Man convicted of drug crimes to get new trial

It seems like a no-brainer that a man who says he could not be fair should not serve on a jury. But that’s what happened when Sonny J. White was tried for drug-related charges, endangering the welfare of a child and resisting arrest.

This morning, the Missouri Court of Appeals Eastern District said White is entitled to a new trial.

During jury selection, juror Steven Graham responded that he didn’t believe he could be fair.

White then challenged his lawyer’s effectiveness in a post-conviction relief motion, but Judge Robert Clayton II, of the Marion County Circuit Court, denied the motion finding that White didn’t show bias, that he didn’t suffer prejudice because the evidence against him was overwhelming and that his lawyer made a strategic decision not to strike Graham from the jury panel. White’s lawyer was Alan S. Cohen of St. Louis.

Clayton arrived at this decision despite an affidavit by Cohen stating that failing to strike Graham was an oversight, not trial strategy. According to the court opinion, the prosecutor, Timothy W. Anderson, said he would have struck Graham but he missed him, too.

The appellate court, however, presumed prejudice based on the fact that an individual who indicated bias served on a jury. Clayton’s statement that White’s lawyer may have “‘observed something’ about Mr. Graham is not a ‘plausible strategic reason for counsel’s failure to challenge'” the juror, the court said.

Judge Patricia L. Cohen wrote the appellate opinion, in which Judge Kurt S. Odenwald and Judge Glenn A. Norton concurred.

The case is White v. State, ED92081.