­tor about her deci­sion and then com­mu­ni­cat­ed the pas­tor’s advice to fel­low jurors. In a 2 – 1 deci­sion, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled on September 12, 2019 that William Leroy Barnes (pic­tured) had been denied his Sixth Amendment right to tri­al by an impar­tial jury and reversed a low­er court rul­ing that had excused the juror mis­con­duct in his case as ​“harm­less error.”

Barnes was tried in 1994 along with two co-defen­dants for the rob­bery and mur­der of a Rowan County cou­ple. During the penal­ty phase clos­ing argu­ments in the case, the lawyer for one of Barnes’ co-defen­dants invoked the bib­li­cal com­mand­ment ​“Thou shalt not kill” and asked the jurors, if they were ​“true believ­ers” did they ​“want to explain to God, yes, I did vio­late one of your com­mand­ments.” According to court records, one of the jurors, Hollie Jordan, was offend­ed by the argu­ment and noticed that anoth­er woman on the jury ​“seemed visibly upset.’” 

According to the tran­scripts from a lat­er evi­den­tiary hear­ing in the case, Jordan met with her pas­tor, Tom Lomax, for sev­er­al hours that night. She tes­ti­fied that she had decid­ed to vote for death and described to Lomax ​“how hor­rif­ic the pic­tures [of the crime scene] were,” ask­ing him ​“if we gave [the defen­dants] the death sen­tence would we burn in hell.” The pas­tor advised her that she ​“had to live by the laws of the land” and pro­vid­ed her with ​“some scrip­tures in the Bible … that explained every­thing.” The next day, Jordan talked to the jury for between 15 and 30 min­utes about her con­ver­sa­tion with the pas­tor. During that time, she read sev­er­al bible vers­es out loud to the oth­er jurors, includ­ing one com­mand­ing that ​“it is the duty of Christians to abide by the laws of the state.” Several jurors tes­ti­fied in the evi­den­tiary hear­ing into Jordan’s mis­con­duct that they expe­ri­enced her talk as an attempt to counter the co-defendant’s argu­ment and to ​“con­vince some­one … it was okay to [impose] the death penal­ty.” The jury ulti­mate­ly sen­tenced Barnes and one co-defen­dant to death and sen­tenced the sec­ond co-defen­dant, who had blamed the shoot­ing on the oth­ers, to life in prison.

Barnes chal­lenged his death sen­tence, argu­ing that Jordan’s mis­con­duct vio­lat­ed his right to an impar­tial jury and a ver­dict based sole­ly on the evi­dence and the law, and not on exter­nal fac­tors. The North Carolina state courts and the low­er fed­er­al court reject­ed his claim with­out an evi­den­tiary hear­ing, but the Fourth Circuit ruled that Jordan’s con­tact with the pas­tor was improp­er and that Barnes was enti­tled to a hear­ing on whether the mis­con­duct had been prej­u­di­cial. After that hear­ing, the fed­er­al dis­trict court again denied Barnes’ claim and he again appealed to the Fourth Circuit. The appeals court again reversed, find­ing that Jordan’s exter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tion with Pastor Lomax had cre­at­ed a con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly unac­cept­able taint­ed on the jury’s sen­tenc­ing ver­dict. The court said that even if Jordan had already decid­ed to vote for death before receiv­ing reli­gious reas­sur­ances from Lomax, she then improp­er­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ed her pastor’s views to the oth­er jurors in an effort to per­suade them to impose the death penal­ty. In those cir­cum­stances, the court said, it was rea­son­able to con­clude ​“that Pastor Lomax’s exter­nal influ­ence affect­ed the jury’s deci­sion” and that her ​“exter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tion was not harmless.” 

Judge G. Steven Agee dis­sent­ed, argu­ing that Jordan’s com­mu­ni­ca­tion with Lomax had been harm­less because the pas­tor had not said what sen­tence should be imposed and Jordan’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions with him had no effect on the facts or the law that the court had instruct­ed the jury to con­sid­er in reach­ing their sentencing verdict.