People v Morgan
2016 NY Slip Op 08484
Decided on December 20, 2016
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Issue: Whether the trial court’s supplemental instruction given after the jury returned a non-unanimous “verdict” was “unbalanced and coercive” such that it deprived defendant of his right to a fair trial.
Holding: The Court of Appeals held that the lower court’s supplemental post-verdict instruction to the jury was not “unbalanced and coercive” and that it did not deprive defendant of a fair trial.
Facts: Defendant was charged with murder in the second degree. During deliberations, the jury sent out a note to the court stating that it was deadlocked. The next morning, the court asked the People and the defense for suggestions on how to proceed regarding the deadlocked jury. The People simply suggested that the court instruct the jury to continue to deliberate and defense counsel indicated that he approved of the court mentioning to the jury that they should proceed with deliberation. The court instead decided to repeat its final instruction concerning the jury’s duty to deliberate.
A few hours later, the jury came to a verdict and found the defendant guilty of manslaughter in the first degree and criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree. However, the verdict was not unanimous. The judge told the People and the defense counsel that he would remind the jury the verdict must be unanimous and to continue to deliberate. Defense counsel moved for a mistrial on the grounds that the two jurors who disagreed with the rest of the jurors clearly have a different opinion and would “continue to have that position.” The request was denied and the judge provided the jury instructions regardless. After the jury was sent to deliberate after the instructions, defense counsel asked if the court would consider an additional jury instruction. The court declined.
Finally, the jury reached a unanimous verdict later that day and found the defendant guilty of manslaughter and criminal possession of a weapon. The Appellate Division affirmed the judgment, holding that the instructions did not deprive the defendant of a fair trial.
Analysis: Defendant asserted that because the court’s supplemental instructions “did not include language conveying that the jurors were to not surrender their conscientiously held beliefs” or, alternatively, “did not refer to the cautionary language in the court’s previous deadlock charge, the instructions were coercive.”
In reference to jury polling, CPL 310.80 states that if “any juror answers in the negative, the court must refuse to accept the verdict and must direct the jury to resume deliberation.” As the Court noted, although the court is permitted to give a supplemental jury charge to help the jury reach a unanimous verdict, the court is discouraged from coercing or pressuring the jury to reach a verdict nor should the court single out any members of the jury for noncompliance. See People v Aponte, 2 NY3d 304, 308 (2004) and People v Pagan, 45 NY2d 725, 726 (1978).
The Court of Appeals first looked at Aponte, where the Court held that “a supplemental jury instruction was ‘unbalanced and coercive’ where the court stated that ‘the point of this process is to get a result and stressed that something happened in this case.'”Aponte, 2 NY3d at 305-307. There were several other statements on the record indicating that the judge was attempting to pressure the jury to come to a verdict, using discouraging language toward the jury in a way that attempted to coerce them into making a swift decision. The Court of Appeals reversed that judgment.
In Pagan, unlike Aponte, the Courts held that the supplemental instruction at issue was not coercive. In the supplemental charge to the jury, the court instructed the jury to “make every effort possible to arrive at a verdict” and that the jury was “expected to come to a verdict.” Contrary to Aponte, as the Court noted, the judge imposed no pressure or threat on the jury members (even though the charge was not necessarily ideal).
The Court also addressed the fact that the trial judge only intended to provide clarification that the verdict had to be unanimous to be a valid verdict. Further, like Pagan, the court only emphasized that the jurors were to “attempt” to reach a verdict, contrary to Aponte, where the nature of the language was much more aggressive and likely to pressure the jury to come to a hasty decision. After contemplation of the jury charge language of Aponte and Pagan and their resulting decisions in comparison with that of the present case, the Court of Appeals ultimately held that the supplemental instruction here was not coercive.