Opinion ID: 1903008
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Identification of Vote

Text: Another circumstance of critical concern is the jury foreman's announcement to the judge in open court of the jury's eleven to one numerical split. Subsequently, the one juror in the minority was referred to as the holdout. Although this information was not requested by the judge, its disclosure was fraught with the danger that any further instruction to deliberate might be construed as pressure on the single holdout to give in. We have recently reiterated that the better practice is for the trial judge to admonish the jury at the outset of deliberations that they should not indicate how they stand during their deliberation. See Scoggins v. State, 726 So.2d 762, 767 (Fla.1999). Further, a judge, consciously or subconsciously, may be influenced by the knowledge that there is a lone holdout to insist that the jury continue deliberating in order to reach a verdict. The apparent temptation is that the single holdout may give in at any time. The disclosure of the numerical split raises great concern in this case because from the jury's requests to rehear testimony it appears that the holdout juror was concerned with the accuracy and reliability of the witness's identification of Thomas. This was Thomas's primary defense and the major issue in this capital punishment case. In addition, Thomas points out that the same exact eleven-to-one split occurred during the penalty phase, possibly indicating that the same juror who was holding out during the guilt phase continued to hold out at the penalty phase where a unanimous vote was not required. In sum, we conclude that the exhausting and pressured circumstances reflected in this record are simply not proper conditions for any jury, much less one in a capital punishment case, to resolve an issue of guilt or innocence. See Ferrer v. State, 718 So.2d 822, 826 (Fla. 4th DCA) (stating that continuing court proceedings into the late evening hours unreasonably and unnecessarily exhausts jurors and may deny a party effective or meaningful representation of counsel), review denied, 728 So.2d 204 (Fla.1998). Obviously, jury deliberations in a criminal case are perhaps the most critical and sacred parts of a trial, and care should be taken to ensure that those deliberations are conducted in such a way that there is no question of their reliability. A coerced verdict in a criminal case deprives the accused of a fair and impartial trial and is contrary to the mandate of the Declaration of Rights of the Constitution of the State of Florida. See Webb v. State, 519 So.2d 748, 749 (Fla. 4th DCA 1988). While we recognize that trial judges have broad discretion in the conduct of trials, see Galbut v. Garfinkl, 340 So.2d 470, 473 (Fla.1976), the totality of the circumstances surrounding the jury's deliberations here appears to have rendered the jury's verdict unreliable. Accordingly, because we cannot conclude that the extreme circumstances prevailing here did not improperly influence the jury's verdict, we reverse Thomas's convictions and remand for a new trial. We address the remaining issues raised by Thomas as they may be relevant to the subsequent retrial of this case.