Opinion ID: 1427529
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Unanimous Verdict Requirement

Text: The California Constitution (art. I, § 16) requires unanimous verdicts in criminal cases. When a conviction is based entirely on generic testimony, however, unanimity becomes impossible: because no evidence of specific criminal acts has been presented, the jurors are by definition precluded from agreeing unanimously on which criminal acts the defendant committed. As stated in People v. Van Hoek, supra, 200 Cal. App.3d at page 817: Implicit in the cases requiring specificity of charges and the charges being supported by specific testimony given at trial is the fundamental due process rule, steeped in antiquity, that the prosecution must prove a specific act and the twelve jurors must agree on one specific act. (Accord, People v. Creighton (1976) 57 Cal. App.3d 314, 320 [129 Cal. Rptr. 249], disapproved on other grounds in People v. Thomas (1978) 20 Cal.3d 457, 468 [143 Cal. Rptr. 215, 573 P.2d 433]).) The majority purport to address this concern with their modified unanimity instruction, which, in addition to allowing a conviction if jurors unanimously agree on specific acts, also allows a conviction if the jury unanimously agrees the defendant committed all the acts described by the victim. (Maj. opn., ante, p. 322.) To understand the complete inadequacy of this answer, some background discussion of the jury unanimity problem is in order.
Courts have long recognized that the achievement of true jury unanimity requires more than the mere agreement of 12 jurors to a common verdict. (See, e.g., People v. Williams (1901) 133 Cal. 165 [65 P. 323].) The concern that a seemingly unanimous jury verdict may mask substantial disagreements among the jurors was first raised in cases in which evidence of more than one criminal act was presented in support of a single criminal charge. For such situations the courts developed the either/or rule, which states that when the accusatory pleading charges a single criminal act and the evidence shows more than one such unlawful act, either the prosecution must select the specific act relied on to prove the charge or the jury must be instructed ... that it must unanimously agree beyond a reasonable doubt that defendant committed the same specific criminal act. ( People v. Gordon (1985) 165 Cal. App.3d 839, 853, and cases cited [212 Cal. Rptr. 174].) When a case relies on truly generic testimony, however, the either/or rule cannot apply, because such testimony does not present a set of distinguishable acts from which the prosecutor can elect or about which the jurors can agree. Recent Court of Appeal decisions differ as to the consequence of the inapplicability of the either/or rule to generic testimony cases. (Compare People v. Van Hoek, supra, 200 Cal. App.3d 811, 816 [unanimity instruction not an adequate remedy when acts are indistinguishable], with People v. Winkle, supra, 206 Cal. App.3d 822, 830 [jurors need not agree on specific act, and unanimity instruction would only confuse the jury].) As will appear, I agree with Van Hoek that the failure of the either/or rule to remedy generic testimony is a reflection more of the inadequacy of that testimony than of the limitations of the either/or rule. Nor does the continuous crime exception to the either/or rule apply here. Under that exception, jurors do not have to agree on specific acts in order to convict in the following two situations: (1) when the criminal acts are so closely connected in time as to be part of the same criminal transaction  e.g., repeated acts of rape in the same hour, or (2) when the criminal activity constitutes a continuous course of conduct. ( People v. Diedrich (1982) 31 Cal.3d 263, 282 [182 Cal. Rptr. 354, 643 P.2d 971].) A continuous-course-of-conduct crime is generally one committed on the same victim and described in terms of cumulative injury to that victim. [2] Examples of a continuous course of criminal conduct include child abuse ( People v. Ewing (1977) 72 Cal. App.3d 714, 717 [140 Cal. Rptr. 299]) and contributing to the delinquency of a minor ( People v. Lowell (1946) 77 Cal. App.2d 341, 346-348 [175 P.2d 846]). By contrast, lewd or lascivious conduct, as defined in Penal Code section 288, subdivision (a), criminalizes at present only specific acts. The statute is quite clear about this, making punishable Any person who shall willfully and lewdly commit any lewd or lascivious act. ... (Italics added.) [3] The problem that the present case poses is not whether generic testimony is acceptable in some abstract sense, but whether such testimony can form the basis of a conviction under a statute that requires proof of particular criminal acts.
