Court Opinion

ID: 9600112
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 01:24:24.774851+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:01:48.047163
License: Public Domain

BAXTER, J., Concurring and Dissenting.
I respectfully disagree with the majority’s conclusion that the trial court did not err in its handling of the circumstances that arose on the death of Juror Coley’s father. I concur, however, in the majority’s judgment affirming defendant’s conviction and death sentence because the record on appeal does not provide a basis for determining that the error was prejudicial.
Put simply, the situation was this: Juror Coley’s father had died within a few hours before Coley returned to court on Tuesday for the third day of penalty deliberations. Coley told the court he was emotionally close to his father and had to leave early to fly to the funeral. The court told Coley to resume deliberations, which would be recessed in time for Coley to board his flight, and that he must return the following Monday unless there was some *1019other severe problem that prevented his return at that time. The court did not offer the juror any guidance how to proceed. In particular, he was not admonished to refrain from telling the other jurors of the death, and he was not told that the press of time—either for getting to the airport or returning the following week—must not affect his independent judgment or the deliberations of the other jurors.
This lack of any precaution created a situation rife with the possibility of prejudice. For most people, there are few, if any, situations that are more debilitating and distracting than the hours of grief shortly after the loss of a mother, father, child, or sibling. This conclusion requires no judicial expertise; it is inherent in human experience. Courts have long recognized that a juror who has very recently suffered a death in his or her immediate family is often in an emotional state not suited for jury deliberations, especially when the defendant’s very life is at stake. (See Annot., Illness or Death of Member of Juror’s Family as Justification for Declaring Mistrial and Discharging Jury in Criminal Case (1928) 53 A.L.R. 1062; 1 Wharton’s Criminal Law (14th ed. 1978) § 61, p. 325.) In one of the earliest reported cases, the families of two jurors became ill during a murder trial, and those jurors were excused. The court noted that not every illness in a juror’s family would warrant excusal for cause, and that good cause had not been shown in that case because the record did not show the nature or severity of the illnesses or that the jurors needed to be with their families. The court explained, however, what would be good cause if shown. “It certainly requires no argument to show that, if the wife or child of a juror is at the point of death, he would not be in a state of mind to discharge the duties which devolved upon him, with that degree of patience, calmness and deliberation, which was due in the investigation of cases of this magnitude and importance; and it would unquestionably be the duty of the court to discharge a juror under such circumstances.” (Parsons v. The State (1853) 22 Ala. 50, 53, italics added.) Although the observation was obiter dictum, the same court later made clear that serious illness or death in a juror’s family was of extreme importance, especially in a capital case. (Hawes v. State (1890) 88 Ala. 37 [7 So. 302, 311] (Hawes).) Indeed, the court rejected the capital defendant’s contention that a juror whose wife became critically ill should not have been discharged. The court found a manifest necessity for the discharge, pointing to its prior decision in Parsons, supra, 22 Ala. 50, and to an intervening decision by another state’s high court that the death of a juror’s son required the juror’s discharge. (Hawes, supra, 7 So. at p. 311, citing State v. Davis (1888) 31 W.Va. 390 [7 S.E. 24] and Commonwealth v. Fells (1838) 36 Va. (9 Leigh) 613, 618-619 [impending childbirth by juror’s wife held to be a necessity for juror’s discharge].)
