Court Opinion

ID: 9752355
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 18:00:46.184678+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:27:15.071118
License: Public Domain

Bogdanski, J.
(dissenting). It has always been the policy of this state that it is more important to enforce the time-tested safeguards erected by the law for the protection of the innocent than to subvert them in order to prevent an apparently guilty person from escaping punishment. State v. Holup, 167 Conn. 240, 246, 355 A.2d 119; State v. Mayell, 163 Conn. 419, 428, 311 A.2d 60. In this case the trial court’s instruction to the jury, considered in or out of context, was such an impermissible transgression into the province of the jury as to deprive the defendant of due process of law in violation of the fourteenth amendment to the United States constitution and article I § 8 of the constitution of this state.
*433A trial judge is forbidden to tell a jury that it must reach a verdict. In Jenkins v. United States, 380 U.S. 445, 85 S. Ct. 1059, 13 L. Ed. 2d 957, the trial judge told a deadlocked jury: “You have got to reach a decision in this ease.” The Supreme Court found that instruction to be coercive and reversed the conviction in a per curiam decision. The instruction in this ease that “I cannot allow you to leave before I have some sort of a verdict. You can readily see, if somebody got sick overnight, 1 would have to declare a mistrial, and this case would have to start all over again. It would be an impossibility [emphasis added],” could only have had a coercive impact upon the jury and must be regarded as that kind of peremptory command by the trial judge so summarily condemned in Jenkins v. United States, supra.
“If the accused be guilty, he should none the less be convicted only after a fair trial, conducted strictly according to the sound and well-established rules which the laws prescribe.” State v. Ferrone, 96 Conn. 160, 169, 113 A. 452. “[T]he principle that jurors may not be coerced into surrendering views conscientiously held is so clear as to require no elaboration.” Jenkins v. United States, supra, 446; cf. Brasfield v. United States, 272 U.S. 448, 47 S. Ct. 135, 71 L. Ed. 345; United States v. Dunkel, 173 F.2d 506 (2d Cir.).
I would find error, set aside the judgment and order a new trial.