v. Black , 2020 COA 136 ( 2020 )

The summaries of the Colorado Court of Appeals published opinions
constitute no part of the opinion of the division but have been prepared by
the division for the convenience of the reader. The summaries may not be
cited or relied upon as they are not the official language of the division.
Any discrepancy between the language in the summary and in the opinion
should be resolved in favor of the language in the opinion.
SUMMARY
September 17, 2020
2020COA136
No. 17CA0317, People v. Black — Juries — Impasse —
Supplemental Instruction When Jurors Fail to Agree —
Modified-Allen Instruction
A division of the court of appeals concludes that when a
deliberating jury’s question indicates that it might be at an
impasse, the trial court must first determine whether progress
towards a unanimous verdict is likely. After making this threshold
determination, the trial court should exercise its discretion in
deciding whether (and, if appropriate, how) to instruct the jury to
continue deliberating. This threshold determination is necessary
because any instruction to the jury to continue deliberating, even a
modified-Allen instruction, may be improperly coercive based on the
unique circumstances of the case.
The jury in this case submitted a question to the trial court
suggesting that the jury might be at an impasse. Without making
the threshold determination of whether progress towards a
unanimous verdict was likely, the trial court instructed the jury to
continue deliberating. The division concludes that failing to make
this threshold determination was an abuse of discretion that
requires reversal.
COLORADO COURT OF APPEALS 2020COA136
Court of Appeals No. 17CA0317
El Paso County District Court No. 16CR1507
Honorable David A. Gilbert, Judge
The People of the State of Colorado,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
v.
Latrice Monique Black,
Defendant-Appellant.
JUDGMENT REVERSED AND CASE
REMANDED WITH DIRECTIONS
Division II
Opinion by JUDGE PAWAR
Román and Tow, JJ., concur
Announced September 17, 2020
Philip J. Weiser, Attorney General, Megan C. Rasband, Assistant Attorney
General, Denver, Colorado, for Plaintiff-Appellee
Megan A. Ring, Colorado State Public Defender, Tracy C. Renner, Deputy State
Public Defender, Denver, Colorado, for Defendant-Appellant
¶1 Defendant, Latrice Monique Black, appeals the judgment of
conviction entered on jury verdicts finding her guilty of third degree
assault, driving under the influence (DUI), and two counts of
resisting arrest. During deliberations, the jury asked the trial
court, “What happens if we can’t come to a unanimous decision on
only one charge?” Without further inquiry into whether the jury
had reached an impasse and how intractable that impasse was, the
trial court instructed the jury to continue deliberating.
¶2 We conclude that this was reversible error because instructing
the jury to continue deliberating without any understanding of the
intractability of the impasse risked coercing the jurors to reach a
compromise verdict. We therefore reverse Black’s convictions and
remand with directions. In doing so, we conclude that the evidence
was sufficient to support her (now reversed) third degree assault
conviction, therefore permitting retrial on that charge.
I. Background
¶3 Police found Black in a Wal-Mart parking lot, asleep in the
driver’s seat of her car with the driver’s side door open, near two
empty fifteen milliliter bottles of whiskey (total combined volume of
less than a shot). The first officer to arrive, Officer Reder,
1
approached her and attempted to wake her by shaking her
shoulder. After several shakes and repeated loud inquiries about
whether she was okay, Black woke up. She was groggy and
unintelligible at first, but after several minutes was able to converse
with Officer Reder, paramedics, and other officers.
¶4 While several officers and paramedics were talking to Black,
who was still seated in her car with the door open, Officer Williams
went inside the Wal-Mart to view surveillance video of the parking
lot. The video apparently showed Black’s car entering the parking
lot about an hour before Officer Reder arrived, parking, and not
moving. The video apparently did not show Black leaving the car at
any time.
¶5 After Officer Williams watched the video, he radioed to his
fellow officers and indicated that Black should be arrested for DUI.
The officers forcibly removed Black from her car, handcuffed her,
and attempted to place her in the back of a police car. During this
process, Black repeatedly exclaimed that she had not driven
anywhere and had done nothing wrong. The officers managed to
seat Black in the back of a police car with her hands cuffed behind
her. But Black kept one leg extended, preventing the door from
2
closing. As recounted in his trial testimony, Officer Williams “did a
strike to her calf” in an attempt to inflict enough pain to cause her
to move her leg and allow the door to close. Eventually, the officers
were able to close the door with Black inside. But during this
process, Black scratched the forearm of Officer Corey with her
fingernails. There was a very faint mark on Officer Corey’s arm, but
the skin did not break and it did not bleed.
