Robert Neulander, center, walks free on $1 million bail from the Onondaga County jail in July 2018. Photo: YouTube/Syracuse.com

Dr. Robert Neulander, who was convicted of a murdering his wife in their home seven years ago, was granted a new trial Tuesday by the New York Court of Appeals, which concluded that a juror's text messages to friends and family may have tainted the verdict in the 2015 trial.

New York state's highest court decided unanimously that the actions of that juror, which included communications and possible research about the trial, were improper.

Associate Judge Rowan Wilson, in a strongly worded opinion for the high court, criticized the juror's misconduct while granting Neulander a new trial.

"We agree that the extensiveness and egregiousness of the disregard, deception, and dissembling occurring here leave no alternative but to reverse the judgment of conviction and remit for a new trial and compel us to affirm publicly the importance of juror honesty," Wilson wrote.

Neulander was represented before the Court of Appeals by Alexandra A.E. Shapiro, a partner at Shapiro Arato Bach in Manhattan.

"Bob Neulander and his family greatly appreciate the Court of Appeals' decision, which reaffirms that every defendant has the right to an impartial jury and a fair trial," Shapiro said.

Neulander, a prominent OB/GYN from the Syracuse, New York area, was convicted of murdering his wife and making it appear as if her death was an accident. He was charged by the Onondaga County District Attorney's Office with second-degree murder and tampering with evidence.

A spokesman for the Onondaga County District Attorney's Office said they plan to go forward with the new trial but declined to comment further on the ruling.

They had appealed a decision from the Appellate Division, Fourth Department last year that reversed Neulander's conviction based on information that a juror had received text messages from family and friends about the trial while it was ongoing.

A text message sent by the juror's father during Neulander's trial, for example, urged her to "Make sure he's guilty!" Other text messages, sent by the juror's friends, referred to Neulander as a "scary person" and suggested that his daughter had a part in his wife's death.

Those text messages may have gone unnoticed if the juror hadn't told other members of the jury that she was communicating with others about the trial. Another member of the jury swore as much in an affidavit to the court.

The affidavit also claimed the juror texted with a friend of hers about what news reporters were saying about the trial on social media.

When asked by the court during the third day of jury deliberations whether she had violated the court's instructions about speaking with others about the trial, the juror said she hadn't. That turned out to be false, which Wilson said was particularly erroneous.

"This is not a case of stray texts or inadvertent misstatements," Wilson wrote. "The record plainly supports the findings of both lower courts that Juror 12's conduct disregarded the court's plentiful instructions as to outside communications and when such conduct was brought to light, the juror was deliberately and repetitively untruthful."

The juror's misconduct didn't end with the text messages she received from her father and friends, Wilson wrote. After she was accused of communicating with others about the trial, she deleted several text messages before submitting copies of those conversations to the court.

The deleted text messages were later uncovered through a forensic examination of her cellphone. When confronted about the missing texts the juror "gave several answers evidencing a continued lack of candor," Wilson wrote.

The juror had also deleted her entire browsing history after the trial and couldn't explain why, Wilson wrote. She was later confronted with evidence that she had visited at least two websites of news outlets that were covering Neulander's trial on a daily basis.

She claimed she hadn't read any coverage of the trial, saying instead that she had accessed one of the websites to read an article about cheerleading. Attorneys later found that no such article was posted during that time. She didn't say why she'd gone on the second website.

"That extraordinary and dishonest behavior by a juror purposefully selected to be a fair and objective arbiter of the facts in the case causes irredeemable injury to the judicial system and the public's confidence in it," Wilson wrote.

It's unclear if the decision handed down Tuesday will have a broader impact on defendants seeking to have their convictions overturned due to juror misconduct like that seen in Neulander's case.

At least two of the high court's judges had openly questioned attorneys during arguments last month whether they would be creating a far-reaching rule by granting Neulander a new trial. Associate Judge Leslie Stein asked if their decision could prompt more litigation.

"Are we going to be interfering with a lot of trials and a lot of verdicts if we basically say, if someone contacts you about the trial, that's misconduct?" Stein asked during arguments.

Shapiro, Neulander's attorney, had argued that the Fourth Department's decision granting him a new trial was narrow enough to prevent a flood of new efforts to have past verdicts reversed.

The situation in Neulander's trial was also fairly specific, Shapiro had argued. The juror, in his case, had failed to disclose the text messages to the court, had deleted certain parts of the conversations, and engaged in other misconduct. That was unique, she argued.

Neulander has maintained that he had no part in his wife's death since he was first accused of murdering her in 2012. He's said she slipped and fell in the shower, and that he had dragged her from the bathroom to their bedroom to resuscitate her.

Prosecutors, meanwhile, have alleged that Neulander's wife died from blunt force trauma and plan to pursue his conviction again in the coming months.

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