The majority opinion nonetheless maintains that such use of generic testimony is constitutionally permissible. The majority claim that because credibility is usually the `true issue' in these cases, `the jury either will believe the child's testimony that the consistent, repetitive pattern of acts occurred or disbelieve it. In either event, a defendant will have his unanimous jury verdict [citation] and the prosecution will have proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant committed a specific act, for if the jury believes the defendant committed all the acts it necessarily believes he committed each specific act [citations].' (Maj. opn., ante, p. 322), quoting from People v. Moore (1989) 211 Cal. App.3d 1400, 1414 [260 Cal. Rptr. 134].) This argument ignores, however, a primary reason for requiring a high level of agreement among jurors. The rule that jurors must agree on specific criminal acts in order to convict has been established not simply to preclude the possibility that jurors presented with multiple acts in support of a single criminal charge might actually disagree. The unanimity requirement serves an additional purpose: as Judge Wisdom wrote in United States v. Gipson (5th Cir.1977) 553 F.2d 453, like the reasonable doubt standard it is needed to impress `on the trier of fact the necessity of reaching a subjective state of certitude on the facts at issue.' ( Id. at p. 457.) To make the unanimity rule an effective means of securing such certitude, the rule requires jurors to be in substantial agreement as to just what a defendant did as a step preliminary to determining whether the defendant is guilty of the crime charged. ( Id. at pp. 457-458, italics added.) The danger, therefore, of relying on wholly generic testimony to convict a defendant of specific criminal acts is that jurors would no longer need to achieve the state of subjective certitude they reach when they are compelled to agree on the specific criminal acts committed by the defendant; instead, they would need only to agree that the defendant committed some lewd or lascivious act, somewhere, at some time. Testimony pitched at such a low level of specificity may be sufficient to convict of a crime defined by a continuous course of conduct, e.g., section 288.5, it does not suffice when the crime consists, as here, solely of the commission of specific criminal acts. Thus, the difficulty with the majority's approach is its implied suggestion that acts can be specific, for purposes of conviction under section 288, without being distinguishable. This approach allows jurors to convict the defendant of phantom acts which lie below the threshold of particularity that is the precondition of jury unanimity in any meaningful sense. But indistinguishable acts cannot serve as the tangible core around which 12 minds dedicated to finding specific-act guilt beyond a reasonable doubt can form agreement. For this reason, the majority's solution to the generic testimony problem  the modified unanimity instruction  is untenable. If jurors are unable to agree that the defendant committed any single act, they cannot be expected to agree that the defendant committed all the acts. If jurors are presented with generic acts A, B, C, and D, and cannot agree unanimously that the defendant committed act A, or act D, how can they agree that he committed all four acts? The subjective certitude that jurors lack in deciding whether defendant committed a single act does not magically appear when jurors are considering the totality of his acts. In other words, the modified unanimity instruction does not address the fundamental requirement that juror agreement on a specific act stand behind every count charged under section 288. Moreover, assuming arguendo that a modified unanimity instruction is accepted as a valid means of curing the defects in generic testimony, it was not given in this case, and therefore defendant's convictions based on generic testimony cannot be upheld. Nor can his omission be judged to be harmless. It is evident that the jury did not believe that defendant committed all the acts with which he was charged, since they acquitted him on five counts. It is impossible to predict how the jury would have reacted had they been given the majority's modified unanimity instruction. Therefore, failure to administer the modified unanimity instruction, by the majority's own logic, must lead to reversal of the generic-testimony-based convictions. The majority's view also ignores the problem of all-or-nothing convictions. When a defendant is charged with a number of similar crimes against the same victim, jurors are likely to believe he is either largely guilty or else innocent. This unstated presumption, however, runs counter to one of our most fundamental notions of due process: a defendant must be convicted independently and beyond a reasonable doubt of each charge. Thus, the prosecutor may attempt to piggyback the charges based purely on generic testimony, about which the jury has been given little information, on those charges supported by more specific testimony, about which the jury has been told a good deal more. The result will be a further compromising of the reasonable doubt standard.
