Opinion ID: 220267
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Factual vs. Legal Argument

Text: In Ayeni, the only reported circuit decision on the practice of allowing supplemental argument, the defendant was charged with conspiracy to defraud through the taking of vouchers meant to compensate trial witnesses. 374 F.3d at 1313-14. Ayeni's first trial ended in a hung jury mistrial. After a few hours of deliberation in his second trial, the jury announced it was hopelessly deadlocked. Id. at 1314. After refusing to enter a mistrial, the district court invited the jury to identify its areas of disagreement. The jury responded, naming three areas of concern. The district court answered the first by informing the jury that there was no lesser included offense to the one charged. With respect to other areas identified by the jury  why a handwriting expert was not called and whether both sides agreed Ayeni's signatures on the vouchers were authentic  counsel were given ten minutes of supplemental argument to the jury. As here, after a few additional hours of deliberation, the jury returned a guilty verdict on all counts. Id. at 1315. After determining that the jury's concerns could have been addressed with short, neutral answers, the D.C. Circuit held: [g]iven these other options, it was an abuse of discretion for the district court to adopt an approach that, in effect, allowed the lawyers to hear the jury's concerns and then, as if they were sitting in the jury room themselves, fashion responses targeted precisely to those concerns. Id. at 1316. Ayeni did not go so far as to hold that supplemental argument should never be allowed because such a practice always invades the jury's fact-finding prerogative. However, noting that this jury trial innovation was almost unheard of in the judiciary, [9] the D.C. Circuit strongly discouraged its use where the reason for the jury's inability to agree is based on a factual matter, rather than confusion about a legal standard. Id. at 1317 (noting the parties had cited only a single case in which supplemental arguments were used). In a concurring opinion, Judge Tatel expressed a stronger view of the impropriety of using such a procedure, arguing that supplemental argument should never be used in response to a jury's factual question because the practice allows lawyers the opportunity to, in effect, participate in the jury's deliberations. Id. at 1318-19. Here, the government argues that the district court had broad discretion to allow supplemental arguments, consistent with the Supreme Court's statement in Bollenbach that [w]hen a jury makes explicit its difficulties a trial judge should clear them away with concrete accuracy. 326 U.S. at 612-13, 66 S.Ct. 402. While it is certainly true that the district court should assist the jury in clarifying matters within the judge's province, that responsibility is limited to answering legal, not factual questions. See Arizona v. Johnson, 351 F.3d 988, 994 (9th Cir.2003) ([W]hile a trial court `must respond to questions concerning important legal issues,' it `must be careful not to invade the jury's province as fact-finder[.]' (quoting United States v. Nunez, 889 F.2d 1564, 1569 (6th Cir.1989))); see also Quercia 289 U.S. at 469-72, 53 S.Ct. 698 (concluding that, where trial court made a definite and concrete assertion of fact ... likely to remain lodged in the memory of the jury, assessing evidence in a manner resembling fact-finding, it overstepped the bounds of its duty as governor of the trial for the purpose of assuring its proper conduct and of determining questions of law). Cf. Williams, 646 F.3d at 643 (The jury is the only actor permitted to determine guilt  not the judge.). Indeed, the sentence immediately preceding the passage cited by the government for its broad proposition makes clear that the court there contemplated a trial court's response to the jury's confusion about the relevant legal standards: Discharge of the jury's responsibility for drawing appropriate conclusions from the testimony depended on discharge of the judge's responsibility to give the jury the required guidance by a lucid statement of the relevant legal criteria.  Bollenbach, 326 U.S. at 612, 66 S.Ct. 402 (emphasis added); see also id. (noting that government there contended it was the judge's special business to guide the jury by appropriate legal criteria through the maze of facts before it); United States v. Southwell, 432 F.3d 1050, 1053 (9th Cir. 2005) (`the district court has the responsibility to eliminate confusion when a jury asks for clarification of a particular issue' specifically because a trial court cannot anticipate, when providing initial jury instructions, every possible question a jury may have during deliberations (quoting United States v. Hayes, 794 F.2d 1348, 1352 (9th Cir.1986))). We have previously cautioned that [b]ecause the jury may not enlist the court as its partner in the fact-finding process, the trial judge must proceed circumspectly in responding to inquiries from the jury. The court may properly attempt to avoid intrusion on the jury's deliberations by framing responses in terms of supplemental instructions rather than following precisely the form of question asked by the jury. Walker, 575 F.2d at 214. In view of Bollenbach and the traditional roles of the judge and jury, Walker 's admonition is properly interpreted to mean that, while the court must aid the jury in clearing away doubts about legal standards, it is not to employ procedures in the exercise of its discretion that will place it in the position of being a partner in the fact-finding process. Id. We think this caution applies with equal force to the placement of attorneys in such a role. Allowing the attorneys to argue further on factual matters after the jury retired to deliberate, over defense objection, was akin to allowing a witness to provide an opinion as to how to weigh evidence presented, which is categorically proscribed. Cf. United States v. Stephens, 73 F.2d 695, 703 (9th Cir.1934) (A hypothetical question which calls upon a witness to determine the credibility of other witnesses or to pass upon conflicts in the testimony invades the province of the jury, whose duty it is to determine where the truth lay in cases of conflicts in the evidence. (citing Dexter v. Hall, 82 U.S. (15 Wall.) 9, 21 L.Ed. 73 (1873))). [10] The supplemental arguments here intruded upon the jury's fact-finding role in two ways and through two conduits: (1) the judge's questioning as to the reasons for the deadlock required that the jury divulge the state of its unfinished deliberations, thereby violating the jury's deliberative secrecy, Ayeni, 374 F.3d at 1320-1324; Courselle, supra, at 237-38; and (2) the parties' supplemental arguments, coupled with the judge's insistence on continuing after a second deadlock, injected the court and the attorneys into the jury's deliberative process, thereby raising the specter of jury coercion. Cf. Courselle, supra, at 225 (Coercive comments do not infringe upon deliberative secrecy because they do not require revelation of the jurors' thought processes, but [they] diminish the jury's independence.... In other words, coercive comments may not let the jury's thoughts out of the deliberation room, but they let the judge's influence in.). The district court ordered, and the parties presented, additional arguments regarding matters of fact. Because the parties were alerted to the factual issues dividing the jury, they could tailor their arguments accordingly. As Judge Tatel observed in Ayeni, supplemental arguments addressing factual issues thus permit[ted] the lawyers to effectively participate in the jury's deliberations, almost as if they were in the jury room itself. 374 F.3d at 1320. Additionally, given the judge's decision to order such arguments after the jury reported a second deadlock, the lawyers' arguments were of perhaps increased coercive value: the implication was, as with a second Allen charge, that the judge believed the jury had not accorded proper deference to his prior encouragement to reach a verdict. See Seawell, 550 F.2d at 1163. Thus, though we do not foreclose the possibility that supplemental argument treating factual matters could ever be used, its employment here resulted in an impermissible intrusion into the jury's role as the sole fact-finder.