Court Opinion

ID: 9457235
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 20:16:45.789776+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:16.592585
License: Public Domain

BAZELON, Chief Judge
(dissenting):
I would reverse because the trial judge, over objection, delivered a second Allen charge late in the afternoon to a deadlocked jury while at the same time refusing appellant’s request that the jury be told that it could adjourn and resume deliberations the next day if it did not shortly reach a decision.
Appellant was on trial for robbery. The main question, a close one, was whether appellant was the man who committed the crime.1 At the close of the case, the jury was given a form of the Allen charge over appellant’s objection.2 At 4:30 p. m., some three to four hours after deliberations began,3 the jury reported that it was deadlocked. The judge recalled the jury and, again over appellant’s objection, gave it another version of the Allen charge. Appellant’s attorney then asked that the jury be instructed that if it did not reach a verdict by *3135:00 p. m., the jurors would be permitted to go home and resume deliberations the next day. The judge refused. At 5:00 the jury returned with a verdict of guilty.
This case was tried before our prospective ban on the Allen charge.4 Accordingly, its use here, standing alone, does not require reversal. “However, since the charge is potentially coercive, its content and manner of use deserve scrutiny.” 5 In such scrutiny I find several factors which clearly add up to a level of coercion which is intolerable.6 In the first place, the jury was twice told that “if the larger number of jurors are for conviction, a dissenting juror should consider carefully whether his doubt is a reasonable one when it makes no impression upon the minds of so many jurors equally honest and equally intelligent with * * * himself.”7 Further, the judge gave the second charge after the jury had reported itself deadlocked. The Tenth Circuit deemed this particular use of the charge so likely to be coercive that it will tolerate the charge only as part of the initial instructions to the jury.8 Third, the trial judge added as part of the second charge the following coercive statement:
You should consider that the case must at some time be decided, that you were selected in the same manner and same source for which any further jury may be, and there is no reason to suppose that the case will ever be submitted to 12 jurors more intelligent, more impartial or more competent to decide it, or that more or clearer evidence have been produced on one side or the other, and with this view it is your duty to decide the case if you can reasonably do so.
The fact of the mailer is, however, that the case might never have to be decided. As we noted in United States v. Johnson,9 “[t]he question of whether a mistrial will or will not be followed by a renewed prosecution is so speculative that nothing should be said on the matter either way.”
In light of the foregoing, a fourth and final factor is decisive for me: the trial judge’s rejection of defense counsel’s request that the jury not be left with the impression that it would be held in the courthouse into the night until it reached a decision. The request was denied without benefit of reasons, and, as appellant feared, the jury deliberated only a very short time before re*314turning with a guilty verdict.10 This denial sharply distinguishes this case from Fulwood v. United States,11 relied on by the majority, where we noted that the possible coerciveness of the Allen charge was largely dissipated by the fact that the jury was permitted to go home after the charge and to reconvene the next morning.12

. There was a conflict in the descriptions of appellant’s clothing and the length of his hair; there was testimony from which the jury could have found that appellant was identified by a very distraught woman ; and according to the police report the complainant first said she had $5 in bills in her purse, although she later testified that she had a $5 bill. And last but not least, since the jury was deadlocked, it must have found the question a close one.

. Essentially the judge gave the Junior Bar Section’s Instruction 41. See Junior Bar Section, Bar Association of the District of Columbia, Criminal Jury Instructions for the District of Columbia 23-24 (1966).

. It is not clear from the record how long the jury deliberated before announcing that it was deadlocked. The estimate in text is from appellant’s brief, and the Government did not dispute this point.

. United States v. Thomas, No. 22,768 Nov. 6, 1970). See also, e. g., United States v. Fioravanti, 412 F.2d 407 (3d Cir. 1969), cert. denied, 396 U.S. 837, 90 S.Ct. 97, 24 L.Ed.2d 88 (1970) ; United States v. Brown, 411 F.2d 930 (7th Cir. 1969), cert. denied, 396 U.S. 1017, 90 S.Ct. 578, 24 L.Ed.2d 508 (1970).

. Moore v. United States, 120 U.S.App.D.C. 203, 204, 345 F.2d 97, 98 (1965).

. Cf. Green v. United States, 309 F.2d 852 (5th Cir. 1962). See also United States v. Sawyers, 423 F.2d 1335, 1347 (4th Cir. 1970) (Sobeloff, J., dissenting).

. The jurors were also told, of course, that “if the majority are for acquittal, the minority ought to ask themselves seriously whether they might not reasonably doubt the correctness of a judgment which is not concurred in by most of those with whom they’re associated.”
It is worth noting that this charge is far more coercive than the American Bar Association charge which will be used in this circuit in the future. See United States v. Thomas, supra note 4, at 14 n. 46. As we said in United States v. Johnson, 139 U.S.App.D.C. 193, at 198-199, 432 F.2d 626, at 631-632 (1970), the ABA charge is preferable to the Allen charge because “it is relatively free of potentially coercive references, does not tend to place proponents of a minority view in a vulnerable position, and does not perpetuate the unfortunate fiction that, in case of a mistrial, another jury will inevitably be assembled to consider the case.”

. United States v. Wynn, 415 F.2d 135 (10th Cir. 1969), cert. denied, 397 U.S. 994, 90 S.Ct. 1133, 25 L.Ed.2d 402 (1970).

. Supra note 7, 139 U.S.App.D.C. at 199 n. 7, 432 F.2d at 632 n. 7.

. Compare Webb v. United States, 398 F.2d 727 (5th Cir. 1968).

. 125 U.S.App.D.C. 183, 369 F.2d 960 (1966), cert. denied 387 U.S. 934, 87 S.Ct. 2058,18 L.Ed.2d 996 (1967).

. Cf. United States v. Johnson, supra note 7, 139 U.S.App.D.C. at 2.00, 432 F.2d at 633.