Opinion ID: 1192491
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The District Court Has Discretion to Instruct the Jury on Applicable Mandatory Minimum Sentence in Some Circumstances

Text: The government concedes that neither the Supreme Court nor this Court has expressly held that a court has no authority to inform the jury of the applicable sentence, but it argues that the principles motivating various Supreme Court and Second Circuit decisions demand the conclusion that a district court may not inform the jury of a mandatory minimum sentence. Specifically, the government draws two principles from court rulings: (1) the Supreme Court's teaching in Shannon that the jury is to base its verdict on the evidence before it, without regard to the possible consequences of the verdict, 512 U.S. at 576, 114 S.Ct. 2419, and (2) our disapproval, expressed in United States v. Thomas, 116 F.3d 606, 616 (2d Cir.1997), of any encouragement of jury nullification. The government argues that these two principles are inconsistent with any recognition of district court discretion to instruct the jury as to the consequences of a verdict. In fact, the law does not support such an absolute prohibition. First, the government's position contradicts the Supreme Court's explicit statements in Shannon. Although the Shannon Court concluded that an instruction [on the consequences of a not-guilty-by-reason-of-insanity verdict] is not to be given as a matter of general practice it also specifically recognize[d] that an instruction of some form may be necessary under certain limited circumstances. 512 U.S. at 587-88, 114 S.Ct. 2419. And elsewhere in Shannon, the Court observed:  [A]s a general matter, jurors are not informed of mandatory minimum or maximum sentences. Id. at 586, 114 S.Ct. 2419 (emphasis added). Far from prohibiting all instructions to the jury regarding the consequences of its verdict, these statements make clear that in some, albeit limited, circumstances it may be appropriate to instruct the jury regarding those consequences. Second, while Shannon and Pabon-Cruz emphasize that a jury should base its verdict on the evidence, without regard to that verdict's consequences, and Thomas stresses the general inappropriateness of jury nullification, these principles do not lead inexorably to the conclusion that a court may never instruct the jury on the consequences of its verdict. Without attempting to define the boundaries of a district court's discretion in this regard, we recognize the possibility, as the Court in Shannon did, that circumstances may exist in which instructing the jury on the consequences of its verdict will better ensure that the jury bases that verdict solely on the evidence and will better discourage nullification. Shannon provided an example of one situation in which an instruction on the consequences of a verdict might be appropriate: If ... a witness or prosecutor states in the presence of the jury that a particular defendant would `go free' if found [not guilty by reason of insanity], it may be necessary for the district court to intervene with an instruction to counter such a misstatement. Shannon, 512 U.S. at 587, 114 S.Ct. 2419. The Shannon Court's reasoning suggests that an instruction might be appropriate in such circumstances because the jury's attention already has been drawn in an unfair and misleading way toward the very thing โ the possible consequences of its verdict โ it should ignore. Id. at 586, 114 S.Ct. 2419. In this case, it is not necessary to decide whether it would have been within the district court's discretion to inform the jury of the applicable mandatory minimum sentence. Even assuming arguendo that the district court had discretion to give such an instruction, it was certainly within the trial court's discretion to decline to instruct the jury on the mandatory minimum sentence. Once the jury rendered a verdict upon an error-free trial, only a compelling reason involving substantial unfairness could justify undoing the jury's verdict and ordering a new trial. [8] See United States v. Cot้, 544 F.3d 88, 101 (2d Cir.2008) ([C]ourts must ... exercise Rule 33 authority sparingly and in the most extraordinary circumstances[,] ... [such as where] a district court is convinced that the jury has reached a seriously erroneous result or that the verdict is a miscarriage of justice. ... [T]he court may not wholly usurp the jury's role. (internal quotation marks omitted)). Whether circumstances could be imagined in which a trial judge's decision to take some step within its permitted discretion might result in unfair, unforeseen prejudice so as to justify an order for a new trial, in this case, no such justifications were identified. There was no suggestion that the evidence failed to prove Polizzi's guilt, that witnesses against him lied or were mistaken, or that the fairness of his trail was impaired by some error or some untoward prejudicial event. The only justification cited by the district court for the retrial order was that some jurors might have voted for acquittal so as to nullify the application of the harsh sentencing law had they been aware of the mandatory minimum sentence. Based on its post-verdict colloquy with the jurors, the court stated that Polizzi was prejudiced because it [wa]s apparent that a ... rational jury [if informed of the applicable mandatory sentence] would likely have deadlocked on the receiving counts or found Polizzi not guilty by reason of insanity. Polizzi, 549 F.Supp.2d at 448. Although jurors have the capacity to nullify, it is not the proper role of courts to encourage nullification. See Thomas, 116 F.3d at 615. A trial court's failure to take discretionary steps that might have induced jurors to nullify does not furnish an adequate justification for a finding under Rule 33 that the interest of justice... requires a new trial. In short, given that the jury rendered its verdict after a trial conducted without error and without any occurrence that risked to prejudice the defendant in the eyes of the jury, the mere fact that jurors advised of the harsh sentencing law might have voted to acquit in an effort to nullify its application did not furnish adequate justification for vacating the jury's verdict and ordering a new trial.