Dockery v. TDCJ ( 2022 )

Case: 21-20439 Document: 00516417581 Page: 1 Date Filed: 08/03/2022
United States Court of Appeals
for the Fifth Circuit United States Court of Appeals
Fifth Circuit
FILED
August 3, 2022
No. 21-20439 Lyle W. Cayce
Clerk
Ricky Dockery,
Plaintiff—Appellant,
versus
Texas Department of Criminal Justice,
Defendant—Appellee.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Southern District of Texas
USDC No. 4:18-CV-966
Before King, Elrod, and Southwick, Circuit Judges.
Per Curiam:*
An employee of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice sued his
employer, alleging it had failed to promote him due to his race, which is
African American. A jury returned a verdict for the defendant, and the
plaintiff moved for a new trial and alleged that extrinsic influence unfairly
prejudiced the jury. The district court denied his motion for a new trial. We
*
Pursuant to 5th Circuit Rule 47.5, the court has determined that this
opinion should not be published and is not precedent except under the limited
circumstances set forth in 5th Circuit Rule 47.5.4.
Case: 21-20439 Document: 00516417581 Page: 2 Date Filed: 08/03/2022
No. 21-20439
REMAND for fact-finding on whether there were extrinsic influences and
retain jurisdiction.
FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND
Ricky Dockery is an African American male who has worked for the
Texas Department of Criminal Justice (“TDCJ”) for more than thirty years.
In March 2014, Dockery resigned from his position as Assistant Plant
Manager of the Beto-Sign Plant and retired. Dockery’s retirement was short-
lived, though, and he returned to the employ of TDCJ in December 2014 as
an Industrial Specialist III. Less than a year later, TDCJ had a vacancy in
Dockery’s old position of Assistant Plant Manager, and Dockery applied for
the job.
Dockery alleged a subsequent saga of mismanagement and
malfeasance, in which he ultimately was not awarded the job of Assistant
Plant Manager. Dockery believed that this failure to promote was due to his
race, and he filed an Equal Employment Opportunity Complaint internally
with the TDCJ and a Charge of Discrimination with the Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission. Two years later, TDCJ again posted the position
as open, and, again, Dockery applied but was not selected for the job.
In 2018, Dockery sued TDCJ in the United States District Court,
Southern District of Texas, alleging racial discrimination in violation of 42
U.S.C § 1981 and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The district court
held a jury trial, and the jury returned a verdict for TDCJ. Following the
verdict, Dockery filed a motion for new trial and attached an affidavit from
one of the jurors. Dockery alleged several errors in his motion for a new trial,
but raises only one issue on appeal: whether the district court abused its
discretion in refusing to grant the motion for a new trial without an
evidentiary hearing because extrinsic evidence alleged in the juror affidavit
influenced the jury, rendering the trial unfair.
2
Case: 21-20439 Document: 00516417581 Page: 3 Date Filed: 08/03/2022
No. 21-20439
DISCUSSION
A district court’s denial of a motion for a new trial is reviewed for
abuse of discretion. See Williams v. Manitowoc Cranes, L.L.C., 898 F.3d 607,
614 (5th Cir. 2020). The baseline presumption “in any trial” is that of “jury
impartiality.” United States v. Ruggiero, 56 F.3d 647, 652 (5th Cir. 1995). The
presumption may be overcome, though, by showing prejudice through
“evidence that extrinsic factual matter tainted the jury’s deliberations.” Id.(quotation marks and citation omitted). Upon a “colorable showing of
extrinsic influence,” it is a court’s responsibility to “investigate the asserted
impropriety,” and a new trial is warranted upon the introduction of extrinsic
evidence” into the jury room “unless there is no reasonable possibility that
the jury’s verdict was influenced by the material that improperly came before
it.” Id. (quotation marks and citation omitted).
At the same time, a court’s ability to inquire into a jury’s deliberations
is sharply constrained by Federal Rule of Evidence 606(b). See id. at 652.
Federal Rule of Evidence 606(b) provides that “‘[d]uring an inquiry into the
validity of a verdict,’ evidence ‘about any statement made or incident that
occurred during the jury’s deliberations’ is inadmissible.” Warger v.
Shauers, 574 U.S. 40, 43 (2014) (quoting Fed. R. Evid. 606(b)(1)). The
rule, though, has three exceptions, and allows testimony “about whether . . .
(A) extraneous prejudicial information was improperly brought to the jury’s
attention; (B) an outside influence was improperly brought to bear on any
juror; or (C) a mistake was made in entering the verdict on the verdict form.”
Fed. R. Evid. 606(b)(2).
Taken together these propositions support the following:
Post-verdict inquiries into the existence of impermissible
extraneous influences on a jury’s deliberations are allowed
under appropriate circumstances so that a juryman may testify
to any facts bearing upon the question of the Existence of any
3
Case: 21-20439 Document: 00516417581 Page: 4 Date Filed: 08/03/2022
No. 21-20439
extraneous influence, although not as to how far that influence
operated on his mind.
Llewellyn v. Stynchcombe, 609 F.2d 194, 196 (5th Cir. 1980) (quotation marks
and citation omitted).
In his motion for a new trial, Dockery alleged that there were two
instances of extrinsic influence on the jury, and he presses these again on
appeal. First, Dockery alleged that a member of the jury worked for the State
of Texas — though not with the TDCJ — and warned other jurors that Texas
was paying for a retirement pension as well as for Dockery’s regular pay as a
current employee, in effect “double-dipping.” Second, Dockery alleged that
one of the other jurors “was directly influenced by his wife’s opinions in
deciding in favor of TDCJ,” and that the juror “told [the jury] that his wife
(not a juror) discussed with him how important a ‘management pipeline’ was
to an employer” making him “inclined to vote in favor of TDCJ.” Both
statements were supported by the juror’s affidavit.
