Opinion ID: 2815635
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Special Unanimity Instruction

Text: The trial judge gave a standard “general unanimity” instruction as part of his final charge to the jury: The verdict in this case must represent the considered judgment of each juror. In order to return a verdict, each juror must agree on the verdict. In other words, your verdict must be unanimous. See Criminal Jury Instructions for the District of Columbia, No. 2.405 (5th ed. 2010). Appellant contends that the judge also should have given a “special unanimity” instruction on the charges of carrying a pistol without a license in a gun-free zone and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. In particular, appellant asserts that the judge was required, in the circumstances, to instruct the 34 jury that all twelve jurors must agree on a particular act of carrying or possession of the Bulldog revolver before the jury could find him guilty of either weapons offense. Without a special unanimity instruction, appellant argues, there is an unacceptable risk that the jury found him guilty of the weapons offenses through non-unanimous verdicts, i.e., that some jurors found him guilty based on evidence of his carrying and possession of the revolver in the basement of the Ord Street house while others found him guilty based on evidence of his carrying and possession of the gun in the van. Appellant contends that the error requires the reversal of his convictions on both weapons charges even though he did not request a special unanimity instruction at trial. The right to a unanimous verdict is an “indispensable feature of the Sixth Amendment right to trial by jury.” Scarborough v. United States, 522 A.2d 869, 872 (D.C. 1987) (en banc). The unanimity guarantee “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 873 (quoting United States v. Gipson, 553 F.2d 453, 457-58 (5th Cir. 1977)). Thus, whenever one count in an indictment encompasses two or more separate criminal acts, the trial judge must instruct the jury that a guilty verdict may be returned only 35 if all jurors agree “as to the specific act the defendant committed.” Id.; see also Wynn v. United States, 48 A.3d 181, 192 (D.C. 2012).2 A special unanimity instruction is not required, however, “when a single count is charged and the facts show a continuing course of conduct, rather than a succession of clearly detached incidents.” Gray v. United States, 544 A.2d 1255, 1258 (D.C. 1988). In that event, the alleged actions of the defendant are not distinct, either factually or legally, and a special instruction is not necessary to ensure unanimity among the members of the jury. Id. 2 The current edition of the standard Red Book instructions contains the following instruction on special unanimity: [Name of defendant] has been charged with one count of [name of offense]. You have heard evidence of more than one act or incident related to this count. [Describe the separate acts/incidents.] You may find [name of defendant] guilty on this count if the government proves beyond a reasonable doubt that [name of defendant] committed either of these acts/incidents. However, in order to return a guilty verdict on this count, you must all agree that [name of defendant] committed [describe first act/incident] or you must all agree that [name of defendant] committed [describe second act/incident] [repeat if other alternative acts/incidents]. Criminal Jury Instructions for the District of Columbia, No. 2.406 (5th ed. 2014). 36 It is a close question whether a special unanimity instruction was required in these circumstances. On the one hand, we have held in the merger context that the act of carrying or possessing a weapon “is continuous and may be committed by a person who is moving from place to place,” Bruce v. United States, 471 A.2d 1005, 1007 (D.C. 1984), and there is no evidence in the record that appellant ever broke his continuous (and unlawful) carrying and possession of the Bulldog revolver throughout the events at issue by putting it away or (as to the charge of carrying a pistol without a license) by returning it to his home, place of business, or other location at which his carrying of the weapon might not have been unlawful, see id. On the other hand, we have recognized that “unanimity and merger inquiries must be approached from different perspectives in light of the different constitutional principles they are meant to safeguard,” Bryant v. United States, 93 A.3d 210, 219 (D.C. 2014), and we are concerned, in light of the jury’s inability to reach unanimous verdicts on the charges arising from the shootings of Mr. Brown and Mr. Stuckey, that the jury also may have been divided on the question whether appellant carried and possessed the Bulldog revolver in the van. In this regard, we reiterate our recent statement that “[i]n determining whether a special unanimity instruction was required, we need only determine that it was possible, based on the evidence, for the jury to reasonably perceive separate incidents and then base their convictions on different factual predicates.” Id. at 220-21. 37 We need not resolve this difficult question, however, because appellant’s failure to request a special unanimity instruction at trial subjects his claim to plain error review on appeal, see id. at 217; Wynn, 48 A.3d at 192, and appellant cannot satisfy the plain error standard. Even if we were to assume, without deciding, that the trial judge’s failure sua sponte to give a special unanimity instruction met the first three prongs of the plain error standard – i.e., that it was a clear error affecting appellant’s substantial rights – appellant cannot meet the fourth prong of the plain error standard by showing that a decision on appeal declining to correct the error would seriously erode the fairness, integrity, or public reputation of judicial proceedings. See Marshall, 15 A.3d at 710. First, “we can rely on the ‘robust intuition and good common-sense of jurors . . . to apply the standard unanimity charge to circumstances where special unanimity problems lurk.’” Bryant, 93 A.3d at 222 (alteration in original) (quoting Shivers v. United States, 533 A.2d 258, 263 n.14 (D.C. 1987)). We are thus confident that the general unanimity instruction the judge gave to the jury at trial reduced the danger of non-unanimous verdicts on the weapons offenses. Second, as we discuss below, the government presented abundant evidence at trial of appellant’s carrying and possession of the Bulldog revolver in the basement of the Ord Street house and in the van in which the shootings occurred. As we held in Bryant, the government’s presentation of 38 ample evidence at trial of a defendant’s commission of all of the separate acts constituting an offense precludes the defendant on appeal from “carry[ing] his burden on this [fourth] prong of plain error analysis.” Id. at 225. We therefore find no reversible error.