December 15, 2023
On December 6, 2023, at the end of a bitterly contested five-week trial of the former CEO of a publicly traded corporation who had been charged with federal criminal securities violations, a mistrial was declared by the court after the 12-person jury was unable to reach a unanimous verdict. Schlam Stone attorneys Doug Grover, Jim Roberts and Angela Li sought a mistrial following a surprising turn of events in which one of the jurors disagreed with the verdict initially reported by the foreperson. As reported in Law360:
“The occasional mistrial in a fact-heavy criminal case is a job hazard prosecutors and defense attorneys have come to expect, but a lone juror's sudden sabotage of a guilty verdict last week was a first to many in the Newark, New Jersey, federal courthouse. A murmur rippled through the courtroom on Dec. 1 when the juror emphatically disagreed with his peers after being polled by U.S. District Judge Esther Salas, reducing what appeared to be prosecutors' successful securities fraud case to a hung jury. That shock came just moments after the forewoman told the court that the 12 jurors had found Marc Schessel guilty of duping investors into believing his company had a multimillion-dollar COVID-19 test kit distribution deal.”
Read more at: https://www.law360.com/articles/1772715/how-one-word-turned-a-guilty-verdict-into-a-mistrial?copied=1