Court Opinion

ID: 9715405
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 06:04:45.656879+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:34.804342
License: Public Domain

SHEPARD, Chief Justice,
concurring.
I join the Court's opinion because it reaffirms our precedent, prohibiting the use of "Allen charges" to break jury deadlocks and our rule that if one instruction is to be reread they should all be re-read.
The application of these rules appears awkward in this case because the jury's question to the court seems like a request for information and not a declaration that the jurors were deadlocked. The trial judge interpreted the question as an indication of deadlock, however, and it is possible that she was right. If so, as the Court's opinion indicates, the decision to give an "Allen charge" was error.
This appeal also suggests another question which will be ripe for examination when the appropriate case presents itself. Our declaration in Lewis v. State that a judge should re-read instructions to a deadlocked jury 8 was written during an era when it was error to send instructions to the jury room. Now that we regularly give the jury the written instructions, this may be something left to trial court discretion.
DICKSON, J., joins.

. Lewis, 424 N.E.2d at 111.