“There was one holdout,” [a] juror in the trial, Paula Duncan, said in an interview. We all tried to convince her to look at the paper trail. We laid it out in front of her again and again and she still said that she had a reasonable doubt.“
[...]
“I thought that the public, America, needed to know how close this was and the evidence was overwhelming,” she said.
Duncan said she was a Trump supporter and wanted to believe that Manafort was innocent. She noted that even his critics had described him as a brilliant political consultant and that Trump had trusted him with overseeing his campaign.
“I did not want Paul Manafort to be guilty. But he was and no one is above the law.”
[...]
Duncan said the deliberations were heated at times, leading some jurors to tears at one point, but that politics did not influence their decision-making.
“I think we all went in there like we were supposed to and assumed that Mr Manafort was innocent. We did due diligence, we applied the evidence, our notes, the witnesses and we came out with guilty verdicts on the eight counts,” she said.
[...]
Duncan said some of the jurors had a problem accepting the testimony of Rick Gates, Manafort’s former right-hand man, because he was testifying as part of a plea deal and “would have done anything that he could to preserve himself”.
She said the jury decided to not consider Gates’s testimony and focus instead on the documentary evidence. Duncan had tough words for attorneys on both sides.
She said the prosecution looked bored at times and that she saw two of them napping. Manafort’s lawyers, on the other hand, gave short cross-examinations, rarely objected and gave off an “easygoing” vibe, she said.
“I think I expected a little more,” Duncan said.
Guardian
A non-sequestered jury in a trial of a man who was in prison for witness tampering.
If not for the fact that the holdout voted to convict on 8 counts, we could have had some real shit.
Apparently, they did have some real problems during the trial, aside from the judge being a dick.
The transcripts show Manafort’s defense team asked for a mistrial on multiple occasions, but those requests were denied by the judge.
WaPo
Interesting because Manafort's lawyer Kevin Downing
told NPR that Manafort got a fair trial.
[A]female juror expressed concerns that a handful of others on the panel were talking about the case before deliberations — which is prohibited by court rules.
Judge T.S. Ellis III called the unidentified juror in for a private discussion, in which she said another juror had recently said to her that “the defense was weak,” or words to that effect. That same juror had also said that about three jurors total had made comments that concerned her.
[...]
The dispute, for a time, showed the potential for causing a serious disruption. Manafort’s defense moved for a mistrial, and attorney Kevin Downing suggested the jury contrary to the judge’s instructions, was “having discussions about the case, and people were commenting on their thoughts about the strength or weaknesses of the defense.”
[...]
On Aug. 14, with the issue still unfolding, the juror who was the subject of the initial complaint wrote a note to the judge, apparently disclosing some kind of medical condition. The exact contents of the note remain secret, but Ellis said the juror “clearly is under some stress.”
Sounds like somebody really wanted out. He didn't let her, though.
That same day, the judge questioned all 16 jurors — including the four alternates — about whether they had followed his instructions, and about whether they had heard their fellow jurors discussing the case. The first initially said “not really” when asked if they “heard any other jurors discuss the weight or effect of the evidence,” but later gave a definitive no. Fourteen others did the same, confirming they had followed the judge’s instruction.
[...]
The transcripts also reveal that the defense asked for a mistrial again on Monday when, during deliberations, jurors requested that if they had legal questions for the judge while they deliberated, that those questions should not to be read out loud in court or answered in open court.
It is standard procedure for courts to enter jury questions into the public record, and the answers provided are also typically a part of the public record.
“I’ve done this for 21 years and I’ve never had this happen,” Downing told the judge in asking for a mistrial.
Judge Ellis denied the motion but did so with an unusual rhetorical flourish, declaring that the jurors “are intimidated.”
He continued: “Were you ever in a trial with this many people and this much TV outside?”
Downing answered, “I have, I actually have.”
Ellis replied, “No, you haven’t, this is unique in American history. Yes.”
Later in the day, the judge seemed to realize his remarks could be problematic, and contradicted his statements.
He said his claim about the jurors being intimidated “is completely without any factual basis. I mean it’s sort of a human thing, but it has nothing whatever to do with the facts.”
Of his assertion that American history had never seen such a trial, the judge said, “that’s kind of a ridiculous thing for me to say.”
Definitely time for Ellis to hang up his robes and turn in his gavel.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
UPDATE:
[Duncan, a Missouri native and mother of two,] described herself as an avid supporter of President Trump, but said she was moved by four full boxes of exhibits provided by Mueller’s team – though she was skeptical about prosecutors' motives in the financial crimes case.
“Certainly Mr. Manafort got caught breaking the law, but he wouldn’t have gotten caught if they weren’t after President Trump,” Duncan said of the special counsel’s case, which she separately described as a “witch hunt to try to find Russian collusion,” borrowing a phrase Trump has used in tweets more than 100 times.
“Something that went through my mind is, this should have been a tax audit,” Duncan said, sympathizing with the foundation of the Manafort defense team’s argument.
[...]
“It was a very emotionally charged jury room – there were some tears,” Duncan said about deliberations with a group of Virginians she didn’t feel included many “fellow Republicans.”
[...]
“Every day when I drove, I had my Make America Great Again hat in the backseat,” said Duncan, who said she plans to vote for Trump again in 2020. “Just as a reminder.”
Fox News
Well, maybe after the next Manafort trial, she'll change her mind.
Yeah, probably not.
