As a “direction”, Judge Ellis is WRONG IN LAW to tell the members of the jury to ‘put the case out of your minds until Monday when you meet again’.
It would be both proper and, in the circumstances, important to direct to the jury members to absolutely refrain from DISCUSSING the case with anyone over the weekend, regardless of whether the other(s) are members of jury or not members of jury. There’s already a general direction that covers this, but putting it in a reminder today would have been prudent to say the least, given the jury has not been sequestered.
Why tho HASN’T this jury been sequestered? Judge Ellis has spoken of threats both to him and to the jury (presumably generic threats, tho we don’t know for certain). And Ellis is being protected by U.S. marshals. But the jury members are NOT being so protected.
One might argue that sequestration only 2 days into jury deliberations is precipitous, but if it were up to me, I’d have warned the jury early in this past week about this possibility and then done it.
That said, as a matter of “ADVICE”, tho not precisely correct, it’s not a terrible thing to say to the jury. The members won’t be able to avoid thinking about it regardless, but they may take it as a reminder to take care not to discuss it. But it’s not a very compelling reason to wrongly overcas prudent advice. The better course of action would have been either early sequestratin or proper directions.
I’ve seen comments about Ellis being “bright”. Compared to who? District Court judges on the whole? Not really. Appointees of GWB and Trump? That’s a case I think might be made.