Opinion ID: 2551366
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Reinstruction at Issue

Text: We turn now to the reinstruction itself. For purposes of this case, appellant does not dispute that the reinstruction is a correct statement of the law when scrutinized literally, without regard to how the trial court presented it or to the impact of comparing it with the initial instruction. Solely for the sake of argument, therefore, we assume that the Payne language, when added to the Smith instruction, would not  without more  reflect constitutional error. [50]
We look, initially, at the language of the reinstruction and the relevance of this court's decision in Payne that found no plain error when the trial court used similar language. The government takes the position that this court has embraced Payne: end of case. According to the government, although Payne did arise on plain-error review, this Court was quite emphatic that it did not see anything erroneous at all in the complained-of language.... Thus, [ Payne ] is not a case in which the Court found error, but no prejudice, or even expressed doubt or ambivalence about the question of legal error. The government reminds us that in the only place where the trial court arguably inserted new substantive language from Payne in the reinstruction  namely, the addition of beyond a shadow of a doubt  that expression meant the same thing as beyond all doubt in the initial instruction. The government therefore stresses that these two formulations are redundant; in Payne, this court said expressly that both mean need not prove to a certainty. [51] This argument is unpersuasive. First, because Payne reviewed for plain error (there was no objection to the instruction at trial), that decision cannot be said to have ruled definitively that, in a reasonable doubt instruction, all jurors under all circumstances must be presumed to understand that beyond all doubt and beyond a shadow of a doubt mean the same thing. [52] Second, Payne did not involve the circumstance of reinstruction, with the additional risk of error that reinstruction invites. And that additional risk, as we have explained, is intensified by the trial court's comment that the jurors should expect to find change in that language. Payne, therefore, does not resolve this case.
That brings us to appellant's central contention: In offering the jury the new third paragraph of reinstruction to compare with the corresponding paragraph of the initial instruction  an offer preceded by an invitation to find change  there is a reasonable likelihood that the jury came to an understanding that impermissibly lowered the burden of proof. We agree. In the first place, when listening for change in the reinstruction, in comparison with the initial instruction, there is a reasonable likelihood that jurors perceived new substance in the judge's addition of the shadow language  language that cut in the government's favor by ostensibly creating three, no longer two, levels of doubt (as elaborated in appellant's contentions summarized earlier). [53] Second, the reinstruction became unbalanced from added weight on the government's side created by an extended rat-a-tat explaining what reasonable doubt is not. The court's use of new, legally correct though more graphic, emphatic, and repetitive language appeared to lighten the government's burden of persuasion. [54] Therefore, even if the language of reinstruction itself was not inherently a violation of due process, there is a reasonable likelihood that the judge's second instruction conveyed to the jury a lower standard of reasonable doubt than due process requires, and that the jury came to its verdict accordingly. [55] The government's reply to this contextual argument stresses: (1) that the reinstruction contained nonsubstantive changes in what remained a single sentence  (emphasis in government's brief), and (2) that the reinstruction was balanced because the trial court had repeated all three paragraphs of the instruction, with six sentences describing what reasonable doubt is and only two sentences spelling out what it is not. The first argument misses the point because it altogether fails to take into account the particular impact of the modified Payne language as reinstruction. We may be dealing with a single sentence, but, in contrast with the penultimate, eighteen-word sentence in the Smith instruction, the new replacement sentence in the reinstruction is long and forceful and includes several additional nots (or the equivalent). In the context here, after more than four days of jury deliberation, there is a reasonable likelihood that the new language had an effect akin to that of the controversial dynamite or anti-deadlock charge used to prod an apparently deadlocked jury to come to unanimity. [56] After reinstruction, the jury took only two more hours to arrive at its guilty verdict. The government's other argument  that the reinstruction is not unbalanced because six sentences explain what reasonable doubt is while only two sentences say what it is not  is considerably overstated and thus not convincing. The first three sentences, comprising the first paragraph of the instruction, are devoted to explaining the difference in burden of proof in civil and criminal cases, presumably to alert jurors who may have served in civil cases that the burden in criminal proceedings is greater: reasonable doubt, not more likely true than not or highly probable. [57] We cannot discern why those sentences should be counted as instruction about what reasonable doubt is when they offer no specifics about what reasonable doubt itself means. [58] When we consider the three other sentences on which the government relies for balance, an express statement of what reasonable doubt is appears only twice (coupled with one followup, explanatory sentence). [59] In the reinstruction sentence on which appellant relies, however, describing what reasonable doubt does not include, there are three nots and a never. [60] (The sentence immediately preceding that one includes two more clauses stating what reasonable doubt is not, adding both a not and a nor.) [61] The government, therefore, has not convinced us that the reinstruction, in context, was balanced.
