party in the jury room

I just finished reviewing my favorite civil procedure case from this semester, Tanner v. United States.

The defendant, Tanner, was convicted of conspiring to defraud the United States and of committing mail fraud. The case itself proceeded normally, and the jurors appeared to all parties to be as interested as jurors ever are in the proceedings.This, apparently, is a fairly low standard.

After the verdict but before sentencing, one of the jurors visited the defendant's lawyer. He was suffering from a bit of post-conviction malaise.

As the juror told it, the jurors in this case were a merry bunch, given to indulging in chemical excess. It seems that the day's debauchery began at lunch, thus rendering the afternoon court session somewhat less than effective from a juror's point of view.

The juror's interview is quoted in the case:

In the interview Hardy [the regretful juror] stated that he "felt like . . . the jury was on one big party." Hardy indicated that seven of the jurors drank alcohol during the noon recess. Four jurors, including Hardy, consumed between them "a pitcher to three pitchers" of beer during various recesses. Of the three other jurors who were alleged to have consumed alcohol, Hardy stated that on several occasions he observed two jurors having one or more mixed drinks during the lunch recess, and one other juror, who was also the foreperson, having a liter of wine on each of three occasions. Juror Hardy also stated that he and three other jurors smoked marijuana quite regularly during the trial. Moreover, Hardy stated that during trial he observed one juror ingest cocaine five times and another juror ingest cocaine two or three times. One juror sold a quarter pound of marijuna to another juror during the trial, and took marjiuana, cocaine, and drug paraphernalia into the courthouse. Hardy noted that some of the jurors were falling asleep during the trial, and the one of the jurors described himself to Hardy as "flying."

They sound like quite a group, but I think I'd prefer to meet them at a baseball game rather than in my jury room.