Court Opinion

ID: 9465106
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 00:35:54.990843+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:38:58.469466
License: Public Domain

COLEMAN, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
Judge Gee has correctly stated the law of this Circuit with reference to the Allen charge. I therefore concur in the opinion which he has authored for the Court.
At the risk, however, of being accused of an attempt to fight lost battles all over again, I must, in good conscience, again state my long-held opposition to the use of the Allen charge, as referred to by Judge Gee in Footnote 4.
It was my professional privilege, in days now long gone, to prosecute or defend in literally hundreds of criminal trials, both state and federal. I also served four years as a state trial judge in a court of general jurisdiction, civil and criminal. That experience taught me that the Allen charge in all its forms is inherently coercive and, with *243deference, I have not the slightest doubt that it infringes on the right of a defendant to the unhampered product of the constitutionally guaranteed jury system once a jury has retired to consider its verdict.
Although I have not the slightest doubt, from the record, that these appellants were flagrantly guilty and should have been convicted, I am troubled about the trial procedure when the verdict came 34 minutes before midnight, on a noteworthily stormy night, and then only after the receipt of an admonition from the trial judge, given sua sponte at the late hour of 10:30 P.M.
There were six defendants and a thirteen count indictment. The trial had lasted five days. Including time for dinner, the jury had been out less than five hours when it got the Allen charge. When it got the charge it was not sent home and told to return the next day to continue its deliberations. It was returned to its room and kept there until it did return a verdict shortly before midnight.
Of course, this was not the extensive detention suffered by a jury in Attala County, Mississippi, who, in 1913, was trying a man for shooting the sheriff of the adjoining County of Choctaw. That jury retired at noon of a Saturday to consider its verdict. Under state law it could not be allowed to separate under any circumstances. The trial judge held the jury until the following Saturday, when it was finally discharged for inability to agree on a verdict.
My whole point is that once a jury is handed the case the role of the judge has come to an end unless the jury sees fit to ask for further enlightenment as to the law. The Allen charge does not concern itself with the law; it is a direct appeal for a verdict, emanating from “the boss of the court”. My opposition to its use stands unabated. If, however, it is going to be used (as the law now permits) it ought not to be given after five o’clock on any court day.
Nothing I have said is to be construed as a criticism of the trial judge. He acted well within the law as it presently stands in this Circuit.