Court Opinion

ID: 9636669
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 14:37:55.644769+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:09:47.988176
License: Public Domain

GILBERT, Circuit Judge
(dissenting). I cannot believe that, by the decision in the Brasfield Case, the Supreme Court intended to declare the hard and fast rule that in a criminal ease a trial judge, by merely propounding to a jury unable to agree, a question concerning its division, no matter what the answer may be, or whether answered or not, commits error which affects the substantial rights of the defendant and requires reversal of the judgment. In that case, in reply to the inquiry, the jury had answered that they stood 9 to 3, without indicating which number favored a conviction. The present case differs from that, in that the trial court said to the jury: “I am not asking you for a division, Mr. Foreman, but will ask you if the jury is about evenly divided. You can answer that yes or no.” To which the foreman answered, “Yes.”
In the opinion in the Brasfield Case, the court reviewed certain decisions to which we may advert as indicating the principles on which its conclusion was reached and the purport of the decision which was made. In the first, the Burton Case, 196 U. S. 283, 25 S. Ct. 243, 49 L. Ed. 482, the Supreme Court, while declining to hold it ground for reversal, disapproved the practice of inquiring the extent of the numerical division in a jury unable to agree. There the answer of the jury had been that they stood 11 to 1. The next reference is to St. Louis & S. F. R. Co. v. Bishard (C. C. A.) 147 F. 496. In that case the judgment was reversed, not on the ground that the court upon inquiry found that the jury, consisting of 1.1 members, stood 10 to 1, but on that and the further ground that the juror who was standing out against the oth*968ers was admonished that he should listen to their argument, and should try to look at the ease from their viewpoint.
The next is Stewart v. United States (C. C. A.) 300 F. 769. There the trial court had asked the jurors whether they were evenly divided, or whether there was a large preponderance one way or the other, and the foreman answered that there seemed to he a large preponderance one way. The judgment was reversed, not on account of that inquiry alone, hut on account of the further fact that the court read to the jury extracts from the opinion in Allen v. United States, 164 U. S. 501, 17 S. Ct. 157, 41 L. Ed. 528, one of which was the following: “It certainly cannot he the law that each juror should not listen with deference to the arguments and with a distrust of his own judgment, if he finds a large majority of the jury taking a different view of the case from what he does himself.” The last reference is to Nigro v. United States (C. C. A.) 4 F.(2d) 781, where the jury had been asked whether there was a preponderance of the individual jurors in favor of a verdict one way or the other, and the foreman had replied that there was, and the court then read to the jury paragraphs from the opinion in the Allen Case. It was held that the inquiry made to the jury, together with the reading of the abstract statement from the Allen Case, constituted reversible error.
The decision in the Brasfield Case must be read in the light of the principles declared in Cohens v. Virginia, 6 Wheat. 264, 399, 5 L. Ed. 257, and when so read its sum and substance is that to ascertain by inquiry from a jury unable to agree that they stand 9 to ■ 3 is error, prejudicial to the substantial rights of the defendant in a criminal ease, and ground for reversal of a judgment against him. It must be assumed that the Supreme Court found in the fact that such a division of the jury had been brought to light in open court a psychological influence was exerted upon the minority jurors, which thereafter might tend to induce them to surrender their own convictions. I submit that no mind is sufficiently astute and no imagination is sufficiently fertile to discover prejudice to a defendant in the mere ascertainment by inquiry that the members of the jury, while unable to agree, are about evenly divided upon the issue submitted to them for decision.
It is the duty of a trial judge to discharge a jury as soon as he ascertains that it is unable to agree. It is familiar practice to call the jury in to inquire of them whether agreement is hopeless. It is a practice which has been followed by many of the ablest and fairest judges. When the foreman answers that they are unable to agree, the judge, from his experience, knows that such an answer is often based upon the unyielding attitude of a single juror. The judge ought to be allowed, without prejudice to either party, to go farther and ascertain whether the foreman’s report is based upon an evert or substantially even division of thé jury, and to propound a question calculated to elicit that informa-' tion. How can it be said that there is anything in such a question, or the answer to it, or in both, that will tend, even in the remotest degree, to induce one juror to surrender his individual conviction of the truth and accept the opinion of others? It is still the law that error in a trial court, in order to be ground for reversal, must be error that affects substantial rights.