¶6 Based on this scratch, the prosecution charged Black with
second degree assault on a peace officer. She was also charged
with DUI, two counts of resisting arrest, and two counts of
obstructing a peace officer. The prosecution later dropped the two
obstruction charges and Black was tried on the remaining charges.
¶7 At trial, the evidence included all of the officers’ bodycam
recordings. But the prosecution neither introduced nor even
collected the Wal-Mart surveillance video. Instead, Officer Williams
testified about what he had seen on the surveillance video.
3
¶8 After several hours of deliberation,1 the jury sent the trial
court its question: “What happens if we can’t come to a unanimous
decision on only one charge?” Black requested that the trial court
provide the modified-Allen instruction — “a supplemental jury
instruction designed to encourage, but not coerce, a deadlocked
jury into reaching a unanimous verdict.” Fain v. People, 2014 CO
69, ¶ 2. The trial court declined, stating that it did not read the
jury’s question to be “telling us they have come to an impasse.”
Instead, the trial court simply instructed to the jury to “please
continue with your deliberations at this time.” Approximately thirty
minutes later, the jury returned verdicts on all charges.
¶9 The jury found Black guilty of third degree assault, a lesser
included offense of second degree assault. It also found her guilty
of DUI and the two resisting counts. The trial court convicted her
accordingly.
1 The record does not clearly reflect how long the jury deliberated.
Instructions and closing arguments occurred just after lunch on
November 16, and the jury deliberated until 5:00 p.m. The court
presented the jury’s question to the parties at 12:45 p.m. the
following day, though the record does not reflect what time
deliberations began that morning.
4
¶ 10 At sentencing, the court expressed its desire to suspend
Black’s jail sentence for third degree assault but ruled that the
relevant sentencing statutes prevented it from doing so. The court
therefore sentenced her to two years and one day in jail with work
release for the assault conviction to run concurrently with shorter
jail sentences for the other convictions.
¶ 11 Black appeals, arguing that (1) the evidence was insufficient to
support her assault conviction; (2) the sentence imposed for the
assault conviction was error; (3) the trial court erred by admitting
Officer Williams’s testimony about what he saw on the surveillance
video without admitting the video itself; (4) the trial court erred by
admitting expert testimony in the guise of lay testimony from one of
the officers about how much alcohol Black had consumed; and (5)
the trial court improperly instructed the jury to continue
deliberating in response to the jury’s question.
¶ 12 We agree with Black that the trial court erred by instructing
the jury to continue deliberating without first determining whether
it was at an impasse and, if so, how intractable that impasse was.
We conclude that this error requires reversal of all her convictions.
We therefore need not address her remaining arguments, save one.
5
If Black is correct that the evidence was insufficient to support her
assault conviction, she cannot not be retried for it. See People v.
McCoy, 2015 COA 76M, ¶ 29 (defendant may not be retried on a
charge where the original conviction on that charge was supported
by insufficient evidence), aff’d on other grounds, 2019 CO 44. We
therefore address this argument and conclude that the evidence
was sufficient, thus allowing retrial on the third degree assault
charge.
II. The Trial Court’s Response to the Jury’s Question
¶ 13 Black argues that the trial court’s response to the jury’s
question during deliberations was improper. We review the trial
court’s response for an abuse of discretion. See Fain, ¶ 17.
¶ 14 If a trial court abuses its discretion by giving a coercive
instruction to the jury, that error violates the defendant’s
constitutional rights to due process, an impartial jury, and a
unanimous verdict. See United States v. Zabriskie, 415 F.3d 1139,
1148 (10th Cir. 2005). If such an error occurs, we must reverse
unless the error is harmless beyond a reasonable doubt, meaning
there is no reasonable possibility the error contributed to the
conviction. See Hagos v. People, 2012 CO 63, ¶ 11.
6
¶ 15 We conclude that the trial court abused its discretion by
instructing the jury to continue deliberating without first
determining whether the jury was deadlocked and, if so, how
intractably. Because the trial court failed to make this threshold
determination, we cannot rule out the possibility that the
instruction was coercive. And because it is possible that the
instruction was coercive, we cannot say that the error was harmless
beyond a reasonable doubt. We must therefore reverse.
A. How to Respond to a Jury’s Indication of Impasse
¶ 16 When responding to a jury question raising the possibility of
an impasse during deliberations, a trial court cannot “give an
instruction that expressly or impliedly coerces the jury to reach a
verdict regardless of whether that would require a juror to
‘surrender his conscientious convictions to secure an agreement.’”
