After a month of seemingly unprecedented ambiguity, a juror with misgivings about their role in convicting former British Virgin Islands Premier Andrew Fahie confirmed the verdict was not a mistake or improperly coerced, according to court records filed Friday. Fahie remains guilty.
After jurors delivered the unanimous verdict Feb. 8, the Miami federal judge asked each juror individually if Fahie was guilty on all counts — conspiracy to commit money laundering, attempted money laundering, and interstate travel in aid of racketeering in a bid to make Tortola a major stopover for ships laden with drugs bound for the U.S. mainland. All 12 jurors affirmed they found Fahie guilty.
But at least one juror — Juror 12 — and possibly another, later reached out to court officers and Fahie’s attorney saying they were unsure about Fahie’s guilt on one of the charges. This sent prosecutors and Fahie’s attorneys scrambling for similar cases that might best inform the judge on how to rule. They found very few precedents and none that matched the predicament exactly, according to court documents.
Prosecutors argued juries’ decisions were sacred and could not be second-guessed after the fact, even by the jury members themselves. The only four reasons to further scrutinize a jury’s decision once delivered and polled in court, prosecutors said, were if the jury had been given incorrect or prejudicial information, some outside source influenced the decision, if there was a mistake on the jury form, or if racial or ethnic stereotypes were used in the jury’s decision.
Fahie’s attorneys argued the juror’s concerns warranted at least limited investigation.
On Thursday, Juror 12 told the judge there was no mistake and they had indeed meant to find Fahie guilty.
Fahie, 53, is scheduled to be sentenced on April 29, two years and a day after his 2022 arrest while stepping off a private plane in Miami. Representing Road Town residents in the BVI House of Assembly since 1999, Fahie was the territory’s highest-ranking publicly elected official from 2019 until a few days after his arrest. He could be sentenced to life in federal prison and a $10 million fine.
Co-conspirator Oleanvine Pickering Maynard, the former BVI Ports Authority executive director, testified against Fahie as part of a plea agreement. She pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to import more than five kilograms of cocaine. She’s scheduled to be sentenced Mach 28.
Her son, Kadeem Maynard, was also arrested in the scheme and was sentenced in November to 57 months in prison under a plea agreement in which he pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to import cocaine.
