Opinion ID: 2429513
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Instruction to Continue the Deliberations

Text: After the court read a verdict that stated the defendants had been found guilty on all counts, a poll of the jurors revealed that the published verdict did not represent the individual verdict of each of the jurors. The defendants contend that subsequent directions the jury received to continue deliberating, at and after the time that the jury had already requested and received permission to leave for the weekend, were coercive and necessitate a new trial. The principle that jurors may not be coerced into surrendering views conscientiously held is so clear as to require no elaboration. Jenkins v. United States, 380 U.S. 445, 446, 85 S.Ct. 1059, 13 L.Ed.2d 957 (1965) (per curiam). Our assessment of whether instructions to the jury were impermissibly coercive looks to `whether the court's communications pressured the jur[ors] to surrender their honest opinions for the mere purpose of returning a verdict.' United States v. Crotteau, 218 F.3d 826, 835 (7th Cir.2000) (quoting United States v. Kramer, 955 F.2d 479, 489 (7th Cir.1992)). Even though a judge might have the best of intentions, innocently intended directions can still be coercive. United States v. Chaney, 559 F.2d 1094, 1098 (7th Cir. 1977). In Chaney, for example, the judge gave a supplemental instruction to the jurors at 12:20 a.m. that said, If you do not arrive at a verdict then the jury will be brought into the court tomorrow morning at 9:30 and the Court will then determine what course should be taken. We ruled that the jurors could have understood the direction to mean that they must reach a verdict to avoid being required to stay until 9:30 a.m., or that they must deliberate until reaching a verdict, or that the court might require them to continue deliberating in the morning even though they had been without sleep. In light of these potential inferences, we concluded that the instruction, although innocently given, required a new trial. Id. In this case, the jurors began deliberating on a Thursday afternoon and began again the next morning. Sometime on Friday, the jurors sent a note that requested permission to leave that day by 3:30 p.m., and the judge responded that they could. At about 3:20 p.m., the jury sent a note with a question about the requirements for conviction on one of the charges. While the judge and parties were discussing how to respond to the question, the jury sent another note that said it had reached a verdict. The court brought the jurors into the courtroom. After announcing a verdict that convicted the defendants on all counts, the court polled the jurors at the defendants' request, and the second juror polled responded that the published verdict did not represent her individual verdict. The defendants contend on appeal that at this point, the judge should have given the instruction we approved in United States v. Silvern, 484 F.2d 879, 883 (7th Cir.1973), which provides: The verdict must represent the considered judgment of each juror. In order to return a verdict, it is necessary that each juror agree thereto. Your verdict must be unanimous. It is your duty, as jurors, to consult with one another and to deliberate with a view to reaching an agreement, if you can do so without violence to individual judgment. Each of you must decide the case for yourself, but do so only after an impartial consideration of the evidence with your fellow jurors. In the course of your deliberations, do not hesitate to reexamine your own views and change your opinion if convinced it is erroneous. But do not surrender your honest conviction as to the weight or effect of evidence solely because of the opinion of your fellow jurors, or for the mere purpose of returning a verdict. You are not partisans. You are judgesjudges of the facts. Your sole interest is to ascertain the truth from the evidence in the case. During discussions with the trial judge, however, defense counsel stated it did not think a Silvern instruction was a good idea then, so our review of the request for a Silvern instruction is for plain error. See United States v. Jones, 600 F.3d 847, 856 (7th Cir.2010). The jury must be deadlocked before a Silvern instruction is required. See United States v. Degraffenried, 339 F.3d 576, 580 (7th Cir.2003); United States v. Miller, 159 F.3d 1106, 1110-11 (7th Cir. 1998). The juror's response during the poll that the verdict as published did not reflect her own verdict meant there was not a unanimous verdict, but it did not necessarily mean the jury was deadlocked. See United States v. Carraway, 108 F.3d 745, 752 (7th Cir.1997) (per curiam). As we explained in Carraway, [W]hen the court decided ... to have the jury continue deliberatingafter polling of the jury had been interrupted by the juror's announcement that she disagreed with the guilty verdict against Carrawaythere was no clear indication that the jury was deadlocked as to Carraway's culpability and that further deliberations would be fruitless. The jury had, after all, signed a unanimous verdict as to Carraway, and the reason for the objecting juror's second thoughts were (and are) unknown. Id. The same reasoning holds true here. We do not know why the juror responded that the published verdict did not represent her individual verdict, and, more importantly, there was no indication that further deliberations would not be helpful. There was no plain error when the jury did not receive a Silvern instruction at that juncture. The lack of a Silvern instruction