TAMPA, FL — Adult filmmaker Max Hardcore’s defense team on Tuesday filed a motion for a new trial after discovering one of the jurors was under mental stress during deliberation because she was fired from her job the night before the verdict was rendered.Hardcore, whose real name is Paul Little, in early June was convicted of distributing obscenity. He is free on bond while he awaits sentencing, expected to take place in August.

The juror, who is identified in court documents as Kimberly Grimes, after the verdict told Little’s defense attorney Jennifer M. Kinsley she was the last of three jurors to change her vote from “not guilty” to “guilty” during “emotional” deliberations. She also told Kinsley her former employer, Tampa-area personal-injury attorney Dale S. Appell, had terminated her employment as his executive assistant by phone the previous evening. Kinsley detailed the conversation in an affidavit filed with the court, noting that Grimes provided her a copy of a note she sent to presiding U.S. District Judge Susan Bucklew prior to the conclusion of deliberations. The note requested a private meeting with the judge about the termination.

“When I got home from jury duty, I received a phone call from my employer that he know [sic] 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.”

Kinsley noted in her affidavit that Grimes and two other jurors who previously deadlocked the jury met with her the week after the verdict, and at that time Grimes provided a copy of the note she sent to Bucklew.

“Incidentally, I noted in court while the verdict was read that this particular juror was crying and sobbing,” Kinsley wrote in her affidavit.

Bucklew declined to meet with the juror until after the verdict had been delivered. The judge also didn’t tell attorneys involved in the case about the note, and that is grounds for a new trial, Kinsley asserted in court documents.

Bucklew dismissed the initial motion for a new trial because it exceeded the court’s 25-page limit by 15 pages. Defense attorneys promptly filed a shorter, 12-page motion.

Grimes reportedly is exploring legal action against her former employer.

“I can say it’s a violation of federal law to fire someone for serving on a jury,” Clearwater, FL, attorney Ryan Barack, who is representing Grimes in the matter, told The Tampa Tribune. “The timing would be suspect, and any other stated reasons were clearly false…. There were no good reasons given.”

Appell denied the allegation he fired Grimes because she served on the Hardcore jury.

“I tell everybody that they need to serve on the jury system,” he told the Tribune. “As a personal-injury attorney and a trial lawyer, I think it’s important to our system.”

He declined to specify why Grimes was fired, but he indicated she worked for him for only three months.

The new-trial motion now pending before the court also specifies other grounds defense attorneys believe warrant further consideration by the court. According to court documents, about midway through the trial a prosecutor “reported that he engaged in an inadvertent, but prejudicial, dialogue with a juror in the elevator,” and the juror may have understood the prosecutor’s comments to be derogatory about the allegedly obscene material at issue. In addition, the court should have required jurors to watch each evidentiary video in its entirety instead of allowing members to view only excerpts.