We confirmed in Smith that some instructiona standard instructionaddressing reasonable doubt is necessary. [62] We warned that tinkering with the Smith instruction is so likely to lead to unbalanced language that trial judges should not do so when instructing the jury at trial's end. [63] And we now conclude, in the same strongest terms expressed in Smith, that trial judges should resist the temptation to stray from, or embellish upon, that instruction [64] when confronted by a note from the jury seeking further guidance on reasonable doubt. We will not say that there can never be circumstances when reinstruction on reasonable doubt might survive appellate challenge, but the risk of reversal will be so great that trial judges should avoid doing so. [65] In this case, the jurors had gone over the original instruction, which they had in writing, to the point that they surely focused on the new material for clues as to what, more specifically, reasonable doubt really means. As we have recognized, [66] the new language would have been the freshest in the jurors minds; they would have given it heightened alertness; and they would have accorded it special emphasisall because they had heard the new words during a break in their deliberations granted to answer a question the jurors themselves deemed important, indeed dispositive. Thus, they were vulnerable to finding conclusive meaning in anything noticeably newnew content in the shadow language, and new warnings about what reasonable doubt is notin contrast with language in the initial instruction which they had read over and over. But jury vulnerability was not the only dynamic at work here. The record makes clear that the experienced trial judge anticipated that the reinstruction would create a revised understanding of reasonable doubt. He found the Smith instruction so heavily weighted to the defense . . . that an improvement, or at least a change as approved by the Payne court is long overduea change that the prosecutor, after initial skepticism, encouraged. The judge took Payne, a product of plain error review that did nothing to revise our en banc ruling in Smith, and used it to rebalance, in the government's favor, the very instruction we had announced definitivelyand the judge himself had given initiallyas the balanced instruction required. The result was a reinstruction with changed language that, as the judge put it, went in one directionin the government'swhich may be problem. The jury's relatively quick verdict after reinstruction, two hours for conviction after more than four deliberative days before reinstruction, is telling. We noted earlier that the impact of the reinstruction, under these circumstances, was akin to a dynamite or anti-deadlock charge. [67] As applied to the reasonable doubt instruction, that impact was particularly serious because, however individual jurors would parse the reinstruction, there was a reasonable likelihood that, collectively, the jurors would gain the overalland correctimpression that the trial judge was restating the instruction in the government's favor, and thus that the concept of reasonable doubt was less stringent than they originally had thought. Once that impression is conveyed, it is virtually tantamount to an indication that the judge believes the defendant is guilty and that the government, therefore, has met its burden of proof. [68] We conclude, accordingly, that the two instructions before us here, each of which we assume, for sake of argument, would survive constitutional challenge as an initial instruction on reasonable doubt, conveyed different meanings when the trial judge, for purposes of reinstruction, not only reworked critical language but also told the jurors to see the instructions in the new light of some change. Even if a grammarian, in the quiet of a study, could discern no legal difference between the message conveyed in the third paragraph of the Smith instruction and the message from Payne offered days later in place of it, we are satisfied that, in the context of reinstruction and the proceedings taken as a whole, there is a reasonable likelihood that the jury applied the challenged reinstruction in a way that violate[d] the constitution [69] that is, in a way that dropped the level of doubt essential for conviction below the level required by due process. In announcing this conclusion we must return, briefly, to our standard of review. Earlier we noted the Supreme Court's ruling in Sullivan that, when the reasonable doubt instruction consists of a misdescription of the burden of proof, that error is structural, requiring automatic reversal, because the error vitiates all the jury's findings. [70] Sullivan considered instructional language alone in finding misdescription of reasonable doubt. The present case is different. We have found misdescription from a reinstruction with language presumed constitutional in isolation but written to favor the government when compared, in the trial judge's words, to the reasonable doubt instruction originally given and conveyed to the jury with a judicial invitation to find some change. This particular combination of instructional language and trial court comment created a misdescription of reasonable doubt for two reasons. First, the judge's invitation to find some change provided an interpretative nexus between the first and second instructions; it was inherent in reinstruction. Second, the new language and the judge's comment, taken together, created a reasonable likelihood that the jurors . . . applied the instructions in a way that violated the Constitution by relaxing too far their understanding of reasonable doubt. [71] We see no principled basis for concluding that the universe we recognize for misdescription of reasonable doubt (comment and instruction) should be treated differently from the narrower universe grounding structural error, as in Sullivan, solely on the formal words of reinstruction. In both situations, the jurors are led to an unconstitutional