Opinion ID: 1058084
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 9

Heading: Question as to Unanimous Verdict

Text: After three hours of deliberations, the jury submitted several questions to the trial court. The questions were as follows: 1. Re-identifying mitigating circumstances. What will happen if we can't come to an agreement? 2. What is mitigating? 3. Are we to weigh the testimony, mitigating and aggravating, that was given to determine a guilty verdict now in the sentencing phase? and 4. And are we to weigh the facts from the entire trial to form our opinion for the sentence? In response to the question What will happen if we can't come to an agreement? the trial court reread portions of the jury charge, including Tennessee law provides that no sentence of death or sentence of imprisonment shall be imposed by a jury but upon unanimous finding that the State has proved beyond a reasonable doubt the existence of one or more statutory aggravating circumstances. The jury resumed their deliberations, and, three hours later reached its verdict imposing a sentence of death. The Appellant now submits that the trial court erred in failing to give the jury accurate sentencing information as to the consequence of their failure to reach a verdict. He argues that the trial court's failure to properly respond to the jury's question gives rise to a reasonable probability of a coerced verdict. Contemporaneously, he asks this Court to find section 39-13-204(h), Tennessee Code Annotated, unconstitutional in the context of the present case. The trial court adhered to legislative direction in its instruction to the jury. See Tenn.Code Ann. § 39-13-204(f)(1), (2); -204(g)(1). The trial court further respected the legislature's admonition contained in section 39-13-204(h), Tennessee Code Annotated, The judge shall not instruct the jury, nor shall the attorneys be permitted to comment at any time to the jury, on the effect of the jury's failure to agree on a punishment. In this regard, we cannot conclude that the trial court erred by refusing to ignore legislative directive. The Appellant also attacks the failure to fully inform the jury as to the consequences if the jury fails to reach a unanimous verdict as unconstitutional. Relying upon the Sixth, Eight, and Fourteenth Amendments, Appellant argues that by permitting jurors to remain ignorant of the true consequence of their failure to reach a unanimous verdict is misleading and coercive and it causes the jury to arbitrarily arrive at a unanimous verdict in order to avoid the imagined adverse consequences of a failure to agree on punishment. This argument has been previously rejected by our supreme court. See State v. Stevens, 78 S.W.3d 817, 850 (Tenn.2002), cert. denied, 537 U.S. 1115, 123 S.Ct. 873, 154 L.Ed.2d 790 (2003); State v. Vann, 976 S.W.2d 93, 118 (Tenn.1998); State v. Smith, 893 S.W.2d 908, 926 (Tenn.1994). Thus, we find no error.