The district court identified “improper outside influence by a juror”
as one of the issues raised in Dockery’s motion for a new trial. The district
court, though, only addressed one of the alleged instances of allegedly
improper external influence in the order, and even this discussion was
limited:
Plaintiff contends a juror’s experience working for Texas
Health & Human Services impermissibly influenced his
opinion and the opinion of other jurors. The fact that a juror
has relevant experiences to the case does not necessarily mean
he violated his obligation to decide this case based on the
evidence and the law as the Court gave it. After reviewing the
Motion, the court finds that the evidence is insufficient to
support a finding that the juror’s conduct was an impermissible
influence, amounting to jury misconduct.
4
Case: 21-20439 Document: 00516417581 Page: 5 Date Filed: 08/03/2022
No. 21-20439
The district court neither explicitly addressed the use of the juror’s affidavit
to establish a question of improper extrinsic influence nor discussed the
possibility that the juror’s comments about a conversation with his wife
might have constituted such improper extrinsic influence.
Dockery argues that he has done enough to make a “colorable showing
of extrinsic influence” on the jury’s verdict and that this “obligated the
district court to address the issue.” He asserts that “the district court erred
by failing to investigate [Dockery’s] colorable allegations of improper
extrinsic influence,” and urges us to remand to the trial court for an
evidentiary hearing.
In response, TDCJ argues that the affidavit should never have been
considered as it undermines Rule 606(b), and that even if the district court
did consider the affidavit, “juror discussion of personal past experience is not
‘extrinsic’ evidence that requires a new trial.”
We agree with the TDCJ as to the juror who discussed his knowledge
of state employment. A jury’s discussion of “extraneous general
information,” so long as it was not prompted by an outside source, is not an
extrinsic influence as described in the exceptions to Rule 606(b). There is no
outside source when a juror discusses his own life experiences. The juror who
discussed his understanding of employment by the State of Texas was simply
doing what jurors do — discussing the evidence in terms of personal
experiences. “It is of course the very stuff of the jury system for the jury to
exercise its collective wisdom and experience in dissecting the evidence
properly before it; and in this process the cross-pollination of opinion,
viewpoint, and insight into human affairs is one of the jury’s strengths.”
United States v. Howard, 506 F.2d 865, 866 (5th Cir. 1975) (quotation marks
and citation omitted).
5
Case: 21-20439 Document: 00516417581 Page: 6 Date Filed: 08/03/2022
No. 21-20439
In a more recent precedent, we found no abuse of discretion when a
trial court denied a motion for a new trial based on jurors’ considering
“extraneous general information” against the court’s explicit instructions
not to do so. United States v. Brito, 136 F.3d 397, 414 (5th Cir. 1998). We
held that this did not violate Rule 606(b) and the district court did not abuse
its discretion because “there [was] nothing to suggest this information was
brought to the jury’s attention by an outside source.” Id.The other reported juror statement could be interpreted as meaning
an outside source provided information that affected one juror’s decision. A
juror allegedly stated “that his wife (not a juror) discussed with him how
important a ‘management pipeline’ was to an employer” and that “[a]fter
this conversation, he told [the jury] he was voting in favor of TDCJ.” The
affidavit certainly could be clearer, but to us the best interpretation is that
during a break in deliberations, perhaps when the juror was home at night,
the couple discussed the case and the juror’s wife made her comment
implying that promoting through the current employee “pipeline” was
important. We so interpret because the affiant swears that the other juror
stated that it was “[a]fter this conversation [that] he told us he was voting in
favor of TDCJ.”
We have stated already that a “colorable showing of extrinsic
influence” requires that a district court investigate. Ruggiero, 56 F.3d at 652.
There was enough in the affidavit about a juror who spoke to his wife to
require an investigation. Certainly, in this 17-pararaph affidavit, there were
many allegations. We are identifying only one, but it is an important one.
With respect, the district court abused its discretion by not investigating. In
this case, it would require clarification of what actually happened and a
decision as to whether “there is no reasonable possibility that the jury’s
verdict was influenced by the material that improperly came before it.” Id.(quotation marks and citation omitted).
6
Case: 21-20439 Document: 00516417581 Page: 7 Date Filed: 08/03/2022
No. 21-20439
We will remand so that the district court may conduct an evidentiary
hearing that will allow the court to make findings as to whether a juror
discussed the case with his wife after the trial began. We have recently held
that in a criminal case, comments made to a juror by outside parties about
issues relevant to the trial are extrinsic influences. See United States v.
Jordan, 958 F.3d 331, 334–39 (5th Cir. 2020). The same applies here.
The relevant fact to be found is whether an extraneous influence acted
on one or more jurors. Should the district court find that unnamed juror did
speak with his wife about the trial while it was occurring, the court should
examine (1) “the content of the extrinsic material,” i.e., the conversation; (2)
“the manner in which it came to the jury’s attention”; and (3) “the weight
of the evidence” in favor of the verdict in order to determine if there was “no
reasonable possibility” that the verdict was influenced by the extrinsic
material. See Ruggiero, 56 F.3d at 652–53 (quoting United States v. Luffred,
911 F.2d 1011, 1014 (5th Cir. 2014)). The inquiry should not explore “how
far that influence operated” on any testifying juror because that would
“probe the mental processes of jurors.” Llewellyn, 609 F.2d at 196 (quoting
Mattox v. United States, 146 U.S. 140, 149 (1892)). If there were outside
influences on the jury, the party who urges upholding the verdict must rebut
a presumption of prejudice. See Ruggiero, 56 F.3d at 652.
After an evidentiary hearing, the court should submit a supplemental
order setting forth its findings. We REMAND and maintain jurisdiction.
7