Court Opinion

ID: 9696052
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 18:34:33.837115+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:18.084414
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
Mr. Justice Musmanno :
On the morning of September 11, 1958, the jurors in this case, who had been hearing evidence for three days, were instructed by the Court attaches to check out of the hotel in which they had been lodged, pick up their luggage and report to the courtroom for the final day of the trial. At 7:08 that evening, after receiving instructions from the Judge on the subjects of murder and manslaughter, the jurors took up the case for deliberation, discussion and verdict. At 11:15 p.m., they requested further instructions which were given to them in the courtroom and they once more retired to the jury room.
At 3 a.m., no word having been received on the possibility of a verdict that night, defendant’s counsel requested the Trial Judge to assign sleeping quarters to the jury. This request was refused. At 5 a.m., the Judge called the jury into the courtroom and the following ensued: “tits court : Are there any questions that you think the Court might be able to answer; any additional questions that you might have that would help? This is, of course, an important case, as you well know, and you have deliberated on it very con*209scientiously. It is an important case to both the Commonwealth and the defense and the verdict, of course, must be unanimous, and we want to give you every opportunity to continue to deliberate, hoping that you can come to a unanimous verdict, the forelady : Your Honor, I as Forelady — we have deadlocked as far as I am concerned, the court: And you feel that any longer deliberations would not solve the deadlock, is that what you mean? the forelady: We have been trying, the court: Well, we are going to send you back again for another effort to see if you can’t come to a unanimous verdict, and we urge you to malee every effort to do that.” (Emphasis supplied.)
At 6:08 a.m., the jury returned a verdict of voluntary manslaughter. The defendant seeks a new trial, asserting that the verdict, in effect, was a coerced one since the jurors were compelled by the Judge to reach a unanimous verdict at a time when they were exhausted from lack of sleep and thus were not able physically to conscientiously discharge their duties.
I would grant a new trial because I believe that the facts justify the conclusion that the verdict was not the unanimous will of twelve persons free from the demands of disabling Nature clamoring for rest. The Majority Opinion quotes the Trial Judge as saying that when, at 11:15 p.m., he delivered additional instructions, the jury “gave no indications of fatigue or illness.” But this was still at a reasonable hour. There was no reason for the jury to have been helplessly fatigued at 11:15 p.m. However, this was still a long-distance from 5 a.m. In six hours the pendulum of the clock swings thousands of times and, with each stroke, after midnight, the eyelids of the average person become heavier, the muscles tire, the brain loses alertness and, as a consequence, attention flags, concentration weakens, resolution droops, determination falters, and eventually a sleepless juror may well lose *210the will of resistance and become, like a rudderless ship at sea, the prey of every influence abroad on the waves of pressure and importunity.
A juror needs sleep as much as Macbeth.
In answering the defendant’s argument that the jury was coerced into a verdict by physical exhaustion, the Majority Opinion says: “It is very significant that the jurors made no complaint nor any request that their deliberations be suspended and that they be given an opportunity to rest.” This observation is artless and, with due respect, I must say that it is almost naive. Who were the jurors to stand up in the jury box and protest against the omnipotence of the Court? No one informed them that they had the right to ask for a suspension of their deliberations until they had been refreshed with rest and slumber. They had been told that very morning that there would be no sleeping accommodations for them any more; they were given their suitcases. In every way that human intelligence can understand, they could only conclude that they had to reach a verdict before they could get to a bed again, and this time it had to be the bed in their own homes.
Who gave the orders that the jurors release their rooms at the hotel while the trial was still in progress? Who assumed the clairvoyant powers to tell them that the trial would be over and the verdict rendered that day?
It is amazing to me how some judges will allow a trial to move on tortoise feet throughout the unfoldment of the evidence and then, when the most important phase of the trial, and, in fact, the only reason for which a trial is held, becomes imminent, everyone is exhorted to hurry. The lawyers must limit their arguments, the jury must deliberate quickly, the verdict must be reached speedily, and justice must be satisfied on the run. Just as the ship of justice is *211about to be launched, when the slightest miscalculation and carelessness will capsize it, everyone seems to feel that the important thing is to get home. It is all inexplicable.
