Opinion ID: 1528579
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Refusal to declare a mistrial.

Text: Salmon contends that even if Juror No. 2 was properly excused, the trial judge abused her discretion by denying his motion for a mistrial. He relies primarily on the Advisory Committee's note to Fed.R.Crim.P. 23, in which the Committee stated: The [1983] amendment provides that if a juror is excused after the jury has retired to consider its verdict, it is within the discretion of the court whether to declare a mistrial or to permit deliberations to continue with 11 jurors. If the trial has been brief and not much would be lost by retrial, the court might well conclude that the unusual step of allowing a jury verdict by less than 12 jurors absent stipulation should not be taken. On the other hand, if the trial has been protracted the court is much more likely to opt for continuing with the remaining 11 jurors. (Emphasis added.) Salmon's trial was short, and, according to him, a mistrial was therefore the appropriate remedy. We do not agree. This issue has been preserved for appeal barely, if at all. During a discussion between court and counsel as to how and when the judge's decision to excuse Juror No. 2 should be communicated to the remaining jurors, Salmon's attorney stated: Well, I guess, first of all, I move for a mistrial based on that, just for the record.  (Emphasis added.) Counsel provided no reasons for this rather half-hearted request, and he must therefore have been relying on his earlier erroneous contentions that the JTAA does not apply to the death of a member of a juror's family and that the Constitution requires a twelve-member jury. His position in the trial court is a far cry indeed from his position on appeal, for his principal claim in this court is that a mistrial should have been granted because the trial was short and because a retrial therefore would not be costly. But even if we assume, without deciding, that Salmon's appellate contentions are properly before us, we are satisfied that there was no abuse of discretion. A mistrial is a severe remedy  a step to be avoided whenever possible, and one to be taken only in circumstances manifesting a necessity therefor. United States v. Clarke, 306 U.S.App. D.C. 251, 264, 24 F.3d 257, 270 (1994) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). We will reverse an order denying a motion for a mistrial only if the decision appears irrational, unreasonable, or so extreme that failure to reverse would result in a miscarriage of justice. Bragdon v. United States, 668 A.2d 403, 405 n. 2 (D.C.1995) (per curiam). Salmon has made no such showing. The declaration of a mistrial, like the reversal of a conviction, requires the court and the parties to begin the trial all over again. A mistrial therefore entails substantial social costs: it forces jurors, witnesses, courts, the prosecution, and the defendants to expend further time, energy, and other resources to repeat a trial that has already once taken place; victims may be asked to relive their disturbing experiences. United States v. Mechanik, 475 U.S. 66, 72, 106 S.Ct. 938, 942, 89 L.Ed.2d 50 (1986); see also Allen v. United States, 603 A.2d 1219, 1228 n. 19 (D.C.1992) (en banc). If the case is retried immediately, then, in a busy urban trial court, it necessarily bumps another trial in which the parties and counsel are ready to proceed. It is also likely to have a domino effect on other previously scheduled trials. Finding new dates may be difficult, for attorneys and witnesses may be unavailable. It is also important to note that defendants whose trials must be postponed because Salmon must be tried again may well be in pretrial detention, a situation that is prolonged by such a postponement. If, on the other hand, the trial of the defendant's case is deferred until a significantly later date, then [t]he passage of time, erosion of memory, and dispersion of witnesses [14] may render retrial difficult, even impossible.... Thus, while reversal may, in theory, entitle the defendant only to retrial, in practice it may reward the accused with complete freedom from prosecution, ... and thereby cost society the right to punish admitted offenders.... Mechanik, 475 U.S. at 72, 106 S.Ct. at 942 (citations, internal quotation marks, and brackets omitted). The price of a retrial is one that society must be prepared to pay if the defendant's initial trial was unfair and if a miscarriage of justice resulted. This case, however, does not entail an injustice. Salmon's sole contention is that he was found guilty by eleven jurors instead of by twelve. So far as the record reveals, all eleven jurors were impartial, and Salmon makes no claim to the contrary. The JTAA expressly states that, in circumstances such as these, eleven jurors can return a valid verdict. Moreover, the Supreme Court has held that a jury of six is constitutionally sufficient, and thus compatible with the requirements of basic fairness. There is nothing magic about the number twelve. The Supreme Court explained in Williams that history affords little insight into the considerations that gradually led the size of that body to be generally fixed at 12. Some have suggested that the number 12 was fixed upon simply because that was the number of the presentment jury from the hundred, from which the petit jury developed. Other, less circular but more fanciful reasons for the number 12 have been given, but they were all brought forward after the number was fixed, and rest on little more than mystical or superstitious insights into the significance of 12. Lord Coke's explanation that the  number of twelve is much respected in holy writ, as 12 apostles, 12 stones, 12 tribes, etc., is typical. In short, while sometime in the 14th century the size of the jury at common law came to be fixed generally at 12, that particular feature of the jury system appears to have been a historical accident, unrelated to the great purposes which gave rise to the jury in the first place. 