Rhode Island man argues Red Sox-loving jury was biased against him because he wore a Yankees hat

A Rhode Island district court needed to instruct a jury full of potential Boston Red Sox fans not to hold a defendant's New York Yankees hat against him, Universal Hub reports. Nevertheless, when David Alcantara received five years in federal prison for conspiracy to commit bank fraud and conspiracy to pass counterfeit currency, he blamed the baseball rivalry for making the jury biased against him.

Alcantara's Yankees hat was brought up several times in the trial as he was wearing it when he committed the crimes. He protested about the bias to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, which ultimately decided that Red Sox fans wouldn't allow their judgment to be clouded by a baseball rivalry.

In the court's words, "any possibility of unfair prejudice was ameliorated when the district court explicitly instructed the Rhode Island jury not to hold Alcantara's wearing of a Yankees hat against him." Yeah, good luck with that.

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