What is perhaps most perplexing about the majority's effort to lower due process standards under section 288 is that it ignores the Legislature's own solution to the problem of prosecuting resident child molestation. Section 288.5, enacted in 1989, punishes any person who either resides in the same house with the minor child or has recurring access to the child, who over a period of time, not less than three months in duration, engages in three or more acts of substantial conduct with a child under the age of 14.... (§ 288.5, subd. (a).) Jurors need unanimously agree only that the requisite number of acts occurred[,] not on which acts constitute the requisite number. ( Id., subd. (b).) As the bill that introduced section 288.5 makes clear, the new statute was intended to overcome the due process problems raised in the Van Hoek case within the framework of existing statutory law. (Assem. Bill No. 2212 (1989-1990 Reg. Sess.) § 1.) The Legislature has chosen to address the substantial constitutional problems raised by Van Hoek and its progeny by creating a continuous-course-of-conduct crime  the crime of resident child molestation. As discussed above, a continuous-course-of-conduct crime is a well recognized exception to the rule that the jurors must agree on the particular criminal acts committed by the defendant before convicting him. The continuous-course-of-conduct crime does not require jury unanimity on a specific act, because it is not the specific act that is criminalized. The actus reus of such a crime is a series of acts occurring over a substantial period of time, generally on the same victim and generally resulting in cumulative injury. The agreement required for conviction is directed at the appropriate actus reus: unanimous assent that the defendant engaged in the criminal course of conduct. The difference between the majority's solution to the resident child molester problem and that of the Legislature is far more than semantic. The Legislature, in enacting section 288.5, created several safeguards designed to balance the state's compelling interest in prosecuting the resident child molester with the protection of a criminal defendant's rights. Primary among these safeguards is the limitation that the defendant be charged with only one count per victim. Although penalties for violation of section 288.5 are severe  with possible 6, 12, or 16 year sentences  the one-count-per-victim provision is a significant restriction on overzealous prosecutors, who may be tempted to compile a multitude of convictions based on potentially exaggerated estimates of the frequency of the criminal conduct by victims concededly unable to recall specifics. Section 288.5 would also require that jurors agree the defendant committed at least three acts of sexual abuse before convicting him on a given count. The three-act requirement thus sets a baseline for the crime of continuing sexual abuse, making clear that a defendant may not be convicted of that crime without substantial evidence that he engaged in a repetitive pattern of abusive acts. Finally, section 288.5 requires that the defendant have had three months' continuous access to the victim. The continuous-access requirement makes clear that the statute was targeted at the resident child abuse situation, where problems with generic testimony are most likely to arise, and was not to be used against individuals who have only transient contact with the alleged victim. Section 288 and 288.5, read in conjunction, are thus two aspects of a single legislative scheme. When a prosecutor has strong evidence of specific acts of child molestation, he may bring his case under section 288, with its more demanding proof requirements. When the prosecutor has strong evidence that the defendant committed some type of lewd and lascivious acts on a child, but has only the child's generic testimony, he may bring the case under section 288.5 as a course-of-conduct crime, with relaxed proof requirements but with the built-in safeguards discussed above. The majority would play havoc with this legislative scheme. Under their construction of section 288, the prosecutor has all of the incentives and none of the disincentives to bring a resident child molestation case under this section rather than section 288.5. He may prove his case against the defendant with generic testimony, and his discretion is virtually unfettered as to how many counts he can charge. He may use generic testimony under section 288 even when the contact between the defendant and the alleged victim has been brief, and the potential for pinpointing the time and place of the acts presumably greater. The majority's holding today therefore severely undermines the thoughtful balancing and limitations incorporated in section 288.5, and deviates from our usual policy of deference to the Legislature in matters relating to the creation and definition of crimes.