People v. Munsey, 232 P.3d 113, 119 (Colo. App. 2009) (quoting
Lowe v. People, 175 Colo. 491, 494-96, 488 P.2d 559, 561-62
(1971)). An instruction directing the jury to continue deliberating
risks coercing jurors to abandon their conscientious convictions
about the case for the sake of reaching a unanimous verdict. See
People v. Schwartz, 678 P.2d 1000, 1012 (Colo. 1984).
7
¶ 17 Whether an instruction is coercive “will necessarily depend on
the content of the instruction and the context in which it is given.”
Gibbons v. People, 2014 CO 67, ¶ 30. If it is early in deliberations
and the jury is making progress towards a verdict, an instruction to
continue deliberating, even an unqualified one, carries little coercive
risk. That same instruction, however, given to a jury that has been
deliberating for longer and is making little or no progress towards a
verdict, carries significant coercive risk. And the coercive risk is
even greater if the unqualified instruction to continue deliberating
is given to a hopelessly deadlocked jury that has been deliberating
for days. Put simply, the coercive risk attached to any instruction
to continue deliberating increases with the intractability and
duration of the jury’s impasse.
¶ 18 The trial court can mitigate some of this coercive risk by giving
a modified-Allen instruction instead of an unqualified instruction to
continue deliberating. The modified-Allen instruction provides:
It is your duty, as jurors, to consult with one
another and to deliberate with a view to
reaching a verdict, if you can do so without
violence to individual judgment. Each of you
must decide the case for yourself, but do so
only after an impartial consideration of the
evidence with your fellow jurors. In the course
8
of your deliberations, do not hesitate to
reexamine your own views and change your
opinion if convinced it is erroneous. But do
not surrender your honest conviction as to the
weight or effect of evidence solely because of
the opinion of your fellow jurors, or for the
mere purpose of returning a verdict.
COLJI-Crim. E:18 (2019).
¶ 19 So, what must the trial court do when the jury suggests it
cannot agree on a verdict? First, the trial court must conduct a
threshold inquiry: What is the likelihood of progress towards a
unanimous verdict if deliberations continue? See People v. Lewis,
676 P.2d 682, 687 (Colo. 1984) (“[A]ny additional instruction
directed towards averting a deadlocked jury should be preceded by
an inquiry ‘as to whether any progress has been made toward
reaching an agreement and what the likelihood is for such future
progress.’” (quoting Lowe, 175 Colo. at 495-96, 488 P.2d at 561)),
superseded by statute on other grounds as recognized in People v.
Richardson, 184 P.3d 755, 761-62 (Colo. 2008).
9
¶ 20 If progress is likely, there is no impasse and the trial court can
give the jury an unqualified instruction to continue deliberating.2
¶ 21 If the trial court determines that progress is “unlikely,” the
court may, in its discretion, give a modified-Allen instruction. Id. at
689; see Schwartz, 678 P.2d at 1012. Although the fact that the
jury is at something of an impasse increases the coercive risk of any
instruction to continue deliberating, the modified-Allen instruction’s
prophylactic exhortations mitigate this risk.
¶ 22 But a modified-Allen instruction’s prophylactics are not strong
enough to sufficiently mitigate the most powerfully coercive
circumstances. As our supreme court recognized in Fain, there is
2 We note that, though the supreme court in Lewis stated that, in
such a case, the trial court should “require further deliberation
without any additional instruction,” People v. Lewis, 676 P.2d 682,
689 (Colo. 1984), abrogated by statute on other grounds as
recognized in People v. Richardson, 184 P.3d 755, 761-62 (Colo.
2008), we do not believe the supreme court meant that the trial
court can say nothing to the jury upon determining there is no
impasse. Surely jurors would be left confused if, in response to
their inquiry about a possible impasse, the trial court brought them
into the courtroom, asked if progress was still possible, and upon
being told it was, the trial court simply walked off the bench
without another word. We therefore read Lewis to say that upon
learning that further progress is possible, the trial court should
simply inform the jury that they may return to the jury room to
continue deliberating.
10
“the potential that a modified-Allen instruction will coerce a
hopelessly deadlocked jury into reaching a compromise verdict.”
Fain, ¶ 19. A modified-Allen instruction is therefore not always
uncoercive. If it were, a trial court could give one repeatedly, day
after day to a hopelessly deadlocked jury until it returned a verdict.
