I’m watching 12 Angry Men while composing some music.
At the start of the movie the judge is providing jury instructions. The last instruction is with regards to sentencing. The judge says “if you return a guilt verdict, then the bench will entertain no plea for mercy. The death penalty is mandatory.”
Would such an instruction be typical?
Would a jury be informed about possible sentences (even in non-death penalty cases), e.g. “If you return a guilty verdict, then the accused would face a 2-4 year prison sentence”?
(Yes I know that the juror investigating the crime is a major no-no)
That’s one of the reason I was wondering. It seems like knowing the sentence could have an effect on the jury. They might think that they don’t want to find somebody guilty because they feel the sentence is unreasonable.
My answer is for Illinois only, so your state may vary, but:
no crime had a mandatory death penalty. Some had & still have a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment, but there was always discretion on imposing death. If the state asked for death, the jury voted (well after & separate from finding them guilty) on whether the defendant was eligible for the death penalty. If yes, the judge imposed sentence and still had unfettered discretion to not impose death.
other than death eligibility, juries have nothing to do with sentencing. The pattern jury instruction for all criminal trials includes:
“You are not to concern yourself with possible punishment or sentence for the offense charged during your deliberation. It is the function of the trial judge to determine the sentence should there be a verdict of guilty.”
The closest to involvement in sentencing is the jury may have to vote at trial whether certain specific statutory aggravating factors existed or not (victim under 12, bodily harm was great or severe, etc.) but they aren’t told what’s done with those factors.
not a jury instruction issue, but consistent with the pattern instruction is that one of the routinely requested and granted orders at trial is that the parties cannot argue to the jury what the sentence must or could be.
All in all, the “instruction” in Twelve Angry Men sounds wholly like a dramatic device.
My understanding is that there was no sentencing discretion for the judge in this case; statute provided for a mandatory death sentence in case of a guilty verdict, with no room for leniency. In such a case I don’t see why the judge should not be allowed to indicate this to the jury in the instruction; in Ramos, the Supreme Court has held that it was permissible for the judge to inform the jury of the governor’s power of clemency, and I don’t see why the result should be different here.
Things may be very different where there is sentencing discretion for the judge.
I should temper my “dramatic device” conclusion by recognizing that judges putting their thumb on the scale with jury instructions subtly or unsubtly expressing their personal biases and preferences was not unheard of. As I recall, maybe from Rumpole of the Bailey and similar works, British judges used to be infamous for this. The result of such shenanigans has been pattern jury instructions and appellate courts being more willing to reverse for problematic non-pattern instructions.
But I still can’t imagine a judge giving the statement in 12 Angry Men. If a judge finds the evidence insufficient to convict, he could then and he/she still can grant a defense motion for a directed verdict and enter a not-guilty. Jury instruction shenanigans were usually the judge’s hint/signal to the jury to find the defendant guilty. But telling the jury that the defendant will hang if found guilty seems contrary to that.
Speaking re the State of California, I agree with @John_Bredin’s outline of how it goes.
Two additional points:
In death penalty cases, the jury must first be “death-qualified,” meaning they have no moral preclusion from imposing the death penalty if they find it is warranted (we could have a whole thread discussing just this); and
Any case tried with the death penalty on the table for the defendant is split into two phases. First is the guilt phase for the jury to determine if the defendant is guilty of the crime(s) as charged; and second, the penalty phase, which is solely to determine if the death penalty is warranted. Sentencing is an entirely separate proceeding held long after the jurors have been excused from their service.
In short, the scenario described in Twelve Angry Men would not legally happen in a California court, and if it did, it would be reversed on appeal.
[quote=“John_Bredin, post:7, topic:1000317”] As I recall, maybe from Rumpole of the Bailey and similar works, British judges used to be infamous for this.
[/quote]
I feel obliged to point out that Rumpole is humourous fiction. It it is not a sober commentary on British judges.
Even when the jury is asked to deliberate on a sentence (typically a felony or Class 1 misdemeanor) it is done as a separate post-conviction phase of the trial because information that would be considered prejudicial to conviction (inapplicable prior convictions, personal history unrelated to the case, et cetera) can be introduced. In some states it is treated as a recommendation that the judge can set aside if they think that it is not in conformance with jury instructions or just doesn’t agree, and if the jury can’t concur the court will fix the sentence.
As others have noted, no crime has a mandatory death penalty (court can always adjudicate to life-without-parole or a statutory minimum). So, no, the jury instructions make no sense. But then, the entire story is about one member of the jury intentionally interfering with deliberations by introducing theories and speculation that were not presented in testimony at trial including performing a demonstration using a purportedly similar weapon that was procured and brought into the jury room without notifying the court and entering into ‘evidence’, with no opportunity for either the plaintiff or defense counsel to object. This movie is a worse example of fair jurisprudence than Runaway Jury, and also lacks Gene Hackman chewing scenery like it is made of beef jerky.
Vincent ‘Vinny’ Gambino could get a mistrial declared in a New York minute even without the able expert testimony of Ms. Mona Lisa Vito, just by noticing that one of the jurors has a heavy object in his jacket pocket that wasn’t there before deliberations. And he’d get that $200 dollars you owe.
True, but a little googling finds that judges in England and Wales presiding over criminal jury trials give the jury a summing-up that includes both the relevant law and a summary of the trial evidence. American judges generally don’t summarize the evidence for the jury, and doing so seems the place where a judge could insert his/her thoughts and inclinations on how the jury should see or weigh the evidence.
The fact that a fictional trope exists doesn’t mean the thing’s common in real life, but it does tend to indicate either that it’s happened or that people think it possible.
Indeed, IIRC news from the Robet Latimer trial years ago, some jury members objected afterwards that had they known that guilty meant a mandatory 10-year sentence, they would not have voted to convict. It is I gather, not allowed for the prosecutor, defense, or judge to mention the sentences applicable to a conviction in Canada.
(IIRC the judge refused to follow the guidelines and assign a 10-year sentence, but the appeal court substituted 10 years. The case revolved around a mercy killing, which the prosecution lied and said was a murder to make the father’s life more convenient. The prosecutor, IIRC, was later disciplined for jury tampering for ensuring that more religiously inclined people made it onto the jury)
To add one data point to the post by @Northern_Piper - I was a juror on a second degree murder case a couple of decades ago. The judges instructions only covered the meaning of the crime of second degree murder, as well as of the possible lesser crime of manslaughter. He did not mention the possible length of sentences for either crime.
