Man convicted of fleeing on Marco, DUI, lacking license will get new trial

Kiereek Seymour Jr. appears at a hearing to confirm a date for his trial on charges of DUI and fleeing and eluding at the Collier County Courthouse on Tuesday, Jan. 12, 2016.

An East Naples man convicted of driving drunk and fleeing law enforcement officers was granted a new trial Thursday after testimony revealed jurors had found a law book left behind in the jury room and used it to deliberate. 

A Collier County jury April 27 found Kiereek Seymour, 28, guilty of fleeing to elude a law enforcement officer, a third-degree felony, and misdemeanor charges of resisting an officer without violence and DUI in connection with a 2014 incident on Marco Island. 

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The jury also had convicted Seymour of having no valid driver’s license after prosecutors had charged him with driving while knowing his license had been suspended, revoked or canceled.

It was for that charge that jurors used a Florida law book to research the particulars of a driver’s license for business purposes, a jury foreman testified during a hearing Thursday. The book had been left behind by a bailiff who was studying for the sergeant’s exam, the bailiff testified.

Seymour’s defense attorneys filed a motion May 14 for dismissal and/or a new trial, writing they were contacted by prosecutors in the case five days earlier and informed “about juror misconduct which took place in the jury room during deliberations, involving at least one bailiff.”

Collier County Sheriff’s Office bailiff John DiMaio testified Thursday that he had been studying the statutes book and left it in a drawer in the jury room the week before the trial started. The book contains legal guides, statutes and jury instructions, he said.

DiMaio said he had placed the book in the drawer the morning of April 19 with the intention of studying during lunch break. He said he went home later that day after not feeling well and called in sick the next day.

He returned to work the next Monday for the start of Seymour’s trial.

“I had forgotten the book was in that drawer,” DiMaio testified.

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On May 9, while looking for the book, he learned it had been in the jury room during the trial and contacted prosecutors.

Jurors had found the book in the drawer while looking for utensils “to cut up our Danish or stir a coffee,” Richard Scarlato, the jury foreman, testified Thursday. 

Scarlato said one of the jurors used the book to help clarify questions they had about what a business license implies. At the time, the jurors were deliberating on the charge that Seymour drove without a valid license, Scarlato said.

“She was trying to find something that would help us resolve the issue that we were mixed up about,” he said. 

After Scarlato’s testimony, Collier Circuit Judge Frederick Hardt granted the defense’s request for a new trial.

“They used the book to render their verdict,” Hardt said during his ruling. 

Seymour’s attorneys said after Thursday’s hearing that their client’s case should have been dismissed altogether.

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“The fact that they (jurors) had to search more information proves that the state had not met their burden,” said Peter Adrien, one of Seymour’s defense attorneys. “It should’ve been a not-guilty plea.”

Instead, he said, prosecutors “get another bite at the apple, which we believe is improper.”

The overall case began more than three years ago.

In January 2016, Hardt imposed a three-year sentence on Seymour in connection with a fleeing and eluding charge. Police said Seymour led them on a high-speed chase through Marco Island before crashing into a palm tree and running away in December 2014.

Seymour had entered into a plea agreement on other charges in connection with the Marco incident. He was sentenced to time served and probation on those charges, court documents show. 

However, Seymour’s sentence was vacated in August 2016 after Hardt agreed with Seymour's defense attorneys that an error had occurred during sentencing.

Seymour’s defense attorneys argued in 2016 that prosecutors had amended the fleeing and eluding charge “unbeknownst” to their client and enhanced it from a third-degree felony to a second-degree felony: fleeing and eluding a law enforcement officer with lights and sirens activated with wanton disregard to the safety of a person or property.

The officer’s sirens were not activated during the pursuit, the defense attorneys said.

Hardt agreed and wrote that the dash cam video showed the sirens hadn’t been on and that Seymour couldn’t enter a plea to a nonexistent crime.

He vacated all sentences in connection with the case, including those tied to the plea agreement, setting up last month’s five-day trial

Seymour now is scheduled for a case management conference July 12.