In appeal, lawyers for ex-U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown stress ousted juror's religious freedom

Closing in on a last challenge to her fraud conviction, attorneys for former U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown are calling the removal of a juror who described getting divine guidance about her innocence “a legal error” that can hurt religious freedom.

“In a religiously diverse country, a jury of one’s peers includes religious jurors, some of whom seek divine guidance,” the Jacksonville political icon’s legal team argued in a brief filed last week with the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

“Disqualifying jurors … based on how they express their religious beliefs would not only deprive criminal defendants of a jury drawn from ‘ordinary people,’” the filing argued, “… but also discriminate among and second-guess religious beliefs and practices in a way that violates core First-Amendment principles.”

The argument is at the heart of a dispute scheduled for a rare hearing next month before all but one of the appeals court’s active judges.

Brown’s team is seeking to reverse her conviction not by refuting prosecutors’ evidence that the 12-term congresswoman misused money raised for a sham charity but by challenging the makeup of the jury that found her guilty.

Brown, a Democrat, was convicted of 18 felonies in 2017 and sentenced to five years in prison but was released last year because of COVID-19 health risks in custody.

The appeal she filed in late 2017 was rejected last year by a three-judge panel, but in September most of the active judges vacated that decision in favor of hearing the case as a group, a process called en banc.

The appeal argued that U.S. District Judge Timothy Corrigan, who handled Brown’s trial, violated her right to a jury of her peers when he replaced a juror who said the “Holy Spirit” had told him that Brown was innocent.

The jury had been discussing the case but hadn’t agreed on a verdict before another juror reported concerns about his remarks. The jury convicted Brown about a day after Corrigan replaced the juror who described getting guidance from the Holy Spirit, which Christianity describes as one of three manifestations of God.

The brief filed last week was the final one scheduled from either prosecutors or the defense before the two sides deliver oral arguments over Zoom on Feb. 23.

The 41-page filing answered government arguments that appeals rules give trial judges a lot of deference to make findings about facts, such as whether a juror is following court rules.

Corrigan had concluded the juror was “not able to deliberate in a way that follows the law and the instructions that the court gave to him” because he reported being guided by the Holy Spirit rather than listening only to the evidence and arguments presented at the trial.

Brown’s brief said the juror “engaged in the common practice of praying for guidance … and then had the faith or credulity [depending on one’s perspective] to believe that his prayers had been answered.”

Believing that might seem naïve but it’s not a reason to be removed from a jury, said the filing, signed for Brown’s team by former U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement, who argued the federal government’s cases to the U.S. Supreme Court from 2005 to 2008.

“Our Constitution’s commitment to religious freedom and a jury that reflects the diversity of our nation does not allow our legal system to adopt either skepticism or self-censorship as preconditions for jury service,” the filing argued.

Clement, now in private practice, filed paperwork to appear for Brown’s team in November, part of a growing list of attorneys appearing on her behalf along with Jacksonville appeals counsel William Mallory Kent. Two lawyers from the First Liberty Institute, a Texas-based religious rights nonprofit, added their names to the list last week.