Indeed, our supreme has declined to embrace a per se rule, instead
indicating its “preference for a case-by-case approach when
evaluating the coercive effect of a supplemental jury instruction.”
Gibbons, ¶ 29. So, if progress towards a verdict is not just unlikely
but is impossible, even a modified-Allen instruction may be
impermissibly coercive.
B. The Trial Court’s Response was Error
¶ 23 We cannot know, because the trial court failed to determine,
whether progress towards a verdict was likely, unlikely, or
impossible. The jury’s question was open to interpretation. Was
the question hypothetical? Or did the jury mean that it was truly
deadlocked on one of the charges? The trial court’s comments
reflected the court’s uncertainty. In discussing the jury’s question
with the parties, the trial court initially stated, “[m]y reading of this
is they are not telling us they have come to impasse. My reading of
11
this is that they are asking me what happens if we can’t come to a
unanimous decision on only one charge.” But the court went on to
state, “I am not all that clear on this,” and “we don’t know what
they mean by the question.”
¶ 24 We do not envy the position of the trial court in having to
interpret and respond to such an ambiguous question. But this
ambiguity did not alleviate the trial court’s duty to make the
threshold inquiry — if anything, this ambiguity made the threshold
inquiry even more critical. And because the trial court failed to
conduct this inquiry, it is impossible for us to now divine the nature
of the jury’s impasse from the cold record. The best we can do is
say that, based on the jury’s question, progress towards a verdict
may have been unlikely or impossible (though the latter is less
plausible). If either was true, the court’s unqualified instruction to
continue deliberating was coercive. We therefore conclude that the
trial court abused its discretion by failing to conduct the threshold
inquiry into whether progress towards a verdict was likely if
deliberations continued.
¶ 25 We recognize that in Munsey, another division of this court
found no coercion and no error under circumstances similar to
12
ours. In that case, the jury’s question during deliberations was, “[i]f
the jury is hung on one or more counts, but has reached a verdict
on the majority of counts, is it considered to be a hung jury for the
entire case?” 232 P.3d at 119. The court responded, “It is your
sworn duty to reach verdicts on all counts contained in the
indictment.” Id. The division held that the court’s response was
not coercive and not error because “the jury did not categorically
state that it was unable to reach a verdict” and there was no
“indication that further deliberations would not result in a verdict
unless at least one juror voted in contravention of his or her true
beliefs.” Id. at 119-20.
¶ 26 In Munsey, as here, the trial court did not make an initial (or
any) determination about whether further deliberations were likely
to be productive. Id. The Munsey division seemed to hold that this
oversight did not matter because there was no indication that
further deliberations would not have been productive. But we think
this interpretation contravenes the supreme court’s directive in
Fain, Schwartz, and Lewis — the Munsey division seems to have
transformed the trial court’s duty to determine to what extent the
jury is deadlocked into a rebuttable presumption that it is not.
13
¶ 27 As explained above, this threshold determination is critical —
the coerciveness of an instruction often depends on the
intractability of the deadlock. Consequently, the determination
should not be weighted by a presumption at the outset. We
therefore respectfully disagree with Munsey and decline to follow it.
See People v. Bondsteel, 2015 COA 165, ¶ 14 (one division of this
court is not bound by the decision of another), aff’d, 2019 CO 26.
¶ 28 Munsey aside, other Colorado opinions have found no error in
cases where a trial court instructed the jury to continue
deliberating without making this threshold determination. See,
e.g., People v. Hayward, 55 P.3d 803, 807-08 (Colo. App. 2002).
But we are unaware of any opinion analyzing whether a court’s
failure to make this threshold determination before instructing it to
continue deliberating can render the instruction potentially coercive
and therefore error. We think the absence of the threshold
determination can render an instruction error based on the
supreme court’s more recent discussion of this issue in Fain.
¶ 29 In sum, when faced with a jury question that indicates the
possibility of an impasse, a trial court cannot simply tell the jury to
continue deliberating. Before instructing the jury to continue its
14
deliberations, the trial court should determine whether further
progress towards a unanimous verdict is likely. Optimally, this will
entail bringing the jury into the courtroom, either collectively or
juror by juror, and inquiring about the likelihood of progress.
¶ 30 Because the jury’s question here suggested that it was at an
impasse, the trial court abused its discretion by instructing the jury
to continue deliberating without first ascertaining the intractability
of that impasse.
