In case you can’t tell, I’m madly disgusted about this, “this” meaning both the episode I’m going to write about, and the fact that I didn’t hear or read about it immediately because of our incompetent, irresponsible news media deciding that their dumb audience would rather share feelings with Savannah Guthrie.
From the New York Times: [Gift link!]
“A former obstetrician-gynecologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who was convicted in 2022 of sexually abusing patients must be given a new trial, a state appeals court said on Monday, overturning the former doctor’s conviction. The former doctor, James M. Heaps, 69, was sentenced to 11 years in prison in April 2023 after jurors in the Superior Court of Los Angeles County found him guilty of three counts of sexual battery by fraud and two counts of sexual penetration of an unconscious person. U.C.L.A. has already paid about $700 million to settle claims of sexual misconduct against Mr. Heaps, who was affiliated with the university in various roles from 1983 to 2018.
“A three-judge panel on the California Court of Appeal ruled on Monday that Mr. Heaps had been denied a fair trial because the trial judge never told Mr. Heaps’s lawyer or the prosecutors on the case about a note that the jury had sent while it was deliberating in October 2022.
The “Note to Judge” said that a recently seated alternate juror had “expressed to us that his limited English interfered with his understanding of the testimony, resulting in every case being the same, and his mind is already made up.”Under the California Code of Civil Procedure, people who lack “sufficient knowledge of the English language” cannot serve on trial juries. The appeals court ruled that Mr. Heaps’s conviction must be overturned.”
“We recognize the burden on the trial court and regrettably, on the witnesses, in requiring retrial of a case involving multiple victims and delving into the conduct of intimate medical examinations,” the appeals court wrote. “The importance of the constitutional right to counsel at critical junctures in a criminal trial gives us no other choice.”
The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office said in a statement that it planned to retry Mr. Heaps ‘as soon as possible.’ Mr. Heaps will be sent back to county jail, the office said, and a court could release him on bail.”
I will now pause a bit while you mop your skull and brain bits off your computer screen. I’ve found that Windex does a good job, though you have to pick up the bigger pieces with your fingers.
Ethics Alarms 
Sounds like an out take from “My Cousin Vinnie.”
What should the jury had done when they presumably did what they thought they should do? They told the judge. What is the next step here?
I recently watched the movie “Runaway Jury”. I am not saying that this is an excellent or even ethical movie, however I came away with the impression that attorneys for both sides in any trial are trying to rig the jury selection process in their party’s favor. So I am not sold on the idea that this outcome of the case proves that the defense attorney was derelict in his duties, as he may have perceived that having this guy on the jury would at least not hurt his clients prospects. The overturning of the verdict proved him right. Now the the ultimate outcome may be attributed to moral luck, however any player in any game knows that luck does not occur by happenstance, but that the conditions in which luck may transpire may have to be created in the first place. So allowing for this wildcard to be added to a jury in a case in which he client was almost guaranteed to loose was a good play. Because in a criminal trial all it takes is one juror to avoid a guilty verdict.
About the prosecutor and the judge to allow this wildcard on the jury, that is indeed incompetent.