What “privacy issues?” If a juror lies to get on a jury and gets high when he or she is supposed to be evaluating testimony and evidence, that juror should be embarrassed. Gump’s attorney—are we sure his name wasn’t Gump?—also said that he and the prosecution agreed that if the juror who used the marijuana had a prescription for it, there was no problem. “We cannot discriminate against a juror who’s following the rules,” he said. Of course there’s a problem! If a juror is so desperate for medical cannabis that he or she has to get stoned during the trial, the juror is breaking the rules and shouldn’t be on the jury. In addition, such a juror still lied on the juror questionnaire.
Safon should fire his attorney for being an idiot.
The judge asked the jurors, one by one, if they had ingested anything legally or illegally while in the jury room, or witnessed another juror doing so. All answered “no.” One admitted smelling marijuana coming from the men’s bathroom inside the jury room, but that juror didn’t know who had used it.
Well, presumably it was a male juror, no? That should have narrowed the search a bit. Why does everyone connected with this debacle seem to be unethical, incompetent, or both? Even the lawyer who was brought into the judge’s chamber to protect the jurors’ imaginary rights sounds dim. “It’s really a difficult position because you don’t really know if anything happened,” he said later. “You’re kind of prying, and you don’t even know if anyone did anything wrong.”
What? A juror was using pot in the jury room! That was wrong. It’s not “prying” for a judge to ensure the integrity of a jury trial. The defendant’s freedom is at stake, and the lawyers are concerned about jurors “right” to get stupid on weed in the jury room?
“Under these circumstances, I think everyone from court staff to the judge acted appropriately and tried our best to remedy the situation without violating any jurors’ rights,” Gump’s attorney told the press. Oh yeah, everyone was an ace: one juror lied, others wouldn’t “snitch,” the staff’s investigative powers were inferior to Nancy Drew, and the judge and lawyers were more concerned with protecting the imaginary Freedom to Get Stoned than the integrity of a murder trial.
Trial by jury, heralded as a microcosm of democracy, is looking as dysfunctional and untrustworthy as the rest of the American experiment.
Ethics Alarms 
Am I to believe that the defendant’s counsel was ok with pot smoking juror sitting on the case? How is that not professional malpractice and ineffective assistance of counsel?
jvb
Wouldn’t a juror who snuck a dose of pot while in the jury room be a likely candidate for a not guilty vote? The prosecution might want him stricken, but I think defense counsel would love to have a stoner on the jury. “Dude! We’re going to put a fellow dude in jail for twenty to life? No way, man.”