at this point (and note that the jury had received the Silvern instruction as one of its instructions before it began deliberating), therefore, was not a problem in and of itself. The direction to continue deliberating after the poll revealed a lack of unanimity also was not inherently problematic, see Carraway, 108 F.3d at 752, as reflected in Rule 31(d) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure: After a verdict is returned but before the jury is discharged, the court must on a party's request, or may on its own, poll the jurors individually. If the poll reveals a lack of unanimity, the court may direct the jury to deliberate further or may declare a mistrial and discharge the jury. However, our review does not end there, as the defendants also contend that the court's communications after the poll were coercive of unanimity. This argument requires that we consider the directions given by the trial court in `context and under all the circumstances.'  Lowenfield v. Phelps, 484 U.S. 231, 237, 108 S.Ct. 546, 98 L.Ed.2d 568 (1988) (quoting Jenkins, 380 U.S. at 446, 85 S.Ct. 1059). Although Rule 31(d) allows a judge to direct the jury to deliberate further if a poll reveals a lack of unanimity, it does not allow, of course, for directions that are coercive. And although we find no plain error in the fact that the jurors did not receive a Silvern instruction after the poll, the policy behind the Silvern instruction matters: a juror should not surrender his honest conviction as to the weight or effect of evidence solely because of the opinion of his fellow jurors, or for the mere purpose of returning a verdict. Silvern, 484 F.2d at 883 n. 5. The jurors had asked earlier in the day to leave by 3:30 p.m. and been told they could. Nonetheless, when the jury returned a verdict very close to that time and the second juror polled answered that the published verdict did not represent her own, the court followed that juror's response by stating: All right. Then I'm going to ask that you people go back to the jury room. At one point you had indicated you wanted to leave today, but I'll let you people decide what you want to do and deliberate further. We do not have a unanimous verdict, so that is all. This directive to continue deliberating was issued right around 3:30 p.m., the time that the jury had already asked for and received permission to leave. It came without the caveat that if the jurors still wanted to leave at 3:30 p.m. that day, they could do so by simply telling the judge. Cf. United States v. Talkington, 875 F.2d 591, 596-97 (7th Cir.1989) (direction not coercive that asked jurors whether they wished to (1) continue deliberating for another hour, or (2) go either home or to a hotel for the evening and continue deliberating the next morning at 10:00 a.m.). It also came without consulting counsel; hearing from the parties outside the jury's presence might have yielded a response to the jury upon which all could agree. Cf. Talkington, 875 F.2d at 597. On their face, the directions the jurors received after the poll suggested that the jurors could not leave for the day until they had a unanimous verdict, despite their previous request to have already left by that point. Perhaps the statement, At one point you had indicated you wanted to leave today, but I'll let you people decide what you want to do and deliberate further, had been intended as an invitation for the jurors to leave for the day if they wished in light of their earlier request to depart at 3:30 p.m. Unfortunately, it reads as the opposite, especially since it was preceded by a direction to return to the jury room and followed by the statement, We do not have a unanimous verdict, so that is all. At the time of that direction, apparently only a single vote stood between the defendants and conviction, and care was especially important. The jurors soon sent out another note confirming their disagreement: We have a debated situation with a decision on two of the counts. They are as follows: One, Count 2; two, Count 3. May we have a little direction if that is possible? Can a juror be asked to be dismissed in a proceedings? The court discussed the note with counsel and indicated it would answer with the direction, Please continue to deliberate. A juror may not be dismissed. One defense counsel responded with concern that the jurors might take such a direction to mean they could not leave as early as they wanted and stated, `Please continue to deliberate.' Maybe that means they'll think they have to stay tonight. I mean, maybe The court responded, Well, they have already been told they can go home. To that, defense counsel responded with the ambiguous, Okay, which could well be an acknowledgment that the court had ruled against it. The bottom line is that the jurors were again told without caveat to continue deliberating, despite their request earlier in the day to leave by 3:30 p.m. We do not know why jurors had asked to leave that day by 3:30 p.m., or whether the holdout juror needed or wanted to leave by that time on that particular day. What we do know is that the jurors may well have understood the post-poll instructions to mean that they needed to return a unanimous verdict immediately if they still wanted to leave at their requested time. Even though the effect was unintentional, under these circumstances, we conclude that the instructions were impermissibly coercive. These directions, along with the inadequacy of the inquiry into the jurors' safety concerns, lead us to conclude that the defendants should receive a new trial.