Appellate court hears argument that juror’s hearing and memory raise fair-trial concerns in Alonzo Hoskins case

Autumn Bowling, attorney for appellant petitioner Alonzo Hoskins, told a panel of judges at a post‑conviction hearing that trial counsel was ineffective for failing to renew a request to question juror number 9 after she raised hearing concerns during Hoskins’ 2019 trial.

“Mr. Hoskins comes before this court having been found guilty by 11 jurors of the murder of Jack McFaul,” Bowling said, and she told the court the post‑conviction record shows the juror later testified she believed she had convicted a different defendant at a different trial.

The claim at issue is whether trial counsel was deficient for not bringing juror number 9 back into court for questioning or otherwise investigating her ability to hear, and whether any deficiency prejudiced Hoskins’ right to a fair trial. Bowling argued the post‑conviction inquiry and other facts — including that the juror obtained hearing aids about three years after the trial and that the juror told the post‑conviction court she recalled sitting on and voting guilty in a separate, high‑profile murder case — amount to clear and convincing evidence that the juror could not hear material proof at Hoskins’ trial.

Bowling also told the court she asked the Knox County jury coordinator to pull juror lists and affidavits and that those records show the juror who testified in the post‑conviction proceeding was the juror on Hoskins’ jury and not on the later trial she mentioned. “We are able to definitively conclude that the juror who testified … was the juror number 9 who complained of hearing problems in Mr. Hoskins’ trial,” Bowling said.

State counsel responded that the post‑conviction testimony more plausibly shows a memory problem than an inability to hear at the time of trial. The state pointed to the length of the trial — described in the record as a four‑day trial with 17 witnesses beginning June 18, 2019 — and to multiple viewings of surveillance video, arguing that the video would have made basic facts apparent even to someone with auditory limitations. “I think what the footage shows, or would have shown, to anyone, even someone who couldn't hear at all, certainly that there was a shooting,” state counsel said, and argued the juror’s inability to recall visual facts supports a memory explanation.

The parties disputed what the post‑conviction court actually found. Bowling noted the post‑conviction order used language indicating both that trial counsel was deficient for failing to renew the inquiry and that the omission “called into question the reliability of the verdict.” State counsel said the post‑conviction order ultimately denied relief for failure to show prejudice and described the juror’s testimony as reflecting memory loss rather than demonstrable hearing incapacity at the time of trial.

Both sides addressed the legal standards cited in the record. The state referenced Burns and urged that a post‑conviction victory requires proof of prejudice; Bowling relied on the relationship between the Burns standard and the prejudice prong of Strickland v. Washington to argue the post‑conviction court erred in its ultimate conclusions.

The bench asked multiple questions about what evidence existed in the trial record: whether the juror had complained contemporaneously, whether other jurors or the court officer could have been called to corroborate a hearing problem, and whether counsel reasonably acted when the juror initially said she could hear. Bowling said trial counsel had been told to remind the judge to recall the juror and did not do so, which led to a waiver on direct appeal and left the post‑conviction record incomplete. The state emphasized that the trial transcript records a polling in which no juror reported an inability to hear and that other jurors’ volume concerns related to defense counsel’s speaking volume, not to witness testimony.

Bowling asked the court to remand the case for a new trial. The bench did not rule during the hearing; the court recessed until 1:30 p.m.