Court Opinion

ID: 9694383
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 17:39:42.898828+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:00.616911
License: Public Domain

NIGRO, Justice,
concurring.
Since I agree that Appellee Herman Edmondson failed to properly preserve his objection to the supplemental instruction to the jury, I join the Majority. I write separately, however, because I also find that the challenged supplemental jury instruction did not amount to improper judicial coercion.
Here, as the Majority notes, the challenged instruction was given after the jury had deliberated for only 1 hour and 35 minutes. When the jury returned to the courtroom at that point, the jury’s question to the judge indicated that it was experiencing difficulty in reaching a verdict on the aggravated assault charge. In response, the court stated:
*166The aggravated assault. If you cannot reach a verdict, you mean you would be a hung jury. I am the one who declares whether you’re a hung jury or not. This case is about as straightforward as you can get. I am not going to hang this jury. So you’ll deliberate until I feel that you can’t deliberate anymore. Now please do what I’ve instructed you to do. Find the facts from the evidence and apply them to the law, just the facts. Not theory, ifs, ands or buts. This has been a short trial, the evidence is quite clear, you have one or two people to believe basically. I’m not going to hang you on that charge. Let’s go back, do your job as responsible jurors.
N.T. at 182.
In my view, the court’s response, in recognizing that the jury had only deliberated for a short period of time, simply instructed the jury to continue to deliberate to reach a verdict, whether guilty or not guilty, on the assault charge.1 These remarks did not, as Appellee claims, coerce the jury into convicting Appellee on the aggravated assault charge. See Commonwealth v. Ford, 539 Pa. 85, 100, 650 A.2d 433, 439 (1994) (no intrusion into jury deliberations occurs where trial judge, after being informed of a jury’s dead lock after one day of deliberations, instructs the jury to continue their work). Rather, I believe this instruction was well within the discretion afforded to trial courts in phrasing jury instructions and supervising the progress of jury deliberations. Clearly, it is a trial judge’s function, when possible, to secure a verdict once a trial has been held. The supplemental instruction given here merely reflects the trial judge’s neutral efforts to reach that goal in this case.
Moreover, it is well established that when reviewing jury instructions for error, the court must read the instructions as a whole and cannot base a finding of error on isolated excerpts of the charge. See Commonwealth v. Woodward, 483 Pa. 1, *167894 A.2d 508 (1978) (it is the general effect of the charge that controls). Here, prior to beginning deliberations, the court instructed the jury that:
In the course of deliberation each juror should not hesitate to re-examine his or her view or change his or her mind if convinced it is erroneous. However, no juror should surrender the weight or effect of their conviction merely because it may differ from their fellow jurors or they might be in the minority or for the mere purpose of returning a unanimous verdict.
N.T. at 177-78.
Viewing the jury instructions as a whole, I do not believe that the trial court’s remarks were improper or coerced the jurors, in any way, into returning a guilty verdict on the aggravated assault charge.
CAPPY, J., concurs in the result.

. Contrary to Appellee's assertions, the trial judge did not state, or even indicate, that Appellee was guilty but merely recounted that there were only two people present during the alleged assault, each with differing versions of what occurred, and it was the jury's duty to determine who was telling the truth.