Opinion ID: 47622
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The district court's Allen charge

Text: 10 District courts have broad discretion to give Allen charges when the jury indicates deadlock. United States v. Rivas, 99 F.3d 170, 175 (5th Cir.1996). Where a defendant does not object to the use of an Allen charge, review is for plain error. United States v. Miles, 360 F.3d 472, 482 (5th Cir.2004). Courts may give modified versions of the Allen charge, so long as the circumstances under which the district court gives the instruction are not coercive, and the content of the charge is not prejudicial. United States v. McClatchy, 249 F.3d 348, 359 (5th Cir. 2001) (internal quotation omitted). [T]he conviction will not be reversed unless an error seriously affect[ed] the fairness, integrity, or public reputation of the judicial proceeding. Id. (internal quotation omitted) (alteration in original). 11 Here, the district court, without objection by the defendants, 5 charged the jury from a superceded version of the Fifth Circuit Pattern Jury Instructions: Criminal. The difference in language between the superceded version and the then-current version was in the fourth paragraph. The fourth paragraph heard by the jury was: 12 If a substantial majority of your number are for a conviction, each dissenting juror ought to consider whether a doubt in his or her mind is a reasonable one, since it appears to make no effective impression upon the minds of the others. On the other hand, if a majority or even a lesser number of you are for acquittal, the other jurors ought to seriously ask each themselves [sic] again, and most thoughtfully, whether they do not have a reason to doubt the correctness of the judgment which is not shared by several of their fellow jurors, and whether they should distrust the weight and sufficiency of evidence which fails to convince several of their fellow jurors beyond a reasonable doubt. 13 By contrast, the fourth paragraph of the then-current pattern instruction states: 14 Those of you who believe that the government has proved the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt should stop and ask yourselves if the evidence is really convincing enough, given that other members of the jury are not convinced. And those of you who believe that the government has not proved the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt should stop and ask yourselves if the doubt you have is a reasonable one, given that other members of the jury do not share your doubt. 15 FIFTH CIR. PATTERN JURY INSTRUCTIONS: CRIMINAL 1.45 (2001). 16 Whatever the reason the district court used the language of a superceded pattern jury instruction, the mere fact that it did so does not require reversal because the district court may give a modified version of the Allen charge. See McClatchy, 249 F.3d at 359. Indeed, the superceded instructions were in effect from 1997 through 2001 without any case holding that the language of the fourth paragraph was prejudicial. Nonetheless, this court must review the content of the charge to determine if it is prejudicial and the circumstances surrounding the charge's use to determine if the jury was coerced. Id. Both defendants focus their argument on the substance of the issued Allen charge, implicitly arguing prejudice. They argue that the charge did not refer to holdouts for acquittal in an even-handed way and that the charge required several holdouts—rather than one—for those in favor of conviction to question their position. 17 The defendants' arguments fail because the remaining content of the charge admonished that no juror is expected to yield a conscientious conviction he or she may have as to the weight or effect of the evidence and that if the evidence in the case fails to establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, the accused should have your unanimous verdict of not guilty. An individual juror's opinion as to guilt or innocence was protected, and the charge as given did not prejudice the jurors. Cf. United States v. Clayton, 172 F.3d 347, 352 (5th Cir.1999) (holding that an Allen charge omitting the reasonable doubt standard was not prejudicial where a previously issued charge protected the jury's understanding of reasonable doubt). There was no reversible error, plain or otherwise.