COCAINE FACT-CHECKING COSTS JUROR $450 FINE

RALEIGH - A regretful Wake County juror found himself on the wrong
side of a law Wednesday when a Superior Court judge held him in
contempt for looking up the chemical makeup of cocaine in a textbook.

Barry E. Taylor, 60, of Wake Forest, a chemist by trade, was fined
$450 by Judge W. Osmond Smith III after Taylor tried to do his own
research in a drug-trafficking case in which he was a juror. Smith
had the option of putting Taylor in jail but decided against it.

"The judge is absolutely right," Taylor said. "I made a huge
mistake." Smith also declared a mistrial in the case of Leonel
Candela Mendoza, 26, who was facing a felony charge of conspiracy to
traffic drugs. The trial began Monday in the Wake County Courthouse.

Smith, using standard instructions given to most juries, told Taylor
and his fellow jurors not to conduct "any independent inquiry,
research or investigation into matters involved in this case."

But Taylor consulted a chemistry textbook to double-check what an
expert witness had said on the stand and told his fellow jurors what
he had done. At the time, he wasn't aware that he had violated
Smith's instructions. But the jury foreman told Smith, and Taylor was
fined. Taylor said he's generally a rational person and not one to
defy a judge's orders. "I apologize to the jury that I was a part
of," he said. "I did a huge disservice to this defendant."

Mendoza will be given a new trial, but no date has been set. He
remains in custody at the Wake County jail, where he's being held in
lieu of $200,000 bail.