The development of the law on this point was subsequently examined by the Georgia Supreme Court in a capital case in which it rejected the
*1020defendant’s plea of double jeopardy based on his claim that in a prior trial a juror should not have been discharged merely because his mother had died. After canvassing earlier cases, the court eloquently explained, “As civilization and refinement have progressed, there has been a growing disposition on the part of the courts to recognize the influence of the feelings and emotions upon the mind, as producing this necessity [for discharge]. . . . [¶]... One whose mind is disturbed and distracted by sudden grief is certainly in no condition to discharge the grave and responsible duty of trying another for his life. What judge would be in a fit condition to preside on the trial of a capital case, upon being summoned to the deathbed of his wife, his child, or his mother? And would any court hold that a judge who is informed, while trying a case, that his wife has just died, cannot return to his home, and attend her funeral, but must go on with the trial? No man of ordinary sensibilities, it seems to me, would be in a proper state of mind to discharge his functions as a judge on the trial of a case, under such circumstances, and he should not be compelled to do so. As was said in the case of State v. Tatman [(1882) 59 Iowa 471 (13 N.W. 632)], ‘the law makes no such inhuman requirements.’ If what has been said is true as to a judge, it is equally true as to a juror. In order to perform his duty properly, he must give his close and undivided attention to the testimony, as delivered by each witness, and to the law, as given in charge by the court. He must carry both in his mind, and carefully apply the one to the other, and it is often necessary that he should make nice distinctions in the application of the law. It is not to be expected that a juror will perform this duty properly, under the circumstances shown by the record in this case. The question to be considered is, not whether the juror, in view of the greater importance of trying the prisoner than of paying the last tribute of affection and respect to his departed mother, should put aside his grief, and proceed undisturbed in the performance of his duty, but whether, as a matter of fact, he is capable of doing this. If not, the ends of justice require that he be discharged from the jury. What was said by the court in the case of State v. Davis [(1888) 31 W.Va. 390 (7 S.E. 24)] where the juror was discharged on account of the death of his son, will apply equally in the present case: ‘Observation teaches us, if, indeed, we have not learned from sad experience, that the natural result of information suddenly imparted to a father, of the death of a child, is to unfit him, for the time, to attend to business. . . . His grief would naturally unfit him for the discharge of such an important [jury] duty. And if, as the court said in Fell’s Case [(1838) 36 Va. (9 Leigh) 613], the object of the trial is to obtain a fair, just, and impartial verdict, there is little prospect of it, under such circumstances. This is one of the cases spoken of in the opinion in that case, where a juror is, from the peculiar condition of his mind and feelings, manifestly disqualified from bestowing on the case that attention and impartial consideration which is necessary to a just verdict.” (Stocks v. State (1893) 91 Ga. 831 [18 S.E. 847, 849].)
*1021Other courts have embraced the same principle. “It requires no argument to show that the effect upon the mind of the juror upon receiving information of the death of his mother was to render him incapable of that calm and deliberate consideration and reasoning which is due in the investigation of cases of this importance and magnitude [i.e., murder case].” (Spelce v. State (1924) 20 Ala.App. 412 [103 So. 694, 698].) In Salistean v. State (1927) 115 Neb. 838 [215 N.W.107, 53 A.L.R. 105] (Salistean), an arson prosecution, a juror’s newborn child died and his wife was seriously ill after the birth. He was discharged. The court compassionately observed, “The serious illness of the wife of the juror and the death of his child would, as a matter of common knowledge, have caused him distress of mind and incapacitated him from giving the case any consideration. To have continued with the trial under such conditions would have been inhuman. It would have been equivalent to trying the case to eleven jurors.” (Id., at p. 109; Woodward v. State (1900) 42 Tex. Crim. 188 [58 S.W. 135, 139] [child of juror in murder case became critically ill].)
More recent cases, though not in the vivid language of our learned judicial predecessors and though arising in a variety of contexts, continue to reflect the recognition that a death in a juror’s family raises a serious question of his or her ability to deliberate in the death’s immediate aftermath. (Weaver v. State (1969) 45 Ala.App. 243 [228 So.2d 857] [reversing manslaughter conviction on ground that mistrial should have been granted when juror’s mother died]; United States v. Smith (9th Cir. 1980) 621 F.2d 350, 351 [defendant held to have impliedly consented to mistrial when juror’s mother had stroke]; Malota v. State (Fla.Dist.Ct.App. 1976) 336 So.2d 1267, 1268 [affirming judgment rendered after a replacement juror was substituted for juror whose nephew was killed]; Allen v. State (Tex.Crim.App. 1993) 867 S.W.2d 427, 430 [approving excusal of juror whose aunt and brother-in-law died]; People v. Portalatin (1980) 105 Misc.2d 725 [433 N.Y.S.2d 57, 58] [approved mistrial declared when juror’s father suffered stroke].)
