Juror Admits Bias in Tennessee Case With Pending Execution Date

A Tennessee death-row pris­on­er who is fac­ing exe­cu­tion in ear­ly December is seek­ing to reverse his 1992 con­vic­tion and death sen­tence in light of new infor­ma­tion that a juror who served on his case failed to dis­close that she was biased against him. 

Lee Hall (pic­tured), who is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed December 5, 2019, was con­vict­ed of killing his estranged girl­friend, Traci Crozier, and sen­tenced to death. However, in a November 14 hear­ing in Hamilton County Criminal Court, he says his con­sti­tu­tion­al right to be tried by an impar­tial jury was vio­lat­ed when one of his jurors did not reveal to the court that she was biased against him because she had been a vic­tim of domestic violence. 

In a sworn affi­davit Hall filed with the court in October, the juror — iden­ti­fied in court papers as ​“Juror A” to pro­tect her pri­va­cy — said she had been sub­ject­ed to recur­ring domes­tic vio­lence and rape over a six-year peri­od dur­ing an abu­sive first mar­riage. Juror A said she had not dis­closed her per­son­al his­to­ry dur­ing jury selec­tion, despite sev­er­al oppor­tu­ni­ties to do so, in part because at that time she had not con­sid­ered her­self to be a vic­tim. She start­ed see­ing a ther­a­pist in 2007 and only then began to address the psy­cho­log­i­cal impact of the abuse. Earlier this year, after she had become aware that Hall was fac­ing exe­cu­tion, Juror A con­tact­ed his attor­neys and, for the first time, revealed her his­to­ry of domestic abuse. 

Hall’s court plead­ings allege that ​“Juror A con­cedes that she was actu­al­ly biased against Mr. Hall at the time of the tri­al and in fact hat­ed him because he remind­ed her of her abu­sive hus­band.” The juror’s ​“affir­ma­tive mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tions” dur­ing jury selec­tion, Hall’s lawyers argue, ​“ren­dered Mr. Hall’s cap­i­tal mur­der tri­al fundamentally unfair.” 

In her affi­davit, Juror A said that, dur­ing the course of Hall’s tri­al, “[a]ll these mem­o­ries [of abuse] flood­ed back to me …. I could see myself in Traci [Crozier]’s shoes, giv­en what hap­pened to me. I hat­ed Lee for what he did to that girl.” At the hear­ing, she explained why she hadn’t dis­close her expe­ri­ence at the time of the tri­al, say­ing, “[i]n 1969, there was real­ly no such thing that I knew of, of date rape, espe­cial­ly since I’d been dat­ing him for so long. I did­n’t even know the term ​‘domes­tic abuse’ at the time. I real­ly thought it was — I mean, I nev­er thought of it as a crime. I had no notion that I had ever been a vic­tim of a crime.” 

Hamilton County District Attorney Neal Pinkston opposed Hall’s peti­tions, argu­ing that Hall’s lawyers should have con­tact­ed Juror A dur­ing the reg­u­lar appeals process and that his juror-bias claim is now untime­ly. They respond­ed that, from 1998 – 2003, his defense team did try to track down the jurors, but Juror A lived out of state and, with the lim­it­ed resources avail­able to defend an indi­gent pris­on­er, they could not afford a flight to inter­view her. Juror A said that she prob­a­bly still would not have iden­ti­fied her­self as a vic­tim of domes­tic abuse or rape at that time. 

Judge Don Poole said that, because of the nature of the alle­ga­tions, he decid­ed that a hear­ing was nec­es­sary. “[T]here is law to the effect that in cer­tain cir­cum­stances of due process fair­ness will allow cer­tain things to be pre­sent­ed to the court, and for that rea­son, I have allowed this sec­ond peti­tion for post-con­vic­tion relief to go for­ward,” he said. 

This is the sec­ond time in 2019 a Tennessee case has come under scruti­ny as a result of jury-relat­ed dis­crim­i­na­tion. In August, a Tennessee tri­al court approved a plea deal between Nashville pros­e­cu­tors and lawyers for Abu-Ali Abdur’Rahman to vacate his death sen­tence and impose three life sen­tences. At Abdur’Rahman’s 1987 tri­al, pros­e­cu­tor John Zimmerman had alleged­ly dis­crim­i­nat­ed against black prospec­tive jurors and com­mit­ted oth­er forms of mis­con­duct. Tennessee’s Attorney General has sought to inter­vene in the case and is appeal­ing the agreement. 

Hall is the fourth Tennessee death-row pris­on­er in the last two years to select elec­tro­cu­tion as his method of exe­cu­tion. Edmund Zagorski, David Earl Miller, and Stephen Michael West were all exe­cut­ed in the elec­tric chair after med­ical experts said that Billy Ray Irick was not prop­er­ly anes­thetized dur­ing his 2018 lethal injection execution.