Instead of placing the blame where it belongs, on the Trial Judge who allows, permits and encourages this headlong procedural helter-skelter, the Majority attempts to shift the fault to the jury. The Majority Opinion says, as already stated, that the jury should have complained. But to say that jurors may complain is like saying that a recruit in the army or navy may complain when his superior officer orders him on a detail of duty. Appellate courts often overlook that jurors are novices in the ways of the law, that they are strangers in an unexplored land, that they are children in the presence of awesome authority. Their every physical movement is guided and controlled by the Judge and the Court attaches. When the Judge said to the jurors that: “We are going to send you back again for another effort to see if you can’t come to a unanimous verdict, and we urge you to make every effort to do that”, his words were like a royal invitation, they constituted a command.
During his entire speech to the jury at 5 a.m., the Judge made not the slightest suggestion that if they desired rest and needed sleep, he would see that they got it. What the Judge said was that he wanted a verdict, a unanimous verdict. He said this in courteous language, of course, but in words which could have left no doubt in the minds of the jury that he regarded it as their duty to return a verdict, and return it quickly.
With the Judge’s importuning words ringing in their ears, the jurors left the courtroom at 5 a.m., and returned with a verdict at 6:05 a.m. What happened in that hour? It is obvious what happened. Flesh overcame will, exhaustion broke down resolution, the *212legions of sleep conquered the forces of vigilance. The verdict finally rendered may have been a correct one, but it also may have been an irresponsible one.
There was a time when I wondered why it was that, even with so-called third degree methods, prisoners would confess to deeds which they could not possibly have committed. In many cases it developed that they signed confessions because they were not allowed to sleep. They were not subjected to physical violence, but by various devices and means they were denied sleep. The agony of the denial of sleep is a torture which surpasses almost any type of physical manhandling. It has been proved scientifically that the time comes when the victim who is denied sleep will sign any paper, confess to any murder or a hundred of them, if only he may close his eyes in dead relief so that the thousands of battering rams at every pore of consciousness may cease their maddening blows.
The Majority is not unsympathetic to victims of sleep pirates and quotes with approval what the celebrated Justice Kent said, namely: “The doctrine of compelling a jury to unanimity by the pains of hunger and fatigue, so that the verdict in fact be founded not on temperate discussion and clear conviction, but on strength of body, is a monstrous doctrine that does not stand with conscience, but is altogether repugnant to a sense of humanity and justice.” (People v. Olcott, 2 Johns. Cas. 301). The Majority only says that there is no proof in this case that any juror was coerced into the verdict because of lack of repose. But the facts of Nature are as much a part of a Court record as the stenographic transcript. Nature writes with an accuracy and an inerasability that would shame the most faithful stylograph or stenotype. And when it is known that a jury is deadlocked at 5 a.m., after deliberating all night, and have not only had no sleep but no accommodations in which to rest comfortably, *213and a Judge tells them they had better come to a unanimous conclusion pretty soon, the verdict becomes suspect when that verdict does come in pretty soon.
The Majority cites the case of Commonwealth v. Tenbroeck, 265 Pa. 251, which supports my position rather than the Majority’s. In that case the Judge said to the Jury: “ ‘If some one of you should become physically unable to remain, the situation would be different, but as long as you are physically able to remain, it is your duty to undertake to agree.’ ” If, indeed, in the case at bar, the Judge had intimated to the jury in any way that he would allow them to sleep if they needed sleep, and he would see that they got the accommodations to sleep, the situation would have been considerably different. But the Judge failed to tell the jury that he would give them the opportunity to sleep, if they wanted to sleep, and, failing to do this, he ignored Justice who, herself, lay down on the couch of weariness and drifted off into the land of Nod where thought is a vagrant zephyr, deliberation a floating vapor, and decision uncontrolled, irresponsible, and often bizarre.