Court Opinion

ID: 9466189
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 01:07:47.75725+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:39:35.587501
License: Public Domain

GODBOLD, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I would reverse because of the verdict-inducing instructions to the jury.
The majority analyze the instructions in terms of the Allen charge cases, which are concerned with whether the instruction coerces a minority on the jury from surrendering their views for the purpose of reaching a verdict, and with an evident lack of enthusiasm conclude that what the district judge said here gets by.
This case does not belong in the Allen mold. The instructions that the court intended that there be a verdict in the case, and that the jury was bound to return a verdict, were much more pointedly and directly verdict-inducing than exhortations to jurors that they re-examine their views. The Allen charge is but one narrow and particularized example of a much broader genre of instructions. Here the risk of improper inducement of a verdict is sufficiently high that this defendant is entitled to have his case considered by a jury untainted by arm twisting.
The majority consider the remarks about not giving up on the case. They do not even comment upon what is to me the most objectionable language: “We intend to get a verdict.”
Interpreting the “not giving up” language as communicating nothing more than that the jury could have as long as it needed to reach a verdict and would not be cut short because of the lateness of the hour, is a possible construction although it seems to me a strained one. But certainly it is not a necessary construction. The majority suggest also that the “not giving up” language was ameliorated by a supplemental charge that “reliev[ed] any pressure to reach a verdict that day.” The verdict-inducing remarks were not limited to that day. So far as we know, the jurors, when they resumed deliberations the next morning, still considered as binding upon them the statement of the court that it intended that there be a verdict in the case.
*1129Defense counsel is not an unbiased observer but he can, and did, listen and react. It is not without significance that he rose up at once and asked for a supplemental instruction covering the right of jury members to not agree on a verdict. In short, what the majority find did not have impact on the mind of the jurors had immediate impact on the mind of defense counsel. The supplemental instruction should have been given. It was not. The conviction should be reversed.