BROWARD COUNTY, Fla. – Juror No. 6 said she was just doing her civic duty in the trial of Broward Sheriff's Office whistleblower Jeffrey Kogan, which ended in the deputy's favor. But now, Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel is accusing her of misconduct and asking for a mistrial after his agency found out she failed to disclose that one of her children had been arrested on suspicion of DUI in 2007.
The juror, who Local 10 News is not identifying, said she simply forgot about the arrest, as well as a 2002 arrest for the same son on another minor charge. She pointed out that she has two other sons working for the BSO and thought that if anything would have disqualified her, it would have been the notion that she might be biased in the agency's favor. But the BSO defense team said it cut to the heart of the case.
"We have a right to know," BSO outside counsel David Ferguson told Judge Sandra Perlman in a hearing in the case Monday. "We were deprived of the opportunity to know who this juror was."
But a key question in the case wasn't so much whether BSO should have known about those arrests, but how the agency got the information in the first place. It was revealed that BSO employees ran the names of jurors and their relatives through restricted law enforcement databases, including the FBI-run NCIC, DAVID and the Department of Vital Statistics. All are databases that are supposed to be used only in conjunction with criminal investigations, not citizens engaging in jury service.
"They ran these jurors and their children, their grandchildren, their stepchildren, only the two female African-American jurors, through these databases," attorney Tonja Haddad, who represents Kogan, told the judge. "They violated the constitutional rights of the people they ran. ... What [BSO] did, quite frankly, was reprehensible."
Ferguson only spoke in limited fashion about the use of the crime databases, but said the BSO's use of NCIC and other restricted databases in probing the jurors was used legally, as possible perjury among the jurors could have been involved. He said in court the investigation was done in conjunction with the BSO's general counsel, Ron Gunzburger.
Haddad said it was far from a criminal investigation and was rather a fishing expedition to try to overturn an unfavorable jury decision.
"They were not investigating a crime. They were investigating jurors after a verdict was rendered," she said.
She said she contacted FDLE and that agency had her send the BSO documents concerning the investigation of the jury to Tallahassee.
"It's up to FDLE to determine if what happened was illegal," Haddad said. "It was at least improper."
The BSO and taxpayers are currently responsible for the legal bills for the the defense and the plaintiff, a figure that is approaching $400,000 between the two sides. At stake in the case is Kogan's standing as a detective, and about $20,000 in back pay after he was demoted following his complaint that Fort Lauderdale police wrongly unleashed a dog on a murder suspect.
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