Opinion ID: 1186149
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Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Genesis of the Allen Charge

Text: The Allen case from which the instruction takes its name is a most unprepossessing leading authority. Alexander Allen was a 14-year-old boy who had been convicted of murder. His conviction was reversed by the United States Supreme Court because of a faulty jury instruction ( Allen v. United States (1893) 150 U.S. 551 [37 L.Ed. 1179, 14 S.Ct. 196]), and after a retrial his second conviction was reversed by the Supreme Court because of another erroneous instruction ( Allen v. United States (1895) 157 U.S. 675 [39 L.Ed. 854, 15 S.Ct. 720]). After a third conviction his case went again to the Supreme Court. ( Allen v. United States (1896) 164 U.S. 492 [41 L.Ed. 528, 17 S.Ct. 154].) No counsel appeared for Allen, and the court declared itself somewhat embarrassed ... by the absence of a brief on the part of the plaintiff in error.... ( Id., at p. 494 [41 L.Ed. at p. 528].) Nevertheless, the court did consider 18 assignments of error in the record, the last 2 of which concerned the instruction now known as the Allen charge. The court noted that the instruction was taken literally from a charge in a criminal case which was approved of by the Supreme Court of Massachusetts in Commonwealth v. Tuey, 8 Cush. 1.... ( Id. at p. 501 [41 L.Ed. at p. 531].) [3] After paraphrasing the instruction, the court reasoned that While, undoubtedly, the verdict of the jury should represent the opinion of each individual juror, it by no means follows that opinions may not be changed by conference in the jury-room. The very object of the jury system is to secure unanimity by a comparison of views, and by arguments among the jurors themselves. It certainly cannot be the law that each juror should not listen with deference to the arguments and with a distrust of his own judgment, if he finds a large majority of the jury taking a different view of the case from what he does himself. It cannot be that each juror should go to the jury-room with a blind determination that the verdict shall represent his opinion of the case at that moment; or, that he should close his ears to the arguments of men who are equally honest and intelligent as himself. There was no error in these instructions. ( Id. at pp. 501-502 [41 L.Ed. at p. 531].) Given this procedural history, and the Allen court's brief treatment of the elaborately crafted collection of nuances and intimations composing the challenged instruction, there is little wonder that many doubt whether the case would not be decided differently today. [Citation.] But that it should have become the foundationstone of all modern law regarding deadlocked juries is perhaps the greatest anomaly of the Allen case. ( United States v. Bailey (5th Cir.1972) 468 F.2d 652, 666.) Nevertheless, the Allen charge won relatively quick adoption in some 10 states. (See Note, An Argument for the Abandonment of the Allen Charge in California (1975) 15 Santa Clara Law. 939, fn. 3; Annot., 100 A.L.R.2d 177-217.) California was not among the early enthusiasts. Undoubtedly the popularity of the instruction stemmed from its perceived efficiency as a means of blasting a verdict out of a deadlocked jury in a manner which had the imprimatur of the highest court in the land. [4] At the same time, trial judges were not averse to adding their own embellishments to the approved text, frequently in an apparent attempt to increase the intensity of the blast. The practice arose of adding an observation, not included in the instruction originally approved in Allen, to the effect that the case must at some time be decided (see, e.g., People v. Ozene (1972) 27 Cal. App.3d 905, 911 [104 Cal. Rptr. 170]; United States v. Brown (7th Cir.1969) 411 F.2d 930, 933; Huffman v. United States (5th Cir.1962) 297 F.2d 754, 759 (conc. and dis. opn. of Brown, J.)) or that the jury had been selected in the same manner and from the same source from which any future jury must be selected, and there is no reason to suppose the case will ever be submitted to twelve men or women more intelligent, more impartial or more competent to decide it.... ( Ozene, supra, at p. 911 of 27 Cal. App.3d; see also Mathes, Jury Instructions and Forms for Federal Criminal Cases (1969) 27 F.R.D. 39, Inst. No. 8.19 at pp. 102-104.) Thus it is somewhat imprecise to refer to a single Allen charge. Decades of judicial improvisation have produced a variety of permutations and amplifications