A rare equally divided federal appellate court on Thursday refused to grant an evidentiary hearing to a former West Virginia Supreme Court justice who claimed a juror’s use of Twitter tainted his fraud trial.

The en banc U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in an unsigned 6-6 opinion, affirmed the judgment of the district court in the case United States v. Loughry. Allen Loughry II, who served as chief justice in 2017 and part of 2018, was convicted in 2018 of seven counts of wire fraud, two counts of making false statements to federal investigators, and one count each of witness tampering and mail fraud. He was sentenced in 2019 to serve 24 months in prison.