Opinion ID: 4555860
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Jury Question

Text: Davis also challenges the district court’s response to a jury question about the phrase “on or about.” The indictment charged Davis with distributing fentanyl “[o]n or about” March 7, 2016. Yet the parties’ evidence and argument showed that the distribution occurred specifically on March 7. So Davis asked the district court to omit the pattern jury instruction defining “on or about” to mean a date reasonably close in time to the date in the indictment. Davis did not want the jury to think it could rely on other drug sales, especially because background evidence showed that Davis had sold other drugs to Stock (who shared them with Castro-White) earlier on March 6. The court agreed and omitted this instruction. Yet the parties’ proposed instructions still used this undefined “on or about” phrase. They charged that “the Government must prove that [Castro-White] died as a consequence of his use of the drugs[] that [Davis] distributed on or about” March 7. During deliberations, the jury submitted the following question: “Charge 1 alleges that Red distributed drugs ‘on or about March 7th.’ What is the time frame of ‘on or about?’” Davis asked the court to respond “that the evidence presented was that the transaction involved occurred on March 7 at 12:34 a.m.” The court responded differently: “‘On or about’ must be viewed and framed in light of all the evidence the jury must reasonably consider in reaching a verdict on Count 1 and, if applicable, the death enhancement.” Davis moved for a mistrial and a new trial based on this response. The court denied his motions. It believed that the safest course was to “refocus[] the jury on the evidence.” And since “[b]oth parties argued that the fatal transaction occurred” on March 7, it was “pure speculation” to conclude that the jury would find that other sales caused Castro-White’s death. On appeal, Davis argues that this supplemental instruction was legally wrong and harmful because it allowed the jury to find that the drugs that Davis had sold earlier on March 6 caused Castro-White’s death. We see no prejudicial error. No. 19-3094 United States v. Davis Page 15 A district court responding to a question from a deliberating jury faces a difficult task. The court “may and should make clear the law the jury is bound to apply[.]” United States v. Rowan, 518 F.2d 685, 693 (6th Cir. 1975). Yet the court “must be careful not to invade the jury’s province as fact-finder.” United States v. Nunez, 889 F.2d 1564, 1569 (6th Cir. 1989). The court also must decide how best to resolve these competing concerns quickly to respect the jury’s time. We thus typically leave the proper response to the district court’s “sound discretion” and will reverse only if the court abuses that discretion in a way that causes prejudice. Id. at 1568 (citation omitted); see United States v. Castle, 625 F. App’x 279, 283 (6th Cir. 2015). When discussing the proper response to jury questions, our cases have drawn a distinction between questions of law and questions of fact. If the jury asks a question about the law, we have noted that the district court generally “should clear away its difficulties ‘with concrete accuracy.’” Nunez, 889 F.2d at 1568 (citation omitted); United States v. Fisher, 648 F.3d 442, 448 (6th Cir. 2011). If the jury asks a question about the facts, we have noted that the court may generally instruct the jury “to rely on its own recollection” of the evidence so as not to bias its decisionmaking. United States v. McClendon, 362 F. App’x 475, 483 (6th Cir. 2010). Under this framework, the district court did not abuse its discretion. To begin with, Davis put the court in a dilemma by advocating for the court to omit the definition of “on or about” but ignoring that the parties’ proposed instructions used that phrase. The jury asked a legal question about the meaning of the phrase “on or about.” To answer that question “with concrete accuracy,” the court would have needed to give the very model instruction about “on or about” that Davis opposed. Nunez, 889 F.2d at 1568 (citation omitted). Davis, by contrast, asked the court to give a factual response to this legal question: “that the evidence presented was that the transaction involved occurred on March 7 at 12:34 a.m.” This response would have “invade[d] the jury’s province as fact-finder” by telling it what facts to find. Id. at 1569. Given the circumstances, the district court did not abuse its discretion with what was essentially a compromise ruling directing the jury to the evidence. Regardless, its response could not have caused “prejudice.” Id. at 1568 (citation omitted); United States v. Washington, 702 F.3d 886, 895 (6th Cir. 2012). We see no risk that the jury based its verdict on the earlier March 6 sale because both parties presented a case that No. 19-3094 United States v. Davis Page 16 Castro-White obtained the lethal drugs after midnight on March 7. So, when arguing for a mistrial, Davis’s counsel agreed that “there’s literally zero evidence in the record that anything that Castro-White obtained at 1:10 p.m. on March 6 was ingested by him which resulted in his death.” And Davis asked to omit the “on or about” instruction precisely because the parties offered no such theory. See United States v. Combs, 33 F.3d 667, 670 (6th Cir. 1994).