Marcus C. Sanders v. A.A. Lamarque, Warden

357 F.3d 943 Marcus C. SANDERS, Petitioner-Appellee, v. A.A. LAMARQUE, Warden, Respondent-Appellant. No. 02-56893. United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit. Argued and Submitted June 5, 2003. Filed February 3, 2004. Ana Duarte, Office of the Attorney General of the State of California, for the respondent-appellant. Tina Long Rippy, Whittier, CA, for the petitioner-appellee. Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of California; J. Spencer Letts, District Judge, Presiding. D.C. No. CV-00-04959-JSL. Before HALL, THOMAS, and PAEZ, Circuit Judges. Opinion by Judge THOMAS; Dissent by Judge HALL OPINION THOMAS, Circuit Judge: 1 Warden A.A. Lamarque appeals the judgment of the district court granting state prisoner Marcus C. Sanders' petition for a writ of habeas corpus based on the state trial court's dismissal of the lone holdout juror. We affirm. 2 * The protection of holdout jurors from coercion has been a fundamental part of our federal jurisprudence. The Supreme Court has long held that it is improper for a trial judge to inquire as to the numerical division of a deadlocked jury. See Brasfield v. United States, 272 U.S. 448, 449-50 , 47 S.Ct. 135…

Opinion by Judge THOMAS; Dissent by Judge HALL

OPINION

Warden A.A. Lamarque appeals the judgment of the district court granting state prisoner Marcus C. Sanders’ petition for a writ of habeas corpus based on the state trial court’s dismissal of the lone holdout juror. We affirm.

I

The protection of holdout jurors from coercion has been a fundamental part of our federal jurisprudence. The Supreme Court has long held that it is improper for a trial judge to inquire as to the numerical division of a deadlocked jury. See Brasfield v. United States, 272 U.S. 448, 449-50 , 47 S.Ct. 135 , 71 L.Ed. 345 (1926); Burton v. United States, 196 U.S. 283, 307-08 , 25 S.Ct. 243 , 49 L.Ed. 482 (1905). Indeed, “[i]f a trial judge inquires into the numerical division of the jury and then gives an Allen charge, the charge is per se coercive and requires reversal.” United States v. Ajiboye, 961 F.2d 892, 893-94 (9th Cir.1992) (citations omitted). As a matter of federal law, this is true even when the judge inadvertently is informed of the division. See United States v. Sae-Chua, 725 F.2d 530, 532 (9th Cir.1984).

Removal of a holdout juror is the ultimate form of coercion. Thus, “ 'a court may…

dissenting:

The decisions of our counterparts in the California courts were perfectly reasonable. By granting the writ to the petitioner, the district court failed to pay appropriate deference to the jurists who have previously considered the petitioner’s claims. Today this court repeats the error.

I respectfully dissent.

I.

The weakness of the majority’s opinion is immediately apparent. At the outset the majority implies that the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments prohibited the state trial judge from dismissing Juror 4 after the judge inadvertently learned that she was the sole holdout in deliberations. But the Supreme Court has never imposed such a prophylactic rule on the state courts. We held in United States v. Sae-Chua, 725 F.2d 530, 532 (9th Cir.1984), that a federal district judge may not give an Allen charge 1 when the judge has inadvertently learned that a juror is the sole holdout and the juror is aware that the judge knows this. Nevertheless, we lack power to impose this or other rules on the trial courts of all nine states in our circuit. Absent a provision for exclusive federal jurisdiction, the state courts are free to interpret federal law — including the Federal…