WASHINGTON -- Sharply criticizing a Bel Air juror for an unauthorized visit to a crime scene during a trial, a federal appeals court has nullified the conviction of Timothy Scott Sherman for the murder of his parents eight years ago.
Mr. Sherman, now serving two life prison terms at the Maryland Penitentiary in Baltimore, is entitled to a new trial because the juror's misconduct probably led other jurors to vote for conviction, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond ruled 2-1.
Giving state prosecutors six months to hold a new trial, the appeals court said Mr. Sherman would stay in prison in the meantime. He would be released only if the state decides against trying him again, it said.
Harford County State's Attorney Joseph I. Cassilly said the state would ask the appeals court to reconsider. Failing that, he said, there would be a new trial of Sherman. He said of a new trial: "Absolutely; it is not even a question."
The appeals court made its decision earlier this week, and prosecutors and Mr. Sherman's lawyers learned about it yesterday.
Mr. Sherman was 17 when he was accused of the shotgun slaying of his mother, Elizabeth Ann Sherman, and his adoptive father, Stevenson Thomas Sherman. They were killed in their beds in their home near Hickory on the night of Oct. 11, 1987.
The appeals court decision was the first major victory Mr. Sherman has won in years of repeated court challenges, one of which failed in the U.S. Supreme Court five years ago. After his appeal failed there, he took his pleas to the federal courts. He lost in U.S. District Court, but then gained a new trial from the appeals tribunal in Richmond this week.
U.S. Circuit Judge Francis D. Murnaghan of Baltimore and U.S. District Judge James A. Beaty Jr. of Winston-Salem, N.C., voted for the new trial. U.S. Circuit Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III of Charlottesville, Va., dissented.
The majority said that juror Blaine Miller violated his duty when he decided, on his own, to visit the Shermans' yard in the Gibson Manor subdivision. The jurors had been told they were not to do their own investigations. Mr. Miller said after the guilty verdict that he had gone to the scene to see for himself the tree where the prosecution contended the youth had tried to hide the shotgun.
