

SPRINGFIELD - Call it the case of the accidental juror.

A man who went to the Hampden Hall of Justice on State Street on Dec. 4 to address a traffic ticket mistakenly wound up as a juror hearing evidence and deliberating in a brief District Court assault trial.

The trial was over and done, and jury deliberations complete in a matter of a few hours before the mistake was discovered. Now, the defendant in the case will receive a new trial.

The man, who spoke limited English, according to court officials, and who is not identified by name in court records for the trial, followed a court officer bringing a group of jurors selected earlier in the day back to the courtroom after a lunch recess.

The jury -- including the accidental juror -- heard the prosecution's one witness, the one defense witness, closing arguments by the lawyers and instructions from Judge Bethzaida Sanabria-Vega' in the rules of law they should use in deciding their verdict.

Apparently, not even the jurors themselves recognized anything was amiss.

The jury found 29-year-old Donald Campbell, of Springfield, guilty of two counts of assault.

A final note on the court docket for the case, logged in at 3:35 p.m., tells the rest of the story.

“After trial, during deliberations the court finds that one of the people on jury panel was not a juror. He was present for a traffic ticket. Court declares a mistrial,” the note reads.

Campbell's case is set for a new trial on March 27.

In a building where there isn’t often a lot of humor, the story passed from person to person quickly over the ensuing days. By Tuesday, it was clear the state Trial Court is taking the incident seriously.

State Trial Court spokeswoman Joan Kenney said the incident has resulted in a revamping of procedures on how court officers check in jurors following recesses. "Seated jurors now report to the jury pool room after a recess, and the court officers identify them by using the numbered cards that each juror receives," Kenney said.

The original jurors selected for the Campbell case had been selected in the late morning and had only heard preliminary instructions and opening statements from prosecution and defense lawyers before they were dismissed for lunch.

Kenney said this marks the first time such an incident has occurred.

As outlined by Kenney, "following the (lunch) recess, six jurors returned on time and were waiting together in a busy corridor for instructions from a court officer about where to report. Another person who had limited English skills, not a juror, was waiting for his case to be called and sat on the same bench with the impaneled jurors.

"When the jurors were escorted to the courtroom for the trial, the non-juror joined them, apparently believing that his case would be called there. Meanwhile, the seventh juror returned from lunch a little bit late and went to an unused deliberation room to wait for instructions. By the time she was identified as a juror assigned to this case, the short trial was concluding," Kenney said.

Hampden district attorney Mark G. Mastroianni said it is the court officer's job to have "eyes on the jury" at all times. Court officers typically do a good job in carrying out their duties at the courthouse, and this incident was an unusual one, the district attorney said..

"I agree it shouldn’t have happened,” Mastroianni said. He added, though, that it is fair to ask why the prosecutor and other participants didn’t notice the substitution.

Calling on his own trial experience, Mastroianni said lawyers all have different styles.

"A lot of lawyers try to avoid eye contact with jurors," he said, noting the tables at which lawyers stand are positioned to face the witness box and not the jury box. Some lawyers, he said, choose to only look at jurors during opening statements and closing arguments.

“They (jurors) are marched in and out by a court officer. You never hear of someone sitting on a jury by mistake,” Mastroianni said.

The case was prosecuted by assistant district attorney James F. Roux, who has been an assistant district attorney for two years, and the defense lawyer was Cristina M. Ianello. Mastroianni said he was speaking on behalf of Roux as well as his office.

Ianello said, “This was a most unusual circumstance. The mistake was properly addressed by the court.” She said the court’s decision was sound to set aside the verdict and declare a mistrial.

Judge William J. Boyle, presiding justice of Springfield District Court, was reluctant to speak on the specifics of the case because it was not his trial and he confessed to only hearing of it in passing. Boyle did say that the mistake may well be a reflection of the volume of traffic in and out of the district court on a daily basis.

“Given our volume of criminal cases – we are the number one busiest district court in the entire commonwealth of Massachusetts – every now and then something completely unexpected happens,” Boyle said. “When it does, we correct and resolve it, which is what we’ll do here.”