Almost a month after a North Little Rock man was convicted of kidnapping, a judge in Pulaski County Circuit Court is considering whether a juror’s Facebook postings are misconduct or “musings” - a distinction that could overturn the verdict and life sentence imposed on Quinton Riley Jr.

Circuit Judge Herb Wright said he would decide by early next week whether Brittany Nicole Lewis’ Facebook posts are grounds to grant Riley a new trial. He told the Little Rock woman that he will also consider whether she should be held in contempt of court at a Tuesday hearing.

Lewis denied wrongdoing in a 10-minute appearance before the judge on Monday, saying she never revealed any details about the trial on the social media website during the two-day proceeding.

“No details about Quinton Riley’s trial was posted on my Facebook page,” she testified. “The whole time I was in the deliberations room, no posts were made.”

The first post, stating “we can’t come to a decision,” was made during a restroom break from deliberations, Lewis testified, although the judge noted the restroom is inside the jury room. The statement was posted about 90 minutes before court was adjourned that day, court filings indicate.

Riley, who turned 27 on Sunday, was convicted of kidnapping after the December trial that saw the seven-woman, five-man jury also impose the maximum penalty available. At the sentencing hearing, jurors heard another woman testify that Riley had abducted and raped her in 2010, although no charges were filed in that case.

At Monday’s hearing, defense attorney Bobby Digby II told the judge that Lewis’ postings violated the judge’s repeated orders against jurors discussing the case before the trial was concluded. The judge had also told the jurors not to use cellphones in the jury room during deliberations, Digby said.

Lewis’ two postings on the first day of trial showed she was impatient with the jury’s inability to reach a unanimous decision quickly enough, Digby told the judge.

In a third post, made about three hours after the first day was adjourned, Lewis described herself as “irritated as hell” and worried about getting to sleep after hearing testimony and seeing “horrible pictures and I gotta do it all over again tomorrow,” court filings show. On the second day of trial, she reportedly expressed hope the proceedings wouldn’t last as long as the first day, stating “ain’t nobody got time fo dat.”

“Quinton Riley counted on 12 jurors, not 11” to decide his case, Digby told the judge, questioning how Lewis could be considered reliable if she couldn’t follow simple and repeated court instructions about using social media.

Her impatience with deliberations showed she had not given his client fair consideration, Digby stated, arguing Riley is owed a new trial.

Chief deputy prosecutor John Johnson disputed that Lewis’ Facebook posts showed prejudice against Riley. Her postings were “musings” that fell within the rules set by the judge about discussing the trial, Johnson said. There’s no proof that Lewis improperly swayed fellow jurors, he told the judge, noting that all 12 verbally affirmed their verdict at the trial’s conclusion.

Each side claimed its argument was supported by a 2011 Arkansas Supreme Court decision in which defendant Erickson Dimas-Martinez’ capital-murder conviction and death sentence were overturned in part because of one juror’s continued use of the social media service Twitter despite the trial judge’s direct order to stop. Dimas-Martinez was subsequently sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty to the charge in June 2012.

Riley was convicted of kidnapping at his December trial with jurors acquitting him of three counts of rape leveled by the 20-year-old accuser, a Little Rock woman who said she had never seen the defendant before the May 2012 day that he tied her up with duct tape and repeatedly raped her. The woman said she had accepted Riley’s invitation to go riding around while smoking marijuana.

She made the allegations to authorities after turning up naked, with duct tape still attached, in a North Little Rock neighborhood and led sheriff’s deputies to a shed where she said Riley left her bound and blindfolded with tape.

Riley didn’t testify at trial, but denied raping the woman in an interview with investigators. He said they had consensual sex in his car behind a relative’s home but that she had gotten mad at him when he refused to pay her for the encounter as he had promised. Riley said he’d left her “butterball naked” and had thrown her clothes out of the car when he left.

Three women have accused Riley of raping them, but he’s never been convicted of those crimes. He was acquitted at his first trial, in which he was accused of being a home intruder who hog-tied a woman with duct tape, after the charges were dismissed for a lack of evidence.

Arkansas, Pages 9 on 01/07/2014