Former Sarasota private jet service CEO seeks new trial, cites clerk misconduct

Patrick Britton-Harr, the former CEO of a Sarasota private jet membership firm convicted of defrauding investors and customers of $15 million, is asking a federal judge in Maryland to grant him a new trial.

In a motion filed by his attorney last week, Britton-Harr says the need for the retrial is “due to the misconduct that occurred at his trial between jurors and the deputy courtroom clerk.”

Britton-Harr, who founded and ran the Sarasota and Annapolis, Maryland, company AeroVanti, is facing 120 years in federal prison after being found guilty of six counts of wire fraud by a federal jury in Baltimore in June. He is also facing an October trial in Maryland for an unrelated alleged Medicare fraud scheme.

AeroVanti was founded in 2021, selling $150,000 memberships to people who would share the use of private planes bought from the proceeds of the memberships. According to the indictment that led to his conviction, Britton-Harr, 43, “devised and knowingly intended to devise an artifice to defraud (members), to obtain money and property by means of materially false and fraudulent pretenses and promises.”

Prosecutors allege he defrauded victims of $14.7 million, diverting funds for personal use.

In the motion asking for the new trial, Britton-Harr’s lawyer, Gerald C. Ruter, alleges that the federal deputy clerk’s misconduct was reported to court staff about eight times, adding that “there can be no definitive answer (to) how many more incidents occurred that were not shared with court staff or observed by court staff, and therefore not reported as an incident.”

The situation was brought to the attention of U.S. District Judge Adam B. Abelson in a July 2 letter from Chief Deputy Clerk David E. Ciambruschini.

The letter, included in the motion for the new trial, lays out concerns about the clerk based on a report from the court’s staff. (The deputy clerk is identified in the motion as Ms. Herndon.)

Ciambruschini writes that “court staff reported to me alleged conduct by the assigned courtroom deputy clerk that may have impacted your trial.

“The courtroom deputy is no longer employed with the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland for unrelated reasons,” he writes.

Among the incidents discussed in the letter and in the motion are an issue between the clerk and Britton-Harr’s father. While the two would speak during breaks early in the trial, the elder Britton-Harr allegedly told the clerk during one of the early conversations that “she was the best ‘cattle herder’ that he ever saw.”

The clerk took offense to the statement and refused to speak to him after that. Ciambruschini writes that she also shared the comment with jurors and that there is a belief she also told them she was offended.

Among other allegations included in the letter, the deputy clerk reportedly told court staff she allowed jurors to take notebooks at the end of deliberations, which is a violation of court policy.

In another incident, a juror asking about the definition of wire fraud informed the deputy clerk that the jury was not talking about the case in the deliberation round. She answered by saying no one “will know what goes on behind these four walls.”

The deputy clerk reported the juror’s question to the court. When the matter was discussed in court, the deputy clerk shared the interaction but some of the comments she shared with court staff “were noticeably missing from the recitation.”

Other incidents cited in Britton-Harr's motion:

• Two jurors told the deputy clerk they had a “crush” on a government’s witnesses. She later told court staff that “jurors were ‘complimenting her figure,’ and the courtroom deputy clerk responded to jurors that “she engages in intermittent fasting, and that she wrote a book on the topic.” It is not known if she asked jurors to buy copies of the book.
• On the morning before closing arguments, one of the jurors informed the deputy clerk that she told her husband: “[W]hen we’re done today, I’m not going back to work until Monday.” This was interpreted by court staff to mean that juror believed a verdict would be reached shortly after the case closed.
• Later, one juror told the deputy clerk she wanted to hold up a sign during Ruter's closing argument that read "We’re done." The courtroom deputy did not tell court staff if she responded to either comment.

“In the interest of justice, Mr. Britton-Harr requires a new trial to alleviate the misconduct of court personnel in his trial that caused prejudice towards him due to the actions of the former courtroom deputy, Ms. Herndon,” Ruter writes in the motion.

He adds later that “the comments made were influential and there is no substantive reasonable possibility that the jury’s verdict was not in fact influenced by the disappointing misconduct of the former courtroom deputy clerk, Ms. Herndon.”

Adelson, in a July 20 order following a conference to discuss the letter and before the motion for a new trial was filed, set a schedule to take up the matter. He gave prosecutors until Aug. 13 to respond to the motion and Britton-Harr until Aug. 20 to file a brief in response to prosecutors.

A hearing on the motion is scheduled for Aug. 26.

Meanwhile, Adelson writes that Britton-Harr’s sentencing scheduled for Aug. 26 has been postponed.

His trial on the Medicare fraud indictment, however, remains scheduled for Oct. 3.