I do not agree with the suggestion in some of the foregoing cases that a family death necessarily requires the juror’s discharge. In my view that goes too far. I discuss those cases, however, because they reflect a long-standing acknowledgment that a death in a juror’s immediate family can have, at least temporarily, a profound effect on a juror’s ability to deliberate. Any such diminution of the juror’s ability is of the gravest importance when the decision is whether the defendant shall live or die.
This sensitive situation arising from the death of Juror Coley’s father was made even more troublesome by the time deadline facing Juror Coley. He *1022was faced with a situation in which he had an incentive for the jury to return a verdict as soon as possible. His flight was scheduled to depart within hours. (Indeed, the common realities of travel suggest the court allowed him barely enough time, if that, to leave the courthouse, travel to the airport, handle preboarding chores, and board the flight.) The court had told him that, if tiie jury did not return a verdict before then, he would be recalled the following week, beyond the time the jurors had been told would be necessary for the trial. Moreover, Juror Coley would have had to leave his grieving family after a very short time and, in all likelihood, would still have been upset and unsettled by his father’s untimely death. The pressure to decide defendant’s fate with undue dispatch was plainly great.
The likely pressure on the other jurors also cannot be discounted. It would be fanciful to believe Juror Coley did not tell them of his father’s death, as momentous an occasion as one is likely to bear. Indeed, absent such information, they would have been perplexed as to why deliberations were being truncated that day. In short, they almost certainly knew of the death and the time pressure. As the Salistean court, supra, 215 N.W. 107, 109, perceptively observed, “the sympathy of the other jurors would naturally have been with him in his misfortune and tend to render them anxious to dispose of the case as quickly as possible. Under such circumstances the jury would not give the case the careful consideration which the importance of the issue merited.” (Italics added.) Likewise here, in addition to having sympathy for Juror Coley, the other jurors (and Coley himself) were faced with the prospect of having to return several days later if they could not return a penalty verdict within approximately an hour. And, Juror Coley was faced with the prospect of burying his father while wrestling with the weighty issue of whether defendant should live or die. Any normal person would be tempted to shed the latter burden so as to be able better to bear the former. Under these circumstances, I am troubled by the fact that—within the hour after the court directed Juror Coley to resume deliberations—the jury returned its death verdict.
We have not previously had the same situation before us, but we have acknowledged the difficulty encountered by a juror who has suffered such a family loss. In In re Mendes (1979) 23 Cal.3d 847 [153 Cal.Rptr. 831, 592 P.2d 318] (Mendes), the defendant objected to the trial court’s having excused without a hearing a juror whose brother had died the previous night. We cautioned that a juror should not be excused without a hearing “[u]nless the facts clearly establish a sufficient basis on which to reach an informed and intelligent decision” that good cause for the excusal is present. (Id., at p. 852.) Even though no hearing had been held and although we knew nothing *1023of the circumstances, we explained that we had “. . . no difficulty, in the case before us, in concluding that the reason for [juror] Mrs. McQuown’s request to be excused clearly constituted ‘good cause.’ . . . [N]ormal grief would make it exceedingly difficult for Mrs. McQuown to concentrate on the evidence, the arguments of counsel, the court’s instructions and the jury’s deliberations. In.our view, a hearing would have been pointless and perhaps callous.” (Ibid., italics added.) In a later capital case, we upheld the trial court’s summary discharge during penalty deliberations of a juror whose mother had died the preceding night. (People v. Ashmus (1991) 54 Cal.3d 932, 986-987 [2 Cal.Rptr.2d 112, 820 P.2d 214] (Ashmus).) We observed that “. . . a mother’s death is ‘obviously ... a tragic and disturbing event.’ ” (Id., at p. 987) I agree with the majority that Ashmus, supra, 54 Cal.3d 932, and Mendes, supra, 23 Cal.3d 847, are factually distinguishable from the present case because in those cases the jurors had requested to be discharged, whereas the present record does not reflect that Juror Coley made such a request. I believe, though, that the distinction misses the mark. In neither case did this court place any importance on the request itself. Rather, our basic point was that the situation, i.e., a death in the juror’s family, is so patently fraught with difficulty that no inquiry of record is necessary to establish that fact. It seems to me the logical converse of this principle is that a hearing is required before allowing the juror to proceed immediately with further deliberations.
