Opinion ID: 221663
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Charge to Continue Deliberations

Text: Washington further claims that the district court coerced the jury into finding that the conspiracy involved 50 grams of crack by instructing them to continue deliberating after they announced their failure to reach a unanimous verdict on whether the conspiracy involved 50 grams of crack, despite five hours of intense debate on that subject. Whether the court's instruction was improperly coercive is debatable. In any case, it was not plain error. The controlling question is whether the court's instruction was coercive. See, e.g., Weaver v. Thompson, 197 F.3d 359, 365 (9th Cir. 1999); Jiminez v. Myers, 40 F.3d 976, 979-80 (9th Cir. 1994). In answering that question, we consider four factors: (1) the form of the jury charge, (2) the length of deliberations following the 4 Rather than arguing that the outcome would have been different had the jury received proper instruction, Washington claims that the verdict subjected him to a harsher sentence than he would have received for a conspiracy involving 50 grams of cocaine. While Washington is indeed correct that the mandatory minimums for 50 grams of these two types of drugs are different, this fact alone does not fulfill Washington's obligation to show that the outcome of his trial would have been different if the jury had received proper instructions. See Olano, 507 U.S. at 73435. -11- charge, (3) the total time of deliberations, and (4) any other indicia of pressure. Weaver, 197 F.3d at 366. On the one hand, as Washington argues, the court required the jury to continue deliberations after five hours of what they described as intense debate on the crack issue. And it did so without offering cautionary language—that no juror should abandon his or her reasonable beliefs to arrive at a verdict. But neither did the court request that any juror reexamine the legitimacy of his or her position, as in the traditional Allen charge.5 See Allen v. United States, 164 U.S. 492, 501 (1896). While courts have not settled upon a precise formulation for the charge, United States v. Mason, 658 F.2d 1263, 1265 (9th Cir. 1981), the defining feature of an Allen charge is the request that jurors, particularly minority jurors, re-examine their views of the evidence, see, e.g., Rodriguez v. 5 Indeed, in its initial instructions to the jury, the court said: Each of you must decide the case for yourself, but you should do so only after you have considered all the evidence, discussed it fully with the other jurors, and listened to the views of your fellow jurors. Do not be afraid to change your opinion if the discussion persuades you that you should. But do not come to a decision simply because other jurors think it is right. It is important that you attempt to reach a unanimous verdict, but, of course, only if each of you can do so after having made your own conscientious decision. Do not change an honest belief about the weight and effect of the evidence simply to reach a verdict. -12- Marshall, 125 F.3d 739, 750 (9th Cir. 1997) (An Allen charge is traditionally understood as an instruction to work towards unanimity by considering the views of others when a jury has reached an impasse in its deliberations.), overruled on other grounds by Payton v. Woodford, 299 F.3d 815, 829 n.11 (9th Cir. 2002); United States v. Wills, 88 F.3d 704, 716 (9th Cir. 1996). For the most part, the court was merely asking the jurors to take a break and then continue deliberations. On a plain error review, we cannot say such an instruction was coercive.6