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A Fort Wayne woman who once served as a juror in a high-profile murder trial recently received a personal letter from the man she helped judge—and that has set off alarm bells in some quarters about the protection of juror privacy.
Donte Curry, who was acquitted of that murder charge in 2023, didn’t just look up his juror in a phone book; he obtained her contact information through a request for his case file to the Allen County Clerk’s Office. That information was supposed to be confidential.
Curry’s letter addressed the woman by name and was sent directly to her home from the Westville Correctional Facility, where he was serving time on a drug conviction, according to a news report from WANE-TV in Fort Wayne.
The letter, a complaint about the criminal justice system and a personal cry of innocence, left the juror too shaken to speak on camera, according to WANE.
“All it takes is one mistake, and you lose that trust,” the juror’s husband, Rick Wannemacher, told WANE.
Allen County Prosecutor Mike McAlexander told The Indiana Lawyer that among the documents the Allen County Clerk’s Office sent Curry in response to his request was a list of payments made to the jurors for their service.
That information was not supposed to be disclosed, and it included names and addresses, which Curry used to send letters to at least five of his former jurors, McAlexander said.
Human error
The reason for the mistake, McAlexander said, wasn’t a system shutdown or technical error.
“The safeguards are in there; we have all sorts of stuff that is listed as confidential in court records that shouldn’t be disclosed,” McAlexander said. “So I think, sadly, this was, you know, human error.”
The Allen County Clerk’s Office declined The Lawyer’s request for comment.
In Indiana, jurors are selected at random from a statewide jury pool compiled from Indiana Voter Registration lists and records from the Bureau of Motor Vehicles. Those randomly selected from the pool are then sent a jury qualification questionnaire to determine their eligibility to serve.
Luke Britt, legal counsel for Marion Superior Courts and Indiana’s former public access counselor, told The Lawyer in an email that these jury questionnaires are excluded from public access, and Marion Superior Court Judge Charles Miller explained that, in Marion County, these questionnaires are returned to the court after the jury is chosen and preserved only to the extent as required for appellate review.
So, with tight policies set to keep juror information safe, McAlexander said the release of such information is rare and something that he’s never seen before.
“We want our jurors to feel comfortable and secure and safe,” McAlexander said. “That’s why we don’t give out their names in the first place.”
Britt said he thinks keeping juror information confidential is important for a juror’s privacy and comfort.
“It’s crucial that they make a decision based on the merits of the case, and not be influenced by any kind of externality,” Britt said.
That externality could be fear of retaliation or retribution by either party against the juror for the decisions they make.
According to the U.S. Courts, high-profile trials demand much more of jurors than other cases do.
“They can last for weeks or months, attract intense media attention, expose jurors to physical threats and emotional stress, and force them into long periods of isolation, with only their fellow jurors and court personnel for company,” the U.S. Courts stated.
In Indiana, a court may order sensitive information from a juror or prospective juror during an individual voir dire or side bar interview. But even that is still excluded from public access, according to the Indiana Jury Rules.
Safeguards
Miller said it has now become common practice throughout the state to identify jurors by numbers rather than by their names during court proceedings.
“Call the prospective juror during selection, for example, ‘Prospective Juror 14,’ instead of by their name, instills a sense of security in the jurors that the court and parties value their privacy but still allows the parties to adequately examine the prospective juror,” Miller said. “It has the added bonus of making the record much easier to transcribe and read for any appeal.”
Kathryn Dolan, chief public information officer for the Indiana Supreme Court, told The Lawyer that the jury rules do not require or prohibit the use of juror numbers by Indiana courts.
“There are no proposals before the Supreme Court at this time to require that jurors be identified by number, but many courts around the state do follow this practice, and all courts have the option to do so,” Dolan said in an email.
So the larger issue, McAlexander continued, is finding the balance between public access and an individual’s privacy.
“Periodically, we have problems with discovery that’s been provided to the defense finding its way to the internet,” McAlexander said. “That’s an area that can be problematic at times, and all of this is trying to balance the public’s right to know versus protecting individual privacy. And where do you draw that line?”
But juror information is one area that McAlexander is certain should be kept confidential.
“Certainly, juror information, there is very limited times when that should ever become an issue or be disclosed,” he said, “And if it did need to be examined, it should be done in the courtroom with some very clear reasons to do so.”
“This should have been protected under a confidential, on-the-look, kind of thing in the system, and we have those set up,” McAlexander added. “I suppose the secondary thing is, whoever is responsible for complying with a request needs to use some common sense about, ‘Oh, gee, I shouldn’t be giving out juror information.’”
Even though human error apparently occurred in this rare instance, Britt told The Lawyer there is still no substitute for putting human eyes on court documents to verify their accuracy and appropriateness for release.
“That’s where the human element comes in, to make sure that the information is reviewed for any kind of sensitive information and then vetted for potential redaction, or denial, if it’s one of those confidential types of record,” Britt said.
Britt said that judges, agencies and law enforcement take privacy and confidentiality very seriously.
“Yeah, there’s always going to be a human element in it,” Britt said. “But ultimately, I think the attitudes that I’ve seen is always be, ‘Hey, let’s double check this and be safe than sorry.’”•
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