Opinion ID: 1427529
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Generic Testimony and the Jury Unanimity Problem

Text: 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.