A guilty verdict in a marriage and immigration fraud trial out of the Northern District of New York has been vacated by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, after the panel found the trial judge’s ex parte communications with jurors and instructions ahead of deliberations raised too many concerns about the fairness of the proceedings.

“Although we do not question the judge’s conscientiousness and good faith, we nonetheless conclude that his ex parte meeting with the jurors and his instruction about assessing the credibility of a testifying defendant were sufficiently sharp departures from the law of this Circuit as to undermine our confidence in the fairness of the trial,” the panel wrote.