Court Opinion

ID: 9487538
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:19:40.143545+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:52:20.534904
License: Public Domain

KOZINSKI, Circuit Judge, dissenting:
The majority has made a bad situation worse. In its earlier opinion, it merely held that “our Allen charge cases are relevant.” 12 F.3d 1474, 1477 (9th Cir.1993). Today, it invents a whole new doctrine — the “de facto Allen charge.” Maj. op. at 980. According to the majority, “the court’s instruction to continue deliberating until the end of the day sent a clear message that the jurors in the majority were to hold their position and persuade the single hold-out juror to join in a unanimous verdict, and the hold-out juror was to cooperate in the movement towards unanimity.” Id.
With all due respect to my colleagues, this is sheer phantasy. What happened here is nothing like giving an Allen charge, where the trial judge explicitly exhorts jurors to try to achieve unanimity. The idea that we can piece together a de facto Allen charge from a trial judge’s questions and comments, none of which exhorts the jury to do anything at all, is far more novel and far more dangerous than what the majority said the last time around. Teague v. Lane, 489 U.S. 288, 109 S.Ct. 1060, 103 L.Ed.2d 334 (1989), is clearly implicated.
For these reasons, and those stated in my earlier dissent, see 12 F.3d at 1479-85, I *982continue to believe that the district court’s judgment must be affirmed.