A Crown Court juror who risked the collapse of a murder trial when he carried out private research on the law during deliberations on the verdict has been spared jail.
Sadiq Leon, 42, was on the panel of jurors for the trial of Tyrece Fuller, who stabbed to death the 27-year-old brother of Grammy-award winning rapper 21 Savage.
When the jury had gone into deliberations, Leon, an accountant, searched online for the meaning of the word “intention” over the weekend, before passing out copies of his research to fellow jurors.
The trial was saved from collapse as the other jurors refused to read Leon’s research and reported him to the judge, Southwark crown court heard on Tuesday.
Leon was prosecuted for his actions, and was spared a spell behind bars by Judge Tony Baumgartner who accepted the incident was “out of character” and brought on by the traumatic evidence the jury were forced to hear.
Leon was handed a two-month prison sentence suspended for six months, and was ordered to pay £1,500 towards the cost of the prosecution.
“However well-intentioned you were, you acted recklessly and acted regardless of clear and foreseeable risk that had been identified by the judge”, said Judge Baumgartner.
“It could have led to the abandonment of the trial altogether, and I can’t think of a more serious charge than a charge involving murder.”
The judge said Leon, from Putney, had was guilty of an “error of judgment”, which had been “brought about by the burden of responsibility you felt as a juror.
“It seems to me what you did was completely out of character”, he said.
“You had been diagnosed as suffering from anxiety shortly before the offence.
“Some of the evidence exacerbated this, affecting your sleep and that is capable of explaining your irrational conduct.”
In the trial in front of Mr Justice Cavanagh, Fuller was cleared of murdering Terrell Davis-Emmons with a six-inch Rambo-style knife in an incident on a housing estate in Brixton, south London, in November 2020.
The jury convicted him of manslaughter and having a bladed article.
The court heard that Leon and his fellow jurors had been warned not to conduct their own research on the case.
“You took a printed sheet of paper for each juror into the jury room”, said the judge.
“This paper set out the results of your research into the meaning of the word ‘intention’.
“Quite rightly, the other jurors challenged you about this.”
The trial was kept on course after Leon was discharged and other jurors said they had not read the contents of his research.
Leon admitted the offences in interview in August 2021, saying he was suffering from mental health difficulties caused by claustrophobia, and said he “felt awful”.
“You said you had stopped when told to, and you were very sorry and didn’t think what you had done would cause such issues.”
Leon pleaded guilty to being a member of a jury carrying out research during the trial period and sharing research with other jurors.
At the end of his trial, Fuller was jailed for ten years for Mr Davis-Emmons’s manslaughter.
He argued during his trial that the stabbing happened when Mr Davis-Emmons was trying to collect an £800 gambling debt and a fight broke out between the two men.
