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BANGOR — A decision in the Tuesday morning hearing on the man convicted this summer of killing a University of Maine student in a 2010 hit-and-run was postponed to allow the defense to respond to a memorandum filed by Penobscot County’s district attorney.
William Bly, the defense attorney for 23-year-old Garrett Cheney of North Berwick, alleges jury tampering. Meanwhile, a juror calls his claims “ridiculous.”
Superior Court Justice William Anderson, who presided over Cheney’s trial, heard argument on two motions Bly filed. Arguments at the Penobscot Judicial Center lasted less than 30 minutes.
While leaving for lunch during the July trial, three jurors were approached by an unnamed man who asked them not to let Cheney become “another Casey Anthony,” referring to the summer’s widely publicized trial of a Florida woman accused of killing her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee. Anthony was acquitted.
Because of the man, Bly motioned Tuesday to acquit his client based on jury tampering during this summer’s trial.
He said he would also be satisfied if Cheney was granted a new trial in the death of Jordyn Bakley, a 20-year-old elementary education student, on Middle Street in Orono on Jan. 30, 2010.
Jurors informed the court about what had happened and were questioned by Anderson. At the time, Bly and district attorney R. Christopher Almy had no qualms about continuing the trial.
“[Bly] had a chance right then and there to say ‘jury tampering,’ but he said ‘nope,’” Debbie, a juror who did not want her last name published, said.
Now, Bly says jurors must have been influenced by the man since they deliberated for only two-and-a-half hours.
“If this was a verdict of guilty that came back in two-and-a-half days, we wouldn’t be standing here today,” Bly said. “They made such a quick decision, and they didn’t even review all the evidence.”
Debbie called Bly’s accusations that the jury did not fully deliberate “ridiculous,” saying she didn’t follow Anthony’s trial and heard nothing about it until it was nearly over.
“It’s not as if we went in [to deliberate] and said, ‘He’s guilty. Let’s just sit here for a couple of hours,’” she said.
Bly said the jury did not ask for any testimony to be read back to them during deliberation or open all the evidence provided to them, including pieces of the front bumper of Cheney’s truck he said were still wrapped in paper after deliberation ended.
“We opened everything,” Debbie said, denying Bly’s claims that the bumper was not unwrapped.
Combined with the man asking jurors to convict Cheney, Bly believes Anthony’s acquittal unfairly prejudiced jurors against his client, which he claims he could not have known when the jurors were questioned.
“They made their decision far in advance of the close of evidence, and that’s improper,” he said after the hearing. “Fundamental justice at the very least would require a new trial.”
‘There was no jury tampering’
The subject of Bly’s motions, whose identity isn’t publicly known, addressed three jurors on their way out of the courthouse.
Debbie, a juror and mother of three, was one of them. She denies he affected her decision.
“All of us jurors were heading out to the parking lot for lunch … . It was myself and another juror and a gentleman in front of us, and we were the last ones out,” she said. The man told them, “‘don’t pull a Casey Anthony on us, string him up’ and something like that.”
Debbie said she wrote down the license plate number of the man’s car and gave it to court officials when she returned from lunch.
“I don’t know what [Bly] hopes to prove, but there was no jury tampering,” Debbie said. “We all really deliberated hard because we knew this person’s life was at stake.”
Debbie had never served on a jury before.
Cheney is similar in age to her oldest child, and she said she still carries the weight of her decision.
But she doesn’t regret it.
“I can feel for Cheney,” she said. “He did what a lot of college kids do.
“Two lives are ruined because of what happened one night.”
Debbie acknowledged that the jurors did not ask for any testimony to be read to them again but said they considered all the evidence. She said the jurors drew maps of the crime scene and fit the broken pieces of grille back in place during deliberation.
“The grille fit. The pictures we looked at, some were terrible, but we studied them,” she said. “When he said we didn’t look at any evidence, that’s false.”
She said she based her decision to vote guilty on what she saw as Bly’s failure to make his case.
“His lawyer really had no evidence. All he did was try to discredit all of the other witnesses,” she said.
What’s next?
“‘What has changed?’” Almy asked, repeating Anderson’s question during argument. “There is a verdict that Mr. Bly doesn’t agree with, but that is a matter of opinion.”
Almy said the length of deliberation is what truly upset Bly, saying “that’s not the issue.”
“It’s not the length of deliberation that counts,” Almy said after the hearing. “In our opinion, the evidence was overwhelming.”
Bly’s second motion was for the court to release information about the jurors, which Almy objected to. Bly is asking for jurors’ identities to question them about the incident and to determine if it influenced their opinion of Cheney.
Almy’s memorandum was provided shortly before the trial, and the court granted Bly 21 days to review it and respond.
“Each of the fifteen jurors in this case reaffirmed after the confrontation outside the courtroom, which occurred on July 26, 2011, and after the Casey Anthony verdict, which was entered on July 5, 2011, that they could be fair and impartial in this case, and the assessment of their impartiality should stand,” Almy wrote in his memorandum.
“If every time there’s a conviction in this country after the Casey Anthony case, does that mean every verdict is suspect?” Almy asked after the hearing.
If Bly’s motions are denied once he files his response, the trial would be over and sentencing would begin. Bly said he would expect sentencing to occur in November in that situation.
With a warrant out for his arrest, Cheney turned himself in to Maine State Police in Orono on April 16, 2010. According to an April article in The Maine Campus, pieces of debris at the crime scene matched damage to Cheney’s vehicle.
He pleaded not guilty in May 2010 to charges including manslaughter, aggravated criminal operating under the influence of intoxicants, leaving the scene of an accident that resulted in serious bodily injury, and criminal operating under the influence of intoxicants.
Cheney was also involved in an accident at 3:30 a.m. on Jan. 30 on Interstate 95 in Etna, approximately 30 minutes after Bakley was struck, the article said. He is free on $50,000 surety bail.
Bangor Daily News