of the original wording, some remarkably elaborate. (See, e.g., Tomoya Kawakita v. United States (9th Cir.1951) 190 F.2d 506, 524-525, fn. 17; Mathes, op. cit. supra, 27 F.R.D. 39, 102.) Nevertheless, it is possible to isolate the two elements frequently found in such instructions  and found in the charge given in this case  which raise the gravest doubts as to their propriety. The first and most questionable feature is the discriminatory admonition directed to minority jurors to rethink their position in light of the majority's views. In the Allen opinion this concept is expressed in the following passage: if much the larger number were for conviction, a dissenting juror should consider whether his doubt was a reasonable one which made no impression upon the minds of so many men, equally honest, equally intelligent with himself. If, upon the other hand, the majority was for acquittal, the minority ought to ask themselves whether they might not reasonably doubt the correctness of a judgment which was not concurred in by the majority. (164 U.S. at p. 501 [41 L.Ed. at p. 531].) The same language, with some elaboration and deference to female jurors, was used by the trial judge in the case at bar. A second controversial element in Allen -type instructions, not approved in Allen itself, is the direction given by the court below that You should consider that the case must at some time be decided. Neither of the foregoing phrases received judicial approval in California until 1958. In that year, the Court of Appeal considered a case in which the trial judge, after inadvertently learning that the jury stood 11 to 1 for conviction, delivered a conventionally embellished version of the Allen instruction. ( People v. Baumgartner (1958) 166 Cal. App.2d 103 [332 P.2d 366].) The appellate court reversed the conviction on the ground that under the circumstances the charge was coercive of the holdout juror. Nevertheless, without citing Allen or any other authority, the court also declared in dictum that had the trial judge not been informed to the knowledge of all as to the fact that the jury stood 11 to 1 for conviction the charge would have been proper, since it had been worked out long ago as to form and ha[d] been frequently used. ( Id. at p. 108.) On the basis of Baumgartner, Courts of Appeal also approved Allen -type charges in People v. Ortega (1969) 2 Cal. App.3d 884, 896 [83 Cal. Rptr. 260], People v. Gibson (1972) 23 Cal. App.3d 917, 921 [101 Cal. Rptr. 620], People v. Guillen (1974) 37 Cal. App.3d 976, 985 [113 Cal. Rptr. 43], and People v. Terry (1974) 38 Cal. App.3d 432, 448, footnote 2 [113 Cal. Rptr. 233]. Allen itself is first cited in support of the charge which bears its name in People v. Ozene (1972) supra, 27 Cal. App.3d 905, 910-914. However, no supplemental jury instruction containing either the admonition to minority jurors or the statement that the case must at some time be decided has ever been approved in a holding of this court. In evaluating the charge we also consider its treatment in recent decisions of other jurisdictions. There we find that Allen -type instructions have been subjected to a withering barrage of attacks, largely on the grounds they are coercive or inaccurate. [5] Although no opinion of the United States Supreme Court has addressed a challenge to this charge since the original Allen case, [6] 3 federal circuits [7] and at least 22 states [8] have disapproved the instruction. The American Bar Association has recommended abandonment of the charge. [9] Moreover, many decisions which tolerate continued use of the charge have done so grudgingly under compulsion of stare decisis (e.g., U.S. v. Bailey (5th Cir.1972) supra, 468 F.2d 652, 669, affd. (1973) 480 F.2d 518), or have sought to place curbs on its use. These restrictions often take the form of limiting the charge to the original language approved in Allen (see, e.g., United States v. Flannery (1st Cir.1971) 451 F.2d 880, 883; United States v. Kenner (2d Cir.1965) 354 F.2d 780, 782-784; United States v. Rogers (4th Cir.1961) 289 F.2d 433), or requiring balancing instructions (see, e.g., Flannery, supra, at p. 883; Note, On Instructing Deadlocked Juries (1968) 78 Yale L.J. 100, 106, fn. 26, and cases cited). In short, the indisputable modern trend is to abandon Allen ( U.S. v. Bailey (5th Cir.1972) supra, 468 F.2d 652, 668), and an examination of the impact of each of the crucial elements which may be found in Allen -type charges demonstrates the persuasive justification for that sentiment.