Court Opinion

ID: 5443923
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-01-08 18:07:31.267179+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:32:06.868378
License: Public Domain

Beatty, C. J., concurring.
I concur in the judgment, and in the opinion of Mr. Justice Works, except upon one point. It appears that after the case had been submitted to the jury, and they had been for three or four hours deliberating of their verdict, they were by direction of the court sent in custody of two sworn officers to dinner. They were taken by the officers to a public French restaurant, where, in accordance with the invariable custom of the place, they were served with six quart bottles (a half-bottle each) of California claret, which they consumed with their dinner, and a small modicum of brandy, which they used with their coffee. In other words, they had, under the sanction of the court, and in the presence and custody of its officers, an ordinary dinner in a respectable house, embracing only the usual concomitants of that meal at that place. As to whether the jurors were at all affected by the wine and brandy so partaken, the affidavits *340were conflicting, but certainly there was ample evidence to warrant the judge of the superior court in finding that none of them were affected; and unless we are warranted in holding, as mere matter of law, that any drinking of wine by a jury, after retiring for deliberation, however moderate, and whether sanctioned by the trial court or not, is misconduct per se, or unless we can find as matter of fact that men who use wine and brandy in the manner and to the extent these jurors did, and as thousands of men do every day without impeachment of their sobriety or decorum, are thereby necessarily deprived of their ordinary judgment and discretion, we cannot say that this jury was guilty of misconduct, or the defendant prejudiced in this particular. There is, it seems to me, a clear distinction in principle between this case, in which the jurors did, openly and without attempt at concealment, what was apparently, if not expressly, authorized by the trial court, and that class of cases in which jurors have themselves clandestinely conveyed intoxicating liquors into the jury-room, or where, with their connivance, it has been smuggled in by other unauthorized persons. In such cases the means of procuring the liquor amounts in itself to grave misconduct, and evinces a total disregard on the part of the jurors of their obligations and of the rights of thfe parties. By reason of this distinction, we are not, in my opinion, constrained by the authorities to hold, and I am unwilling to say, that the jury in this case was guilty of misconduct.
McFarland, J., dissented.