The impostor occupying juror seat seven is exposed

The exposure of the impostor in juror seat seven turned a concealed irregularity in the trial of Walter Elliot into an immediate test of the court’s ability to protect the jury process without derailing the case. An anonymous warning led Judge Stanton to discover that the man who had sat in the seat for two weeks was not the Lockheed engineer listed in court records; the real juror had never received a summons, and the impostor had disappeared. The trial continued, but the discovery left the identity and purpose of the substitute unresolved.

The warning and the judge’s response

Judge Stanton told Mickey Haller and prosecutor Jeffrey Golantz that his office had received a letter addressed to him on Thursday. He did not open it until after court on Friday, during an end-of-week catch-up session. The printed page warned that juror seven was not the person he claimed to be and urged the judge to check Lockheed and the juror’s fingerprints, adding that the person had an arrest record. The letter carried no other markings beyond two folds. Its allegation prompted an inquiry, but the letter itself did not identify the impostor or explain why he was in the jury box.

Stanton had considered how to handle the warning over the weekend and consulted other judges. He had been prepared to raise the issue with counsel on Monday, but the juror did not appear in court that day. Stanton sent court deputies to the juror’s home. His wife said he was at work, knew nothing about court or a trial, and had not mentioned jury service. The deputies went to Lockheed and brought a man from the workplace to court, only to establish that he was not the person who had been sitting in juror seat seven.

The false identity is uncovered

Court records listed juror seven as Rodney L. Banglund, a Lockheed engineer who lived in Palos Verdes. The man who had occupied the seat for two weeks was not Banglund. The real Banglund was being interviewed and appeared to know nothing about the jury service; he said he had never received a summons. The substitute, whose actual identity remained unknown, was missing. The distinction mattered: this was not a discrepancy in a name or a confused account of attendance, but a person who had taken another man’s place without that man’s knowledge.

The exchange initially left Haller and Golantz trying to understand how the man found at Lockheed could also be the juror who had been absent. Stanton clarified that the person brought from the workplace was the real Banglund, not the person who had served. Haller compared the confusion to the Abbott and Costello routine about who was on first, but the joke only underscored the practical absurdity: the court had spent two weeks treating an unidentified man as a duly selected juror. Stanton’s explanation made the decisive point plain: juror seven was not juror seven.

Trial strategy and the sleeper question

The discovery took place against a background of suspicion about a possible sleeper juror. Walter Elliot had told Haller that Jerry Vincent said a juror could be placed in the box, provided the trial date did not change. Elliot also said Vincent later told him that the defense did not need the fix because Vincent had found a way to win without the sleeper. Elliot believed Vincent’s refusal to proceed with the scheme had led to Vincent’s death. Those statements made the impostor’s presence especially consequential, but they did not establish that he was the sleeper Elliot had described, who arranged his placement, or what he intended to do.

The trial itself had been framed as a contest over how jurors would interpret circumstantial evidence. Haller had described the prosecution’s case as dependent on motive and opportunity and argued that its evidence did not establish guilt. The false juror therefore threatened more than the orderly seating of the panel: it raised the possibility that the jury’s composition had been manipulated in a case already shadowed by allegations of a planned fix. At the same time, the anonymous letter and the impostor’s disappearance provided no answer about the extent of any wider interference.

The case continues

Haller asked whether the discovery required a mistrial. Stanton did not think it did. His proposed remedy was to excuse juror seven without explaining the underlying reason to the rest of the panel, seat the first alternate, and have the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department quietly verify that the remaining jurors were who they were supposed to be. Golantz agreed to continue on the condition that the problem stopped at juror seven. Haller also wanted to avoid a mistrial: witnesses had come from as far as Paris, and both he and Elliot wanted the case to proceed. Stanton accepted the plan, and Haller approved it.

Haller then told Elliot quietly that juror seven had failed to appear and had turned out to be a phony. Elliot stiffened and asked what it meant. Haller reassured him that the defense would win fairly, and court resumed with the jury brought in. The exposure thus produced a limited procedural correction rather than a halt to the trial: the impostor was out, the alternate was to take the vacant seat, and the remaining jurors were to be checked. The man’s identity, his means of entering the jury, and his connection, if any, to the sleeper plan remained open questions.