C. The Trial Court’s Error Requires Reversal
¶ 31 We recognize that we cannot say that the instruction was
coercive. All we can say is that it was potentially coercive. This
uncertainty does not mitigate the trial court’s error — on the
contrary, it is a direct result of the trial court’s error. The trial
court’s instruction was coercive if further progress was unlikely.
But we cannot tell whether this was the case because the trial court
failed to make that determination before giving the instruction.
¶ 32 As explained above, and as the trial court recognized, it was
possible that the jury was at an impasse on one of the charges
(which one, we don’t know). The court responded by telling the
jury, without qualification, to continue deliberating. If the
15
possibility of further progress was unlikely, the court’s instruction
may have coerced members of the jury to abandon their
conscientious convictions for the sake of reaching a unanimous
verdict. Because it is impossible for us to determine the
intractability of the jury’s impasse, we cannot say that the court’s
error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. Cf. Germany v.
People, 198 Colo. 337, 340, 599 P.2d 904, 907 (1979) (Defendant’s
absence during deliberations and therefore inability to object to
modified-Allen instruction was reversible because “[i]n the case of a
modified Allen charge followed by a guilty verdict, it well could be
that the defendant was prejudiced by the charge. No one can say
what the jury might have done had not the instruction been given.
Under these circumstances, obviously an appellate court cannot
say, ‘this was error but beyond any reasonable doubt it was
harmless.’”). And because we cannot tell which charge was the
subject of the impasse, we must reverse all of Black’s convictions.
III. Evidence was Sufficient to Support Black’s Assault Conviction
¶ 33 As mentioned above, because we reverse all of Black’s
convictions, including her assault conviction, we address whether
the evidence was sufficient to support the third degree assault
16
conviction only to determine whether Black may be retried on it.
We conclude that the evidence was sufficient and the prosecution
may retry her for third degree assault.
¶ 34 We review de novo whether the evidence was sufficient to
support a conviction. See People v. Donald, 2020 CO 24, ¶ 18. In
doing so, we view the evidence as a whole and in the light most
favorable to the prosecution, giving the prosecution the benefit of all
reasonable inferences that might fairly be drawn from the evidence.
Id. at ¶¶ 18-19.
¶ 35 Third degree assault requires that a person knowingly or
recklessly cause another bodily injury. § 18-3-204(1)(a), C.R.S.
2019. The criminal code defines bodily injury as “physical pain,
illness, or any impairment of physical or mental condition.” § 18-1-
901(3)(c), C.R.S. 2019. Our supreme court has interpreted this
definition to mean that bodily injury is “at least some physical pain,
illness or physical or mental impairment, however slight.” People v.
Hines, 194 Colo. 284, 289, 572 P.2d 467, 470 (1977).
¶ 36 Officer Corey testified that Black scratched his arm while she
was seated in the police car with her hands cuffed behind her.
According to his testimony, Officer Corey had his left hand on
17
Black’s right forearm. Officer Corey testified that with her other
(left) hand, Black reached up and dug her nails into his left forearm
for five to ten seconds. The officer testified that he did not notice it
at first, but that when he did, it caused him pain and “was very
uncomfortable.” The bodycam videos are too dark to make out the
events surrounding the scratch. And while the bodycam videos do
include one officer yelling at Black not to try to bite him, they do
not include any similar admonishment to stop scratching an officer.
¶ 37 As mentioned above, the evidence also includes photographs
of Officer Corey’s arm taken immediately after the incident. There
is nothing in the record indicating that the scratches broke the skin
or caused any bleeding. And the photographs show faint marks
where Black scratched the officer’s arm.
¶ 38 We may neither reweigh this evidence nor act as the thirteenth
juror. See People v. Poe, 2012 COA 166, ¶ 14. Instead, we must
credit Officer Corey’s testimony and view it and the photographs of
the injury in the light most favorable to the prosecution. We then
take that view of the evidence and determine de novo whether it
qualifies as bodily injury under our supreme court’s interpretation
of that term’s definition in the statute.
18
¶ 39 Because (1) our supreme court has interpreted bodily injury to
mean any “physical pain, illness or physical or mental impairment,
however slight,” Hines, 194 Colo. at 289, 572 P.2d at 470; and (2)
we must view the evidence in the light most favorable to the
prosecution, we must conclude that the evidence was sufficient to
establish that Black caused Officer Corey bodily injury. She may
therefore be retried for third degree assault.
IV. Conclusion
¶ 40 Black’s convictions are reversed and the case is remanded for
retrial.
JUDGE ROMÁN and JUDGE TOW concur.
19