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August 4, 2006
An Interesting Sixth Circuit Case On Inconsistent Criminal Jury Verdicts
Two men are suspected of involvement in a murder-for-hire scheme; one (let's call him "Hiram") is alleged to be the guy who did the hiring and the other (let's call him "Gunn") is alleged to be the paid triggerman.
Both are tried for capital murder, but separately (that is, to different juries). Hiram is tried first. His jury convicts him of aggravated murder, but after a sentencing hearing in which the government submitts murder-for-hire as an aggravating factor warranting the death penalty, the jury sentences Hiram to life, finding the murder-for-hire factor not to have been proven.
Gunn is tried second. He too is convicted of aggravated murder, but his jury finds the murder-for-hire factor to have been proven, and sentences him to death.
Gunn appeals his conviction and death sentence, contending that the inconsistency between his death sentence (on the strength of a murder-for-hire theory) and Hiram's life sentence (on the basis of a rejected murder-for-hire theory) renders his conviction and death sentence unconstitutionally arbitrary and disproportionate.
What result?
A couple of days ago, a divided panel of the Sixth Circuit reversed the conviction and death sentence in a case just like this called Getsy v. Mitchell. The majority held that because the crime of murder-for-hire requires (at least) two guilty participants, the first jury's rejection of the murder-for-hire factor was logically inconsistent with the second jury's endorsement of it, and that the logical inconsistency rendered the second conviction and death sentence unconstitutionally arbitrary and disproportionate.
This case presents an interesting variation on a problem I explored at length back in 1998 in my article "The Hobgoblin of Little Minds? Our Foolish Law of Inconsistent Verdicts," which appeared in the Harvard Law Review.
I'm pleased to say that both the majority opinion and the dissent quoted from and relied on my article. This is not the sort of thing that happens every day for a law professor! It is gratifying to see that every now and then, some of the toiling that we do here in this ivory tower proves useful out there in the real world.
In my view, the dissent by Judge Gilman has the better of the argument. While it is admittedly uncomfortable -- especially in a death penalty case -- to see two different juries reach inconsistent conclusions on similar evidence about the same episode, I don't believe that there's any reason to see legal error of any kind in the second jury's verdict. When a single jury reaches logically inconsistent verdicts in a single case, we can be certain from the verdict itself that the jury has somehow erred (in the sense, at least, of not following its instructions), and the argument of my Harvard article is that the legal system ought to do something about inconsistent convictions in this setting (rather than just letting them stand, as the law now does). But when two juries reach logically inconsistent verdicts in separate trials, those verdicts supply no evidence that either jury has erred -- let alone that the erring jury was "harsher" one.
Posted by Eric at August 4, 2006 10:15 AM
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Comments
"...both the majority opinion and the dissent quoted from and relied on my article."
Cool. Congrats!
ELM: Thanks!
Posted by: Dave S. at August 4, 2006 12:49 PM
So have you started writing your Amicus brief for the Supremes yet? :-)
One question I have is what the result should be if, in a single trial, and without any special verdicts(apart from Blakely factors), the jury decides that someone hired Gunn to commit the crime, but that they had reasonable doubts as to whether the person was Hiram.
Can this be distinguished from genuine logical inconsitency?
ELM: Yup. If the evidence could explain the jury's verdicts (i.e., by providing a basis of acquittal other than a finding of no proof of an illegal agreement), then that's no true logical inconsistency in my view.
Posted by: Simon Spero at August 4, 2006 2:00 PM
Congratulations Eric. I think my crim pro prof made me read your article back during my last semester of law school, spring 2000. The title sounds familiar.
Posted by: Mark K at August 4, 2006 9:32 PM
Seems like the two juries heard different prosecutions and different
defenses and reached different conclusions. That type of inconsistency must
be the result of a trial by jury system. That is, neither jury is
necessarily wrong; they just heard different cases.
In the civil litigation world, things work differently as I recall. There
are some res judicata and collateral estoppel issues that are analagous to
this criminal law situation. Did your article explore that analogy?
[Sorry, I don't have a subscription to HLR and missed the article at the
time of printing ;) ]
ELM: No, Mark, I didn't pursue the civil angle -- though the existence of special verdicts in civil cases makes it a good deal easier to discern inconsistencies than in criminal cases, where the general verdict prevails.
Posted by: Mark Chilton at August 5, 2006 9:06 AM
Logically inconsistent outcomes is not evidence of error where the standard is beyond a reasonable doubt? That suggests you have a very special understanding of logical inconsistency or of error. An episemology in which logical inconsistency is not a primary sign of error is hard to understand. I do not see how you could have any errors.
Posted by: T. Gracchus at August 5, 2006 6:13 PM
Gracchus, there isn't necessarily logical inconsistency because different people made different permissible inferences.
There is certainly external inconsistency, but the Constitutional problem is internal inconsistency.
I would think that the acquittal of the principal on a murder for hire aggravator must necessarily make any supposed agent unable to be tried for that aggravator at the same standard of proof, but that's not the law.
It's not error if one defense attorney did a better job than the other.
Posted by: John Jenkins at August 7, 2006 3:58 PM