SBM
I am puzzled by your statement, the judge looked at the charge sheet and without a word, sent them back to the deliberation room. When did that happen? Id be interested to learn about this; it might help me understand the bizarre behavior of this jury.
Heres what I saw happen:
At 2:40 p.m. ET on Monday, after the jury entered the courtroom claiming to have a verdict, the judge asked the foreman if all jurors agreed on the verdict and the foreman replied yes. Another juror said we all didnt agree and the jury was sent back to continue deliberations,
but only after the judge told them that the decision must be unanimous.
All the attorneys were present when this happened and after the jury left the courtroom for further deliberations the judge asked the attorneys to meet with him in chambers.
Later, the jury once again entered the courtroom claiming to have a verdict. At 3:02 p.m. ET on Monday, the judge again asked the foreman if the verdict was unanimous and the foreman again said yes. The other 11 jurors were silent. The verdict form was passed from foreman to clerk to judge. The judge looked at it and passed it to the clerk to be read and she announced the not guilty verdict. The prosecution asked that the jury be polled and at least seven members of the jury said that their finding was guilty. The judge again told them that their verdict must be unanimous. The jury was re-read at least part of the jury instructions and then told by the judge to continue deliberations. The attorneys then approached the bench.
At 3:50 p.m. ET on Monday, the judge read to the jury an additional instruction. It said all 12 must agree in order to reach a guilty verdict, all 12 must agree in order to reach a not guilty verdict. If the jury cannot reach a verdict, they should inform the judge in writing.
At 5:00 p.m. ET on Monday, the judge told the jury that he understood that they had a report reduced to writing to give him. This report said that they could not reach a unanimous verdict and the judge declared a mistrial.
Speaking for myself, I think questioning the educational background of a group of 12 people who could do what this jury did is not unreasonable. They may all be good people, honest and kind. They may all be well-intentioned. But having been told explicitly multiple times that the decision had to be unanimous, for the entire jury to sit there silently when the foreman made the same mistake a second time (he not once but twice said that their "verdict" was unanimous when it was not) is so incredibly odd to me that I wonder what else beyond a lack of a basic education can explain it. This need not be considered an insult; very few kids control what schools they go to, and some schools are much worse than others. Some people with little education become wildly successful and admired. But this is true: some people are not well educated.
Tellis defense attorney Alton Peterson, in a video posted by local CBS news affiliate WREG in Memphis, said, I think we all realized about the same time that there was confusion in the jury box. When a defense attorney who gets a good result from a jury still feels comfortable calling the jury confused, you know something is extremely strange. (His partner Darla Palmer said after the mistrial was declared that "I characterize it as a victory.")
District Attorney John Champion said, "We felt like it was probably a misinterpretation of a jury instruction, so we added to one of the jury instructions to make it more simplistic." This, according to Therese Apel in The Clarion-Ledger. I understand this to mean that the judge and attorneys decided they had to really dumb it all down for this jury to begin to comprehend a simple rule.
There are various possibilities, but consider this one: at least one member of the jury understood what it means to have a unanimous verdict and at least one member of the jury, including the foreman, did not. If this was the case, then the jury couldnt even hold discussions fruitful enough for the entire panel to agree on the correct rule governing what constitutes a valid verdict.
Another possibility is that the jury instructions only explicitly said that the verdict must be unanimous for a guilty verdict and the jurors concluded, quite erroneously, that no unanimity was required for a not guilty verdict. If that is what they thought, this does clearly point to a gap in education, since a basic understanding of civics and history would mean that a person would know about the unanimity requirement for a not guilty verdict. Even setting that aside, after the jury was specifically told that a verdict (not merely a guilty verdict) had to be unanimous, they were unable to understand this simple point and 20 minutes later tried a second time to offer a non-unanimous finding of not guilty. If this is how they applied themselves to something so simple, I am in agreement with those who have said that it is hard to believe that they could understand some of the complex evidence in the case and analyze what it meant.
Links:
Jury twice tries to offer a non-unanimous verdict, plus judges final jury instruction:
[video=youtube;bVdK9P-gE5g]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVdK9P-gE5g[/video]
Jury announces it cannot reach a verdict:
[video=youtube;H78GfyL65M8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H78GfyL65M8[/video]
[Both videos above are archives of original live coverage by the LawNewz Network.]
Alton Peterson on jury confusion:
http://wreg.com/2017/10/16/verdict-watch-jury-resumes-deliberations-in-jessica-chambers-murder/
Darla Palmer says the mistrial is a victory:
http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2017/10/very_unusual_mistrial_in_missi.html
John Champion on writing a new instruction for the jury:
http://www.clarionledger.com/story/...ppears-confused-cant-agree-verdict/767413001/
