I DON'T CARE WHAT THE JUDGE SAYS I'VE GOT TO TELL SOMEONE!

THE OUT OF CONTROL JURY FOREMAN!

A federal judge warned jurors in a death penalty trial 41 times not to discuss the case with anyone, not even each other, until they were sent off to deliberate on a verdict.

That didn't stop Cynthia Wilson, the jury foreman, from calling five news organizations and placing 71 other telephone calls to two fellow jurors.
U.S. District Judge Joseph F. Anderson Jr. of South Carolina found Wilson's behavior so outrageous that he held her in contempt of court, ordering her to return $2,500 of her juror's pay and perform 120 hours of community service. Anderson said he would have put Wilson in jail for six months if she did not have four children at home.

But when the defendant in the case, Brandon Basham, asked for his death sentence to be thrown out as a result of Wilson's conduct, Anderson refused and the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., backed him up.

And when Basham took his plea to the Supreme Court, Solicitor General Elena Kagan agreed that the judge had made the correct call. The high court, to which Kagan has since been nominated, could say as early as Tuesday whether it will hear Basham's case.

It is no surprise that the government is seeking to preserve what it already has won, especially after the time and expense of a capital punishment trial.

Basham's guilt in a brutal, senseless crime is not in dispute, as even his lawyers concede. Basham was convicted by a jury and Chadrick Fulks pleaded guilty to kidnapping and killing 44-year-old
Alice Donovan during a two-week crime spree after the pair escaped from a Hopkins County, Ky., jail in 2002. Fulks also has been sentenced to death.