Fox News host Tucker Carlson featured Andrew Napolitano, the network’s senior judicial analyst, on Thursday night’s edition of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” to discuss reports that a juror in the case against Roger Stone may have been tainted.
Social media posts from former Memphis City Schools Board President Tomeka Hart, the foreman of the jury, suggest that she was a left-wing, anti-Trump activist who had posted about Stone’s case before she voted to convict him on obstruction charges.
Carlson said Hart “turned out to be a former Democratic congressional candidate who attacked [President] Trump on Twitter” and said that she “mocked concern” about the FBI’s early morning raid on Stone’s house, before asking Napolitano why she would be allowed to remain on the jury?
First putting out a disclaimer that he has been friends with Stone for “about 40 years,” Napolitano suggested that the woman must have been deceptive about her views.
(Source: Fox News)
“This is information that she must have hidden from the lawyers and the judge, who interrogated her before she was put on the jury,” he opined, adding that judges pick the jurors in federal cases.
“The purpose of the interrogation is to weed out people that have a bias prejudice, knowledge of the case or interest in the outcome,” he explained. “She obviously had a prejudice against Roger Stone — a bias in favor of his prosecution and an interest in seeing him convicted that should automatically disqualify her.”
The former judge said during an appearance on “Fox & Friends” earlier in the day that Stone should get a new trial, noting that when there is an inherent bias by a member of a jury against a defendant, that’s “an automatic trigger for a new trial.”
Napolitano explained to Carlson what should occur when a juror’s bias is discovered after the trial is over.
“The proper thing for the judge to do,” he said, “is to bring this juror back in the courtroom in the presence of Roger Stone and his lawyers, and in the presence of the four prosecutors who have since resigned– because the resignations are not effective until she, the trial judge, accepts them — and interrogate this woman in order to determine whether the bias influenced her guilty vote and whether that bias was passed on to other members of the jury.”
Understanding that jurors are screened, Carlson asked what would happen if it was discovered that Hart lied.
“It would be catastrophic for her,” Napolitano replied. “First of all, she is a lawyer. So she would be prosecuted for perjury since the statements are given under oath and if convicted she would lose her license to practice law but that would be the least of her concerns.
“She probably would serve jail time if she lied in order to affect the outcome of a case, and if she did lie — if a judge concluded she lied — that’s an automatic vacation of the conviction and an order for a new trial if the government even wants to try Stone a second time,” he added.
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The longest-tenured writer at BizPac Review, Tom grew up in Maryland before moving to Central Florida as a young teen. It is in the Sunshine State that he honed both his passion for politics and his writing skills.
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