Court of Appeals of North Carolina Grants New Trial Based on Jurors Saying, “Someone — that man died, so someone needs to go to prison.”

Most errors at criminal trials are subject to a harmless error analysis. In other words, the appellate court looks at the gravity of the error and the overall weight of the evidence to decide whether the error was harmless (meaning a conviction can be affirmed) or prejudicial (meaning a conviction must be reversed). In rare cases, however, courts find structural error, meaning that the defendant’s conviction must be reversed without needed to decide whether the error was harmless or prejudicial. 

The recent opinion of the Court of Appeals of North Carolina in State v. Blake, 853 S.E.2d 838 (N.C.App. 2020), contains one of the crazier instances of structural error I’ve ever seen.

In Blake, Jermail Blake was charged with involuntary manslaughter. At the end of trial, the jury entered a guilty verdict and then did the following, as described by the trial judge:

All right. Now, the court is going to put on the record as well that, after the jury announced its verdict and they were discharged, I spoke to them like I always speak to the jurors — jury after the case was over. And several of them, say the majority, indicated to me that they did not believe any of the witnesses, that in their opinion the witnesses — and I’m saying their because I don’t know which — I would say at least seven — the witnesses were not believable, that they weren’t sure that the defendant committed this crime but, quote, this is what I was told three or four times, “Someone — that man died, so someone needs to go to prison,” which I disclosed to the attorneys yesterday and I’m disclosing to them again today outside of the presence of the public and outside the presence of the defendant with his consent. I think that’s it.

Blake later appealed to the Court of Appeals of North Carolina, which vacated Blake’s conviction, holding as follows:

We conclude the jury disregarded its instruction by the trial court and convicted Defendant on a standard less than beyond a reasonable doubt. The majority of the jurors told the trial court they did not believe “at least seven” of the State’s eight witnesses and convicted Defendant because “someone needs to go to prison.” The jurors’ comments to the trial court demonstrated that the trial did not accomplish its central purpose: “the central purpose of a criminal trial is to decide the factual question of the defendant’s guilt or innocence.”…We conclude this defect in Defendant’s trial resulted in the trial no longer “serv[ing] its function as a vehicle for determination of guilt or innocence.”

The State argues that “there is a strong presumption against finding structural error and the doctrine only applies to a limited number of cases. Defendant’s claim does not fit into any of specific types of cases outlined by the Courts.”…The State is correct that the types of cases where structural error has been found are limited, but the circumstances here present the same type of constitutional error present in some of those cases.

This is a good outcome in Blake’s case, but one wonders how many other cases have jurors using a similar thought process.

-CM