United States v. Mehta

The Second Circuit vacated defendants' convictions for marriage fraud and immigration fraud. The court held that the trial judge's ex parte meeting with the jurors and his instruction about assessing the credibility of a testifying defendant were sufficiently sharp departures from the law of this circuit as to undermine the court's confidence in the fairness of the trial. In this case, during the course of the trial, the judge met with jurors ex parte to discuss the jurors' concerns about two defendants' out-of-court behavior. The judge also instructed the jurors that they could consider defendants' self-interest in the outcome of the case when analyzing their trial testimony. View "United States v. Mehta" on Justia Law