lowering of the standard for reasonable doubt. On the other hand, we recognize that once the basis for structural error extends beyond the formal words of instruction or reinstruction, the rationale for applying structural rather than harmless error analysis can become attenuated. A judge's actions in connection with reinstruction can generate alternative theories of analysis, as our concurring colleague demonstrates. Furthermore, the Supreme Court's 6 to 3 decision in Neder v. United States [72] reveals the Court's difficulty in distinguishing between structural and harmless error. Finally, whichever analysis of error is applied in this case, reversal is required because the process of reinstruction resulted in a description of the burden of proof that created a reasonable likelihood of the jurors' applying a compromised standard of reasonable doubt. Accordingly, we need not rule definitively whether the instructional process here produced structural or harmful error. However the error is characterized, appellant's convictions must be reversed and the case remanded for a new trial. [73] So ordered. GLICKMAN, Associate Judge, concurring in the judgment: The supplemental instruction on reasonable doubt was problematic, but not, in my view, for the reason my colleagues identify. Evaluating a virtually identical instruction in Payne, this Court saw no way in which [its] language conveyed a faulty legal principle, prejudiced [the defendant], or improperly bolstered the government's case. [1] Here too, given the correctness, comprehensiveness, and clarity of the reinstruction, I see no reasonable likelihood that appellant's jury was misled as to either the necessity for proof beyond reasonable doubt or the substantive content of that standard. I appreciate my colleagues' concern that the trial judge prefaced his supplemental instruction by stating that it would be much like the reasonable doubt instruction originally given, but with some change that may be helpful. But although the judge then introduced a distinction not included in his initial charge between proof beyond a reasonable doubt and proof beyond a shadow of a doubtI think it notional at best to suggest that this rhetorical addition substantively confused the jury. Nonetheless, considering the supplemental instruction (in conjunction with the judge's prefatory comment) `in its context and under all the circumstances,' [2] I do think it was problematic. After four days of inconclusive deliberations, the jury reported itself confused by the standard instruction on reasonable doubt and requested additional guidance. This was a momentous revelation. A jury that does not understand the central requirement of proof beyond a reasonable doubt cannot render a valid verdict in a criminal case. The trial judge cannot be faulted for endeavoring to clarify the standard of proof instead of leaving the jury in a state of confusion. [3] But though I acknowledge the challenging nature of that endeavor, I am compelled to fault the supplemental instruction the judge proceeded to deliver. The sole material difference between his initial instruction on reasonable doubt and his supplemental instruction was that the latter instruction admonished the jury more forcefully that the prosecutor's burden in a criminal case is not unrealistic that the prosecution is not required to dispel fanciful or insubstantial doubts in order to convict a defendant. The judge focused the jury on this reinforced admonition by alerting them to the change in language. That the re-instruction remained substantively correct as a matter of law is beside the point. The highlighted new language could mean only one thing to the jurors who heard itnamely, that the judge thought some of them were holding the prosecution to an unduly rigorous standard of proof. And why would the judge have drawn that inference and delivered his warning, unless he believed the prosecution had met its burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt and the defendants were guilty? I do not imagine the judge intended to communicate that belief to the jury, but that is the clear if implicit message of his supplemental instruction. I do not see how the jury could have missed it. [4] It is well-established that a trial judge must not intrude on the jury's independent deliberative process by communicating his opinion that there was sufficient evidence to convict the defendant. [5] Such a communication from the judge is improper not because it may mislead the jury as to the substance or necessity of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, but because it may influence the jury to agree with the judge that the evidence satisfies that standard of proof. [6] In other words, the communication create[s] the risk that the jury [will] abdicate its responsibility to evaluate the evidence in deference to the judge. [7] The error is of Constitutional dimension. Inherent in the [Sixth Amendment] right to trial by jury is the assumption that the jury will be allowed to weigh the evidence and determine criminal guilt without undue judicial intervention[.] [8] Unlike an instruction that materially misstates or relaxes the requirement of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, an instruction that improperly conveys the judge's opinion of the sufficiency of the government's proof does not amount to structural error necessitating automatic reversal of a conviction regardless of demonstrable or likely prejudice. [9] But as the error in communicating the judge's belief to the jury is Constitutional, reversal is necessary unless we are persuaded it was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. [10] We cannot be persuaded of that here, where the juryafter deliberating four days without reaching agreementreturned its verdict against appellant only two hours after receiving the supplemental instruction. I therefore concur in the judgment reversing appellant's convictions and remanding the case for a new trial.