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GIVING A SECOND ALLEN CHARGE AND ALLOWING THE JURY TO CONTINUE DELIBERATING TO 5 OR 6 PM ON A FRIDAY, KNOWING THAT THREE JURORS HAD TRAVEL PLANS FOR MONDAY, DID NOT CONSTITUTE COERCING THE VERDICT, PROVIDING BOTH WRITTEN AND ORAL JURY INSTRUCTIONS WAS NOT IMPROPER (FIRST DEPT).

The First Department, over an extensive two-justice dissent, determined (1) the trial judge’s giving two Allen charges and allowing the jury to continue deliberations to 5 or 6 pm, at the jury’s request, on a Friday, knowing that three jurors could not continue deliberating on Monday because of travel plans, did not constitute coercing a verdict, and (2) providing the jurors with both written and oral jury instructions, without objection, was not improper:

The substance of an Allen charge is not coercive if it is “appropriately balanced and inform[s] the jurors that they [do] not have to reach a verdict and that none of them should surrender a conscientiously held position in order to reach a unanimous verdict” … . Here, the trial court’s repeated Allen charge included an instruction that the jurors were to “make every possible effort to arrive at a just verdict,” thereby implicitly instructing the jurors that they were not required to reach a verdict if they did not all agree that the verdict was just. Further, the trial court advised the jury that it “was not asking any juror to violate his or her conscience or to abandon his or her best judgment.” …

Defendant … contends that the trial court coerced the verdict by acceding to the request made in Court Exhibit XIII for more time to deliberate on the day of the verdict without immediately addressing the scheduling conflicts set forth in the same jury note in which the request was made. … As the record reflects, the trial court construed Court Exhibit XIII as meaning that the jurors thought that they could quickly resolve any remaining differences among them and agree upon a verdict within hours that same day, and therefore permitted them to do so. Thus, there was no need for the court to address the traveling plans of some jurors for the following week because this did not appear to be a problem at the time. People v Muhammad, 2019 NY Slip Op 02609, First Dept 4-4-19

 

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