Saying the request "carries no common sense," the judge in the Naeem J. Williams death penalty trial refused Wednesday to declare a mistrial over the jury’s inability to reach a verdict on the former Schofield Barracks soldier’s sentence after six days of deliberation.
U.S. District Judge J. Michael Seabright also rejected a request from defense lawyers for him, rather than the jury, to decide that the sentence should be life in prison rather than death.
Williams, 34, is facing a possible death sentence for killing 5-year-old daughter, Talia, in their Wheeler Army Airfield quarters in 2005.
His lawyers filed legal papers Monday calling the six days "an extraordinarily long time" compared with the deliberations of juries in other recent federal death penalty cases and considering that the choices are limited to just two options, life in prison or death.
Seabright said different juries deliberate for different amounts of time and that it was the defense that asked the jurors to consider 149 potential factors that weigh in favor of a life prison sentence. He had instructed the jurors to deliberate on each one of the 149.
In case Seabright rejected the first two requests, Williams’ lawyers had a third request. They want him to ask the 12 jurors individually whether there is a reasonable probability that they can reach a unanimous verdict and whether they have been exposed to outside influence or information. Seabright rejected that request as well.
"There’s no factual support for any of it," he said.
Federal prosecutors filed legal papers on Tuesday pointing out the jurors haven’t even said whether they are deadlocked.
Seabright said the second part of the last request improperly questions the jurors’ integrity because he has admonished them repeatedly to avoid media coverage of the trial and communicating about it outside their deliberations.
Defense lawyer John Philipsborn told Seabright, "At no point do we say, ‘We don’t trust the jurors.’" He said the defense team made the request because it found two Facebook postings by one of the jurors.
Seabright said the juror expresses frustration in the postings over the length of his jury duty and does not reveal anything about the case. "I don’t see that this juror violated any of my instructions," he said.
Still, Seabright ordered the name of the juror and copies of the postings kept out of the public court record, at least until after the trial, because he doesn’t want the juror to feel uncomfortable about people trolling the Internet for information about him during deliberations.
