The text message lit up Juror No. 1’s phone after she had gone home on the night of closing arguments in a six-day trial in San Diego federal court. It came from a Colorado area code and a person identifying themselves as “Vanessa.”
After a brief exchange, the juror concluded it was spam and deleted the conversation.
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But checking her trial notes during deliberations the next day, Juror No. 1 began to second-guess her conclusion that the messages were junk. A co-defendant and cooperating witness in the brutal hostage-taking murder case that she and her fellow jurors were deciding had been arrested in Colorado, and in trial testimony the jury had learned that another co-defendant and witness was associated with someone named “Vaness.”
Juror No. 1, whose identity the court has kept anonymous along with all other members of the jury in the case, decided to “get a second opinion” from some of her fellow jurors.
Was this a coincidence, or cause for concern that someone connected to the ultra-violent events detailed during trial was trying to contact her?
Last month, U.S. District Judge William Hayes took the rare step of calling the jurors back into court nearly two months after they convicted Brian Alexis Patron Lopez on multiple charges related to the slaying of a San Diego teenager in Tijuana. But this time, rather than listening to testimony about the drug-related slaying, they were placed under oath and asked about the text messages.
Five jurors testified that they knew nothing about the messages. Juror No. 1 and six others who had seen the conversation or heard about the messages mostly testified that they believed the texts were spam, the kind of unsolicited junk texts that millions of Americans receive daily. All testified that the messages didn’t influence the verdict in any way.
Hayes must now decide what effect, if any, the text messages had on the proceedings.
Bringing jurors back to court to question them “is incredibly uncommon,” said Amy Kimpel, an associate law professor at downtown’s California Western School of Law and the executive director of the school’s Innocence and Justice Clinic.
Kimpel, who is not involved in Patron’s case, said federal rules mostly prevent the court from asking juries about their deliberation process, with very few exceptions.
“It’s almost treated as sacred,” Kimpel said of jury deliberations. “We let that situation play out, trust in the mini-democratic process and typically don’t question their decision making.”
Kimpel said one of the few exceptions — laid out in Federal Rules of Evidence 606 — is to question jurors about extraneous information that came to their attention and may have been prejudicial.
Under oath last month, Juror No. 1 testified that she was “wary” about the messages and brought them to a bailiff’s attention after the trial “because it was going to eat at me.” But she testified that the messages did not influence her decision to convict Patron.
Prosecutors argued in a court filing before the jurors testified that the messages were “innocuous,” unrelated to the case and should be ignored. Patron’s defense attorney argued that Juror No. 1 “tainted the entire panel” and that Patron, who faces mandatory life sentences for two of his crimes, deserves a new trial.
“How related the jurors perceived the messages to be — that’s the hard decision Judge Hayes will have to make,” Kimpel said. “His decision will almost certainly be reviewed by (the 9th U.S. Circuit) Court of Appeals.”
The trial in question took place in March and dealt with the abduction, torture and slaying of 19-year-old San Diego resident Miguel Anthony Rendon in May 2020 in Tijuana. Federal prosecutors said that Patron and several co-conspirators were involved in taking Rendon hostage and extorting his family after the teen stole methamphetamine he had agreed to smuggle into the U.S.
Prosecutors asserted that while others were involved to varying degrees, Patron was the gunman who shot Rendon five times in the head, in part to increase his status in a drug-trafficking organization.
Four other defendants previously pleaded guilty to participating in the kidnapping and killing, but Patron was the only defendant to take his case to trial.
During the proceedings, the jury heard testimony that Jonathan Emmanuel Montellano-Mora, one of Patron’s co-defendants, had been arrested by the FBI in Pueblo, Colo. They also heard testimony from another co-defendant about an associate and suspected drug-smuggler named Vaness.
When the trial ended, the jury deliberated for about five hours over a two-day span and convicted Patron of intentional killing while engaged in drug trafficking, hostage taking resulting in death and conspiracy to take hostages resulting in death.
Patron was sent back to custody to await sentencing. Both his defense attorney and the prosecutors left the courtroom.
Most of the jurors also left the courthouse, but when a bailiff went into the jury room to collect the exhibits and their notes, he encountered Juror No. 1, who told him about her concerns regarding the messages from “Vanessa” and the Colorado connection. The bailiff reported this to Hayes, who set a hearing for the next day to inform the attorneys about the messages.
Had the juror reported her concerns during deliberations and before discussing the messages with other jurors, the court could have fairly easily remedied the situation by removing her from the jury and replacing her with an alternate, according to Kimpel.
“But once a verdict is reached, you don’t have the ability to go back,” Kimpel said.
With her client facing mandatory life sentences, defense attorney Meghan Blanco immediately seized on the texts.
“(Juror No. 1) irrevocably tainted the entire panel by commandeering the jury’s focus, from the facts and evidence, to a disquisition about the origin and meaning of the extraneous communique,” Blanco wrote in a post-trial motion.
That alone, Blanco argued in the court filing, was “sufficient to order a new trial,” and at minimum was enough to hold the evidentiary hearings with the jurors.
Hayes agreed and subpoenaed the jurors to testify. During hearings on May 16, May 19 and May 21, they were called in one at a time to answer questions from the judge.
Juror No. 1 testified that she concluded the messages were spam when “Vanessa” claimed that they met at a charity gala. “I don’t go to charity galas,” Juror No. 1 told the judge. But she testified that the messages nagged at her the next day, anyway.
“Is this something to be concerned about?” she recalled asking at least two other jurors.
Those jurors testified that they told Juror No. 1 there was no cause for concern. One testified that he “made (it) clear” to Juror No. 1 that the messages were “purely coincidence” and “absolutely not” connected to the case.
Neither Blanco nor federal prosecutors have filed motions since the jurors testified, though they are expected to do so in the coming months with arguments about whether Patron should be granted a new trial.
Blanco did not respond to messages seeking comment. A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to comment.
If Patron seeks a new trial as expected, there is no deadline for Hayes to decide whether to grant it. Kimpel said there are “weighty concerns” on both sides of that argument, including the need for Patron to have a fair trial without outside taint, but also the consideration of putting witnesses through a second trial in a case that involves legitimate safety concerns.
For now, Patron is scheduled to be sentenced in August while three of his co-defendants are scheduled to be sentenced in July.