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Case 1:20-cr-00330-PAE Document615_ Filed 02/24/22 Page 28 of 49
also decline to hold as a general matter that, where a juror has
engaged in conduct similar to that of the defendant at trial, the trial
judge must presume bias. Such cases are unlikely to present the
“extreme situations” that call for mandatory removal.
Torres, 128 F.3d at 46; see also id. at 46 & n.11 (rejecting A//sup decision from Ninth Circuit that
court must presume that jurors who had “particular . . . prior experiences were biased”’). Thus, to
the extent the cases cited by the defendant purport to require such a presumption of bias, they are
inconsistent with binding Second Circuit precedent. (See, e.g., Def. Mem. at 31 (citing United
States v. Eubanks, 591 F.2d 513, 517 (9th Cir. 1979), which relied on Al/sup)).
The remaining cases cited by the defendant are inapposite. Some merely state a general
proposition that similarity of experiences may give rise to a presumption of bias, but then go on to
resolve the case on other grounds. See, e.g., Skaggs v. Otis Elevator Co., 164 F.3d 511, 517-18
(10th Cir. 1998); United States v. Daugerdas, 867 F. Supp. 2d 445, 472 (S.D.N.Y. 2012), vacated
by United States v. Parse, 789 F.3d 83 (2d Cir. 2015). Others find that a juror should have been
struck not merely because of similarity of experiences, but also based on a number of other factors
not present here. For example, in one case prominently cited by the defendant, a juror in the
penalty phase of a death penalty case told a “litany of lies,” and the First Circuit declined to rest
its decision on any particular category of bias, but instead cited the combination of the juror’s
interpersonal relationships, inability to separate emotion from duty, similarity of experiences,
scope and severity of dishonesty, and motive for lying, any one of which “taken in isolation, may
be insufficient to ground a finding of a valid basis for a challenge for cause.” Sampson v. United
States, 724 F.3d 150, 161, 166-68 (1st Cir. 2013); see also Hunley v. Godinez, 975 F.2d 316, 319-
20 (7th Cir. 1992) (citing combination of factors in “extreme” case where two jurors were
burglarized during deliberations and then changed their votes as a result, and stating that “our
holding is limited to the very unique facts stated herein” and “[iJt is unlikely these rare
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Document Details
| Filename | DOJ-OGR-00009147.jpg |
| File Size | 775.0 KB |
| OCR Confidence | 94.4% |
| Has Readable Text | Yes |
| Text Length | 2,366 characters |
| Indexed | 2026-02-03 17:42:02.229430 |