Opinion
handed down September 20, 2016
In Smotherman
v. Cass Regional Medical Center, the Supreme Court of Missouri addressed
the issue of whether a juror’s testimony regarding the extent to which
misconduct affected jury deliberations is sufficient to overcome the
presumption of prejudice created by the misconduct.[1] As discussed below, the court’s decision
represents a step back from recent decisions that attempted to clarify the
extrinsic evidence exemption to the Mansfield Rule and ignores past decisions
regarding the weight that should be assigned to such testimony.
