Opinion ID: 2305688
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Post-Trial Motions and Sentencing

Text: About a month after the trial, but before sentencing, appellant filed a Motion to Set Aside the Verdict Based on Improperly Intimidating Influences at Polling, to which was attached a statement (erroneously captioned as an affidavit) by juror Charles Hall. The motion and the written statement alleged that Mr. Hall had been intimidated in confirming the jury's guilty verdict during polling by Darone Derricott's presence in the courtroom. The motion also alleged that another juror, identified only as Ms. Scott, felt `trapped' into the guilty verdict and did not dissent during the jury poll because she feared she would be penalized by the court for changing her verdict. The government filed a response asserting that the trial judge had instructed the jurors that they could state no if they disagreed with the guilty verdict and that Mr. Derricott was not even in the courtroom during the poll. When the case came on for sentencing, the court denied appellant's motion, ruling that the motion and Mr. Hall's written statement were totally inadequate to justify attacking the verdict. With respect to juror Scott, the court noted that it had clearly indicated that [Ms. Scott] had the ability to change the position she had agreed to back in the jury room. The court found Mr. Hall's claim of intimidation to be totally absurd . . . because, if he was so afraid of Mr. Derricott and he felt compelled to return a verdict of guilty because of Mr. Derricott, then why did he find Mr. Gibson not guilty of committing the assault against Mr. Derricott? That doesn't make sense. . . . I think [Mr. Hall's] statements are just totally inconsistent with the reality of what occurred in this case. The court then proceeded to impose sentence. After allowing appellant and his family members to speak, the court sentenced him to fifteen years to life, the maximum possible sentence, on the armed manslaughter conviction. In doing so, the court made the following comments: Sentencing is probably the most difficult thing that judges are asked to do. And it is sad and it hurts. And I don't know what, as a society, we do in order to turn that situation around. But it is sad when the number one cause of death for black men in this country between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four is homicide. . . . A black man in this society has a . . . one in twenty-one chance of dying as a result of homicide before he reaches his thirtieth birthday. And on the one hand I am being asked to, in a sense, give a slap on the wrist, which obviously a fifteen-month sentence with probation, which is being asked by the defensethat's what this would be. I remember growing up and the hurt I always saw in my mother's eyes when she talked about her father. I never really understood the hurt that she felt until I got older and she told me that, you know, throughout her life she was denied an opportunity to have a father because someone decided to kill him and take his pay check. And everybody knew, she said, down in Georgia, who did it. But the life of a black man was thought to be not worth anything, and therefore, nobody was ever punished, and that has agonized my mother throughout her entire life. And I think all too often that has been the legacy of this country, that we do not respect the value of black life. And to impose a fifteen-month sentence for an offense that involved the stabbing of another human being in the back who, at the time he was stabbed, could not have been posing a threat to the defendant, I think would be saying to the Etheridge family and to the rest of society who care about people who are killed, that the life of black men is nothing. And I just can't buy in on that proposition. Several weeks later, appellant filed a timely motion to reduce sentence pursuant to Super. Ct.Crim. R. 35. In a separate motion, appellant sought recusal of the trial judge from further proceedings in this case and asked that the motion to reduce sentence be assigned to another judge. In a written order, the trial judge denied both motions.