A juror whose Facebook posts during a trial prompted a judge in Pulaski County Circuit Court to overturn a North Little Rock man’s kidnapping conviction and life sentence was fined $500, the maximum, for contempt of court Monday.
Circuit Judge Herb Wright gave Brittany Nicole Lewis of Little Rock the option of paying immediately or going to jail; she paid within the hour.
Saying Lewis and fellow jurors had been warned against using social media during the December trial of Quinton Riley Jr., Wright cited her for criminal contempt of court, a sanction about the equivalent of a traffic ticket, for posting to Facebook directly from the jury room during the trial. Wright could have sent her to jail for a month.
The teacher’s aide had denied doing anything wrong, citing a lack of trial details in her posts.
Lewis, represented by attorney Jason Kordsmeier, had admitted to using Facebook at a January hearing, in which she confirmed posting to her account to express her frustration at the pace of jury deliberations and proceedings.
She also described her repugnance over some of the photographs that were used as evidence and stated that some of the testimony was upsetting.
Lewis’ Facebook posts were brought to Wright’s attention at the January hearing, and he ruled they were grounds for anew trial, citing an Arkansas Supreme Court decision involving a juror’s Twitter use during a death-penalty case. Prosecutors have appealed Wright’s ruling to the high court.
At his December trial, Riley, 27, was cleared of rape accusations brought by a 20-year-old woman but was convicted of kidnapping by the seven-woman, five-man jury that also imposed the maximum penalty available. The woman said she agreed to go for a ride while smoking marijuana with Riley after he approached her in May 2012, driving a gray Dodge Charger.
She believed he had a gun, she said, so she obeyed his commands to take off her clothes and eventually submitted to being bound with duct tape. Police found her naked, with duct tape still attached, in a North Little Rock neighborhood, and she led investigators to a shed where she said Riley left her bound and blindfolded with tape.
Riley didn’t testify at trial but denied wrongdoing in an interview with police. He said he and the woman had consensual sex in his car behind a relative’s home, but she had gotten mad at him when he refused to pay her for the encounter as he had promised. Riley said he’d left her “butterball naked” and had thrown her clothes out of the car when he left.
Riley remains in custody, with his next court appearance scheduled for June.
Arkansas, Pages 14 on 02/25/2014