That this day would ever come and I just feel so grateful that the jury believed us and sent a strong message that perpetrators of sexual abuse and exploitation will be held accountable no matter how much power and privilege that they have That was Annie farmer a little more than a week ago after a jury found the lane Maxwell guilty of engaging in a ten year sex trafficking scheme with Jeffrey Epstein But now the verdict that was hailed as long delayed justice for the victims is in jeopardy In newspaper interviews a juror said that during the jury deliberations he revealed that he'd been the victim of sexual abuse as a child and that his story helped sway other jurors who questioned the credibility of some of Maxwell's accusers then a second juror made a similar disclosure Joining me is former federal prosecutor Jessica Roth a professor at cardozo law school Jessica explain why the revelations by these jurors are leading the defense to ask for a new trial A defendant is entitled to a trial by a jury that is fair and impartial That is a constitutional guarantee A defendant is not entitled to a perfect trial but at a minimum to a trial by a group that will decide the case based on the evidence presented in court and not influenced by any bias And so the problem that has been raised by these recent revelations by two jurors is the concern that they may have Harvard a bias against Maxwell based on their own prior experiences as victims of sexual abuse And so what the court is going to be trying to determine is whether essentially these jurors should not have been seated because of those prior experiences Clearly the questionnaire that the jurors had to fill out asks have you or a friend or a family member ever been the victim of sexual harassment sexual abuse or sexual assault So was there misrepresentation here by either juror Well there are a couple of things we still don't know So we don't know how he answered that question on his questionnaire because it's under seal So the lawyers may know but the general public doesn't know yet how in fact he answered that question And it seems unlikely that he answered it in a way that disclosed the abuse because if he had it is likely that the attorneys would have asked follow-up questions about it and according to the reporting the transcript of the vor gear does not reveal any follow-up questioning of this particular chair on that issue So that's suggest that if it not disclose it on his questionnaire and that's important for the next step of the inquiry because the court is going to inquire into his possible motive for not disclosing it assuming for present purposes if he did not disclose it If the court were to determine that he did not disclose it deliberately in order to get on the jury then that would be more indicative of bias than if he as he has suggested perhaps inadvertently failed to disclose it because he was rushing through the questionnaire And there are cases where courts have talked about the significance of a jurors motivations for failing to disclose information that seems relevant to determining bias because if it seems that the juror was determined or trying to get onto the jury that is often indicative in the course of you of harboring some bias and wanting to get onto the jury in order to render a verdict against the defendant Well the judge look into what happened in the jury room That's one of the more interesting aspects of this new turn in the case The judge is not going to consider testimony or other evidence about the jury deliberations in making her decision about whether or not to grant a new trial That's because there's a federal rule of evidence that expressly prohibits a judge from considering testimony or an affidavit from a juror about conductor statements that occurred during the jury's deliberation That's a rule of long-standing precedence And it's designed to protect the privacy of jury deliberations the concern is that if jurors are not assured of the privacy of their deliberations that they will be less candid Courts have been willing to accept the fact that this rule may result in occasional injustice but they have said that they do not think that the jury system could survive efforts to perfect it in this regard What kind of factors would the judge consider Will she consider the strength of the evidence against Maxwell Will she consider having to put the four victims who testified through another trial Well motions for a new trial are disfavored precisely because of the interest and finality in judgments once they've been rendered And those interests include not having to put victims and witnesses through another trial But that said the legal determination that the court will need to make is whether or not the record establishes that these jurors or sufficiently unbiased that they were appropriately seated as jurors in this case So I think the court is likely to hear from these jurors about their reasons for not disclosing this information if in fact they fail to disclose it and also their own views about the case when they went into the case Thanks Jessica That's professor Jessica Roth of cardozo law school coming up next The investigation into January 6th This is Bloomberg Progressive snapshot can save you money based on how you drive and how much