Finding that vodka and jury deliberations do not mix, a Kentucky judge has ordered a new trial in an automobile accident case because of the “inexcusable, disruptive” behavior of an intoxicated juror.

The jury had already delivered its verdict by the time Jefferson County Circuit Court Judge Geoffrey P. Morris learned that the clear liquid one juror had been sipping from a water bottle during the one-day trial was actually vodka. “When the jury came out, she was literally staggering,” plaintiff's attorney Edward A. Mayer recalls.

Mayer moved for a new trial even though the verdict favored his client, a woman injured when a garbage truck collided with her car. The jury found All-Star Waste Disposal Truck Inc. liable and awarded Joy Mayes $15,500 in damages.

“We wanted a new trial on the issue of damages,” Mayer, a sole practitioner in Louisville, explains.

All-Star opposed the motion, citing an 1895 case in which the Kentucky Supreme Court found that a juror was not “so drunk as to be incapable of properly deciding the case.” In 1915, the court also said “the occasional taking of intoxication spirits in moderate quantity by jurors” was not grounds for a new trial.

But in a Jan. 9 opinion, Morris distinguished those precedents, noting that his own “colloquy with the juror in this case revealed her to be extremely intoxicated” and the foreman stated “she was disruptive, uncooperative and, eventually, unable to participate.”

“The Court is aware that new trials are generally granted only in the most extreme of circumstances; however, the inexcusable, disruptive behavior of this juror was so extraordinary as to render this relief appropriate,” Morris concluded.

The woman's husband told the judge when he came to pick her up from the courthouse that she was anxious about serving. "She just hated this jury duty idea," he said.

The decision is consistent with other precedent. “The fact that a juror drank intoxicating beverages during a trial or deliberation of a verdict is not grounds for a new trial unless the beverages were consumed in such quantities or at such time to incapacitate the juror from performing his duties,” the Alabama Supreme Court ruled in Alabama Power Co. v. Henderson, 342 So. 2d 323 (1976).

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall also once wrote that the “general effect” of an intoxicated juror “would not be conducive to the careful and objective deliberations upon which our criminal justice system relies.” McIlwain v. U.S., 464 U.S. 972 (1983)

By Matthew Heller
1/23/07