From the Tribune: 
 
Ryan jury shake-up could stand up on appeal, experts say 
 
By Michael Higgins 
Tribune staff reporter 
Published April 19, 2006, 10:50 PM CDT 
 
 A federal judge's decision to remove some jurors, but not others, from the trial of former Gov. George Ryan might well stand up on appeal, provided she wasn't influenced by how those particular jurors viewed the merits of the case, legal experts say. 
 
 Court records unsealed Wednesday show that Ryan's lawyers repeatedly challenged U.S. District Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer's rulings regarding the removal of jurors accused of lying on their jury questionnaires, characterizing her decisions as inconsistent and unfair. 
 
 Prosecutors backed Pallmeyer, arguing that she had good reason for treating some jurors' misstatements differently than others. 
 
 How would an appeals court see the issue? Some experts say appellate judges are not likely to overturn Ryan's conviction as long as Pallmeyer made her decisions without considering a juror's view of the case. 
 
 The complete answer to how much Pallmeyer knew about the jurors' views and how she treated that information may not become clear until Pallmeyer unseals juror notes and transcripts of juror interviews. 
 
 Steven A. Miller, a former federal prosecutor, said it is highly unlikely the judge would have asked jurors their views of the case. 
 
 Ryan's defense team, however, has argued that the sealed material will help their case. "That seal will be lifted," defense lawyer Dan Webb said Monday after Ryan was convicted, "and you all can make your judgment yourself about how unusual the developments have been during [these] jury deliberations." 
 
 Legal experts agree that it's not really important what the former jurors say about the case now, but only what Pallmeyer knew at the time. 
 
 For example, Pallmeyer decided to remove juror Evelyn Ezell, with whom other jurors had quarreled, for failing to disclose an arrest record. That ruling won't be second-guessed simply because Ezell now says she would have opposed the guilty-on-all-counts decision. 
 
 Pallmeyer decided to keep forewoman Sonja Chambers on the jury even though she had not disclosed her involvement in some civil cases. That ruling probably won't cause trouble on appeal merely because Chambers later voted for conviction. 
 
 The legal system generally doesn't use a juror's after-the-fact statements as grounds to overturn a conviction. "That would unsettle every case, civil and criminal," said Thomas Sullivan, former U.S. attorney in Chicago. 
 
 But "if the judge had reason to think that [Ezell] differed from other jurors on her view of the merits, then there's a problem," said Al Alschuler, law professor at the University of Chicago. 
 
 The issue has come up in previous cases. In 1999, a federal appeals court overturned the bank fraud conviction of another one-time governor, Fife Symington of Arizona, on similar grounds. 
 
 In that case, a judge had removed a juror during deliberations because other jurors complained that the woman would not deliberate. One complaining juror said the jury was heading for a "an undecided vote, a hung jury." 
 
 The trial judge dismissed the holdout juror. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Symington's conviction, stating that "because it was reasonably possible that the impetus for [the juror's] dismissal came from her position on the merits of the case, it was error to dismiss her." 
 
 In 2004, the Illinois Appellate Court reversed the conviction of Timothy Gallano, a Bourbonnais man who had been convicted of murder and sentenced to 60 years in prison. 
 
 During deliberations at Gallano's trial, a juror wrote a note stating that he disagreed with his fellow jurors. "My mind cannot be changed because I feel some reasonable doubt," the juror wrote. 
 
 After the note appeared, prosecutors conducted a background check of the holdout juror and found that he had failed to disclose arrests for burglary, assault, armed robbery, kidnapping and other charges. Prosecutors asked Cook County Circuit Judge Frank Zelezinski to remove the juror, and the judge agreed. 
 
 Gallano was convicted. The Appeals Court ruled that the prosecution had conceded that "the impetus for its investigation ... was the knowledge that [the juror] was the lone holdout juror."