TAMPA – A juror who resisted convicting a movie producer on obscenity counts was fired from her job during deliberations, defense attorneys assert in a court filing today.

Paul Little, known in his movies as Max Hardcore, was convicted two weeks ago of ten counts of distributing obscene materials through the mail and over the Internet for selling explicit videos that featured vomiting, urination and the swallowing of various bodily fluids.

Before reaching their verdict, jurors sent a note to U.S. District Judge Susan Bucklew stating they were deadlocked and that the deliberations were emotional.

Three jurors were holding out, according to today’s defense court filing. One of them was a woman who had sent a note to the judge earlier in the day asking to talk to Bucklew because the juror had been fired from her job the night before.

“When I got home from jury duty, I received a phone call from my employer that he know longer wanted me to work for him,” the note stated. “I feel it is because I have been here on this jury. He did make other reasons for the termination. … I know it was because of this.”

The judge didn’t meet with the juror until after the verdicts, and didn’t tell attorneys in the case about the juror’s note, defense attorneys assert in their court filing, which seeks a new trial for Little.

Bucklew promptly dismissed today’s defense motion because, at 40 pages, it exceeds the court’s 25-page limit. The defense then filed a 12-page motion for a new trial.

Defense attorney Jennifer M. Kinsley says in an affidavit that after the verdict, three jurors came to her hotel to tell defense attorneys they had initially voted not guilty and were the source of the note to the judge about the fact that they were deadlocked. The juror who told Kinsley she was the last to change her vote, Kinsley wrote, was the one who was terminated from her job as an executive assistant to a personal injury attorney the night before the verdict was reached.

Clearwater employment lawyer Ryan Barrack said he is representing the juror, Kimberly Grimes, who is exploring her legal options against her former employer, lawyer Dale S. Appell, whose billboards and advertisements blare the slogan, “We Fight For Justice.”

“I can say it’s a violation of federal law to fire someone for serving on a jury,” Barrack said. Although Appell gave other reasons for the firing, Barrack said, “The timing would be suspect and any other stated reasons were clearly false. … There were no good reasons given.”

Barrack said he couldn’t comment on what if any effect the firing had on the juror’s decision to change her vote in the trial.

Appell said he fired Grimes for other reasons, and that it doesn’t make sense to suggest he fired her for serving on the jury when he encouraged her to participate.

“I tell everybody that they need to serve on the jury system,” Appell said. “As a personal injury attorney and a trial lawyer, I think its important to our system.”

Appell declined to specify the reasons for the firing, except to say he learned some things while she was serving on the jury. “There’s a number of reasons, but I don’t think this would be the appropriate place to mention them,” he said. He said Grimes worked for him for about three months.

“Incidentally, I noted in court while the verdict was read that this particular juror was crying and sobbing,” Kinsley wrote in her affidavit. Kinsley added that the juror called her the week after the verdict and provided a copy of the note she sent to Bucklew about losing her job.

The defense maintains that the court’s failure to disclose the note to attorneys was improper and warrants a new trial.

The defense sought a new trial on several other grounds, including an assertion that a prosecutor made an improper comment to a juror during the trial. According to the defense filing, midway through the trial, a federal prosecutor “reported that he engaged in an inadvertent, but prejudicial dialogue with a juror in the elevator,” the defense motion states. “The attorney questioned whether the juror was going upstairs to ‘watch that porn,’ and the juror affirmed that he was.

“Although there was no apparent motive on the part of the attorney to taint the jury, the fact remains that the juror was chided by a government lawyer for being exposed to the allegedly obscene materials in this case,” the defense motion states.

The defense motion also says the court erred when it didn’t require the government to play all eight hours of videos that were the subject of the charges against Little. When a juror sent a note asking to view only excerpts, the defense wrote, the court should have questioned the juror about whether the contents of the note had been shared with others on the jury.