Opinion ID: 1198179
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: The District Court Erred In Denying Lamphere's Motion For A Mistrial.

Text: Lamphere argues that the district court erred in the manner in which it polled the jury after the non-unanimous verdict and because the instruction the court gave the jury before sending it back to deliberate further amounted to a dynamite instruction in violation of State v. Flint, 114 Idaho 806, 761 P.2d 1158 (1988). For the reasons stated below, we hold that the district court erred in denying Lamphere's motion for a mistrial. Idaho Criminal Rule 31(d) provides: (d) Poll of jury. When a verdict is returned and before it is recorded the jury shall be polled at the request of any party or upon the court's own motion. If upon the poll there is not unanimous concurrence, the jury may be directed to retire for further deliberations or it may be discharged. (Emphasis added). In the present case, the jury initially came back to the courtroom, after deliberating, stating that it had reached a verdict. The district court then instructed the presiding juror to hand the verdict to the bailiff to be passed to the clerk for recording and to be read into the record. The verdict was stamped by the clerk with the date and time of recording: May 31, 1995, at 3:13 p.m. When the presiding juror indicated that the verdict was not unanimous, the jury was asked to leave the courtroom and the prosecution stated that it sounds like you have a mistrial. The court responded that before it declared a mistrial, it intended to instruct the jury that it must reach a unanimous verdict. The prosecutor then stated again that he thought there was a mistrial and that he objected to the instruction. He stated that the jury had already been given the instruction, and that what the court was doing was in essence telling the jurors to cave in or there would be no verdict. Lamphere's counsel disagreed, noting that the jury had not yet been polled, and that the court should instruct the jurors that they must be unanimous. The court then stated: Idaho Criminal Rule No. 31 ... covers a situation such as this. It leaves it within the discretion of the Court when the Court is notified prior to the recording of a verdict that the decision is not unanimous. The jury may be directed to retire for further deliberations, or it may be discharged. In light of the work that this jury has already gone through, I'm going to ask them to retire for further deliberations along with this instruction and a new jury verdict form. The district court must have mistakenly believed that the verdict had not been recorded because the jury was then brought back into the courtroom and individually polled. The court asked the jurors whether the verdict as read by the clerk was theirs. Seven responded no, and five responded yes. The court then stated: In light of your responses, your presiding juror did inform the Court correctly, that is, that your verdict was not unanimous. I'm going to give you this instruction: Your verdict in this case must be unanimous, that is, all twelve of you must agree. In the absence of such agreement, there is no verdict. I am going to ask you to return and continue deliberating. Out of the jury's presence, the court then stated to counsel: Counsel, it's my impression from the poll that there's a misunderstanding as to what to do when there's a deadlock, but I'm not going toI'm not going to assume that there is a deadlock until I'm told by the jury that there is. Contrary to I.R.C. 31, the court polled the jury after the verdict was recorded. The transcript from the trial reflects this as do the court minutes. The initial verdict was recorded at 3:13 p.m. The minutes reflect that the jury was not polled until sometime after 3:29 p.m. Thus, we hold that it was error for the district court to have polled the jury after the verdict was recorded. Lamphere's motion for a mistrial should have been granted. We further hold that Lamphere's counsel's statements were properly treated as a motion for a mistrial and that the motion was timely made. We deny Lamphere's request for reinstatement of the first verdict as the record plainly demonstrates it was not unanimous.