One note complained jurors “can?t hear the interpreter clearly!”
Another asked whether a juror could work at the Baltimore City Detention Center, where the defendants were held, during the trial.
A third urged the judge to dismiss one juror for sleeping on the job.
“We the jurors feel that that juror No. 6 should be removed because of lack of concentration and constantly nodding during this trial,” that note said. “Two men?s lives are at stake and we believe they deserve a fair trial.”
But none of these notes from jurors was shared with defense attorneys for Adan Canela, 21, and Policarpio Espinoza, 26, two men convicted of the near-decapitation deaths of three young children, according to an appeal filed in Maryland?s second-highest court, the Court of Special Appeals.
“It?s a very strange issue,” said Brian Murphy, Canela?s appellant attorney. “The rule is pretty clear: You have to turn over notes from the jury.”
Baltimore City Circuit Judge David Mitchell in 2006 sentenced Canela and Espinoza to two consecutive life sentences each without the possibility of parole, plus 30 additional years in prison, for the May 2004 deaths of 8-year-old Lucero Espinoza, her brother Ricardo, 9, and their cousin Alexis Espejo Quezada, 10.
Policarpio Espinoza is an uncle to the children, and Canela is a cousin. It took two trials, complete with tangled family melodrama, to convict the two men. The first in the summer of 2005 ended with a hung jury.
Baltimore City prosecutors did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Mitchell could not be reached for comment.
A hearing on the issue, scheduled for Monday, has been postponed until September.