399 U.S. at 87-90, 90 S.Ct. at 1899-1900 (emphasis in original; footnotes omitted). Indeed, as this court recently noted, a jury of twelve ... is not deemed to offer any advantage [to] the defendant, and even a statute which permits trial by a jury of six instead of twelve operates only in a limited and [in]substantial manner to the defendant's disadvantage. Duvall, supra, 676 A.2d at 451 (quoting State v. Maresca, 173 Conn. 450, 377 A.2d 1330, 1333 (1977)). Assuming that the judge correctly held that the death of the juror's aunt constituted extraordinary circumstances within the meaning of the JTAA  and we have so concluded  Salmon's loss of a twelfth juror is not miscarriage of justice material. [15] Salmon insists, however, that the Advisory Committee note to Fed.R.Crim.P. 23 supports his position and that we should construe the JTAA accordingly. To the extent that the enactment of a District of Columbia statute can be viewed as the adoption of an advisory committee note to a Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure, there is some support for Salmon's position in a few federal appellate decisions. See, e.g., Araujo, supra, 62 F.3d at 936 (dictum). [16] We agree, however, with the following discussion of the issue by Judge Patricia Wald, writing for the court in United States v. Harrington, 323 U.S.App. D.C. 431, 108 F.3d 1460 (1997): Rule 23(b) explicitly and without reservation assigns the stop/go decision to the discretion of the trial court, and nothing in the accompanying Advisory Committee notes, or in any case of which we are aware, cabins this discretion in a way that would call this judge's decision into question. Harrington's argument that his trial was a relatively short and simple one is well taken, but the Advisory Committee notes say only that in such cases, a trial court might well decide that a mistrial is appropriate, while for longer and more complex trials courts would be more likely to decide against a mistrial. [Fed. R.Crim.P. 23] advisory committee's note. Because Rule 23(b) expressly leaves this decision in the trial court's discretion, and because we find no policy statement, case, or principle of fairness that would invalidate the discretionary decision made by the trial court here, Harrington's challenge to the eleven-member jury verdict fails. Id. at 443, 108 F.3d at 1472; accord, United States v. Patterson, 23 F.3d 1239, 1252 n. 17 (7th Cir.1994) (nothing in the rule requires the judge to declare a mistrial in all brief trials) (citation omitted). [17] Moreover, Duvall was also a brief trial  not much longer than the present one  and this court affirmed the trial judge's denial of the defense motion for a mistrial. The trial in this case was in fact a short one. If Salmon's attorney had requested a mistrial on that ground, it would have been incumbent upon the trial judge to include that consideration in her calculus in determining whether to grant Salmon's motion for a mistrial. It might then have been a permissible (but not a mandatory) exercise of her discretion to grant the defense motion, especially if the judge could reasonably be assured that all counsel and witnesses would be available on another suitable date, and that the cost of a mistrial, in terms of the impact on other cases and fairness to other affected persons, would not be prohibitive. Unlike our dissenting colleague, we are unwilling to burden the trial court's exercise of discretion in this area with the duty to balance explicitly the relative social costs, post at 961 (italics in original), of continuing the trial versus a mistrial. Considerations such as the length of the trial [or] the complexity of the issues, id., while meant to be objective criteria, can easily yield impressionistic and varying answers on similar facts. Moreover, while the District's statute reflects a preference in favor of twelve-member juries, id., its purpose is precisely to give the trial court a remedy short of mistrial when extraordinary circumstances have been shown to justify excusing a juror. On the record before us we are satisfied that the judge did not abuse her discretion in allowing the trial to proceed to verdict with eleven jurors. Affirmed. RUIZ, Associate Judge, dissenting: This case is one of first impression under the Jury Trial Amendment Act of 1994, D.C. Law 10-232, D.C.Code § 16-705(c) (1997) (JTAA). I agree with the majority that although Salmon's trial counsel did not explicitly state the reasons now advanced on appeal in support of a mistrial, we should review the trial court's ruling on the merits for abuse of discretion. The unanticipated situation presented by the death of Juror # 2's aunt and its consequences provided the parties with no time to research the JTAA or refine their arguments. Both the trial court and counsel in these situations may be understandably taken off guard by a completely unexpected denouement. Duvall v. United States, 676 A.2d 448, 452 n. 5 (D.C.1996) (quoting McCall v. United States, 596 A.2d 948, 960 (D.C.1991) (Schwelb, J., dissenting)). In this quickly-developing situation involving a new law, Salmon's counsel cannot be expected to have precisely articulated every reason for requesting a mistrial. During the trial court's brief discussion on the subject, Salmon's counsel raised two arguments objecting to dismissal of Juror # 2, and, when the trial court decided to dismiss the juror over counsel's objection, moved for a mistrial. We would be in a different posture had Salmon's counsel not requested a mistrial. See Cowan v. United States, 629 A.2d 496 (D.C. 1993). The Jury Trial Amendment Act provides in pertinent part that (c) The jury shall consist of twelve persons, unless the parties, with the approval of the court and in the manner provided by rules of the court, agree to a number less than twelve. Even absent such agreement, if, due to extraordinary circumstances, the court finds it necessary to excuse a juror for just cause after the jury has retired to consider its verdict, in the discretion of the court, a valid verdict may be returned by the remaining eleven jurors.