Title: State v. McKissick

State: north-carolina

Issuer: North Carolina Supreme Court

Document:

150 S.E.2d 767 (1966) 268 N.C. 411 STATE v. Warren Walter McKISSICK, Jr. No. 272-D. Supreme Court of North Carolina. November 2, 1966. *768 Atty. Gen. T. W. Bruton, Deputy Atty. Gen. Harrison Lewis, and Trial Atty. Robert G. Webb, for the State. Charles V. Bell and J. Levonne Chambers, Charlotte, for defendant appellant. PARKER, Chief Justice. The State and defendant offered evidence. The judge charged the jury. After the jury had deliberated in their room for several hours, the judge had them brought back into the courtroom and asked them if they had agreed upon a verdict. The jury answered, No. The court then charged them as follows, which defendant assigns as error: Defendant contends that the above quoted statement from the charge was coercive and intimidating, and compelled an unwilling jury, or part of them, to surrender their unfettered and unbiased judgment, and reach and return a verdict. In Wissel v. United States, 2 Cir., 22 F.2d 468, it is said: "The cases all recognize that the surrender of the independent judgment of a jury may not be had by command or coercion. * * * A judge may advise, and he may persuade, but he may not command, unduly influence, or coerce." In Trantham v. Elk Furniture Co., 194 N.C. 615, 140 S.E. 300, Brogden, J., with his *769 usual accuracy and clarity, speaking for the Court said: "It [the verdict of a jury] should represent the concurring judgment, reason, and intelligence of the entire jury, free from outside influence from any source whatever. The trial judges have no right to coerce verdicts, or in any manner, either directly or indirectly, intimidate a jury." An instruction in substantially identical words as here was found no ground for a new trial by this Court in State v. Brodie, 190 N.C. 554, 130 S.E. 205, with the exception that in the Brodie case the judge did not instruct the jury, as the judge did in this case, as follows: "You must consider this case until we have exhausted every possibility of an agreement." In State v. Lefevers, 216 N.C. 494, 5 S.E.2d 552, the court instructed the jury as follows: In finding no error in this charge, the Court said: In State v. Barnes, 243 N.C. 174, 90 S.E.2d 321, this Court in a Per Curiam opinion found no error in the following charge to a jury which had been out several hours without arriving at a verdict (We have copied the quoted part of the charge from the case on appeal on file in the office of the clerk of this Court.): In State v. Green, 246 N.C. 717, 100 S.E.2d 52, the Court found no error in the following charge to a jury which had been out for some time without arriving at a verdict (We have copied the quoted part of the charge from the case on appeal on file in the office of the clerk of this Court.): In In re Will of Hall, 252 N.C. 70, 113 S.E.2d 1, the jury had deliberated for approximately seven and one-half hours and had been unable to arrive at a verdict. The trial judge caused them to return to the courtroom and delivered the following instruction to them, which this Court held was without error: "What amounts to improper coercion of a verdict by a trial court necessarily depends to a great extent on the facts and circumstances of the particular case and cannot be determined by any general or definite rule. * * * In urging the jury to agree on a verdict, the court should emphasize that it is not endeavoring to inject its ideas into the minds of the jurors and that by such instruction the court does not intend that any juror should surrender his own free will and judgment, and these ideas should be couched in language readily understood by the ordinary lay juror." 89 C.J.S. Trial § 481, p. 128. See elaborate annotation in 85 A.L.R. 1420, entitled "Comments and conduct of judge calculated to coerce or influence jury to reach verdict in criminal case." The instruction in the Barnes case, the instruction in the Green case, and the instruction in the case of In re Will of Hall were each to the effect that no juror should surrender his conscientious conviction in order to agree on a verdict. The challenged instruction in the instant case begins in the second sentence with the words, "You must consider this case until we have exhausted every possibility of an agreement," and fails to instruct the jury that no one of them should surrender his conscientious convictions or his free will and judgment in order to agree upon a verdict. The challenged instruction might reasonably be construed by a minority of the jury as coercive, suggesting to them that they should surrender their well-founded convictions conscientiously held or their own free will and judgment in deference to the views of the majority, and *771 concur in what really is a majority, rather than a unanimous, verdict. See United States v. Rogers, 4 Cir., 289 F.2d 433. Defendant is entitled to a New trial.