The substance of the ex parte communication between the court and Juror Coley did not ameliorate the situation. (I agree with the majority that the mere fact of the communication was not error. Some administrative discretion must be allowed the trial court in dealing with unexpected circumstances.) To the contrary, the communication worsened the problem because the court did nothing to assure that deliberations would be unaffected by Juror Coley’s loss. Indeed, the court failed even to inquire on the record whether Juror Coley wished to be discharged from further service. Faced with a circumstance that had an obvious potential for creating problems, especially for Juror Coley’s ability to deliberate properly, the trial court should have inquired at a minimum in some detail and on the record as to Juror Coley’s emotional state and cautioned him not to let his father’s death affect his deliberations, specifically not to rush them. The court also should have directed Coley not to inform the other jurors of the problem. By contrast, when Juror McCoskey had emotional problems with the trial and discussed them with the court, the court properly cautioned her that “ ‘. . . because we’ve talked to you privately that shouldn’t affect any of your decisions in any regard . . . .’ ” (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 974.)
I do not suggest that a juror who has suffered a family death cannot under any circumstance be allowed to continue deliberations. Nor do I suggest that *1024Juror Coley was unable to continue deliberations, even in the immediate aftermath of learning of his father’s death. Of course, a trial court has discretion to determine whether and when such a juror should be allowed to resume deliberations. Danger inheres, however, in allowing the deliberations to continue within only hours of the death. Courts have long recognized the extrinsic and extreme stress such an event interjects into the deliberations. (Ante, at pp. 1018-1022.) When the decision facing the jury is literally a matter of life and death for the defendant, prudence requires that, when the court is notified of the juror’s tragedy, the court make a reasonably detailed inquiry on the record to determine the juror’s ability to continue deliberations. Here the trial court’s action (or rather lack of it) was less an exercise of discretion than it was an abandonment of that discretion. (Cf. People v. Marks (1988) 45 Cal.3d 1335, 1341 [248 Cal.Rptr. 874, 756 P.2d 260] [“We find illogical the notion that an agreement not to hear a matter constitutes a hearing of the matter.”].) I believe the trial court erred in not conducting a meaningful inquiry on the record, preferably after counsel arrived in court, into Juror Coley’s ability to resume deliberations under the circumstances.
The situation was exacerbated when counsel (defense and prosecution) arrived in court. Defense counsel promptly and in reasonable detail stated his concerns, which, as I have explained, were valid. At that point, the court should have attempted, although belatedly, to conduct the proper inquiry into Juror Coley’s circumstances and to determine whether he should have been allowed to continue deliberations that day. The court also should have inquired whether Juror Coley had told the other jurors of his circumstance and the fact that deliberations would have to resume a week later if a verdict were not returned before he left early that day. Instead, the court rejected all of counsel’s objections, except to state it would explain that counsel’s earlier absence was not improper. In short, the court repeated its earlier error of not conducting an adequate inquiry and not making any informed determination whether deliberations should continue that day.
Nevertheless, I concur in the majority’s judgment affirming the death sentence because the trial court’s error, i.e., the failure to inquire adequately into Juror Coley’s willingness and ability to serve, deprives us, as it did the trial court, of any basis on which to make an informed decision, based on the record, regarding whether Juror Coley should have been allowed to proceed. We simply do not know the specific facts of Juror Coley’s mental state, whether by his own account or by those who observed him, or any facts regarding whether he communicated his circumstances to the other jurors, or whether the jury rushed its verdict. We therefore cannot properly decide on appeal that the error was prejudicial. That question can be decided on an
*1025informed basis only if and when it is raised in a petition for a writ of habeas corpus.
Appellant’s petition for a rehearing was denied June 21, 1995. Mosk, J., and Kennard, J., were of the opinion that the petition should be granted.