Criminal Procedure — partial verdicts

Listen to this article

U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit

Criminal

Criminal Procedure — partial verdicts

Where the judge improperly solicited a partial verdict from the jury for using a firearm during a crime of violence, when the jury was unable to reach a verdict on the predicate crime of violence, the conviction must be vacated.

“Because the actual rationale underlying the jury’s verdicts (and lack thereof ) are typically not the proper subject of judicial inquiry, see Fed. R. Evid. 606(b); Tanner v. United States, 483 U.S. 107, 116–127, 107 S. Ct. 2739, 2745–51 (1987); Gacy v. Welborn, 994 F.2d 305, 313 (7th Cir. 1993), we will not and cannot know why the jury convicted Moore on Count Two without reaching agreement on the predicate offense in Count One. See Powell, 469 U.S. at 66, 105 S. Ct. at 477; Askew, 403 F.3d at 501. But we cannot discount the possibility that the jury rendered a verdict on Count Two prematurely, without appreciating that its finding of guilt was logically irreconcilable with its continued division on the predicate offense. This is the very possibility that the district court itself recognized when the partial verdict was first returned. Nor can we rule out the possibility that had the jury been permitted to continue its deliberations on all counts, without interruption and without the court’s solicitation of a partial verdict, the jury in weighing the evidence that bore on Count One as well as Count Two might have perceived the inconsistency and realized that it had not, in fact, reached agreement as to all elements of the section 924(c) offense.”

Vacated in part, and Affirmed in part.

13-2905 U.S. v. Moore

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Grady, J., Rovner, J.