Where a jury was deadlocked in a first degree murder trial, the trial court erred when it asked questions of the jurors which revealed the identity of a lone holdout juror, by allowing the prosecutor to examine the holdout juror, and by allowing testimony only from those jurors who claimed that the holdout juror was not deliberating in good faith. The prosecutors inquiry risked pressuring the dissenting juror to conform. The courts subsequent inquiry was inadequate and its findings derived from a “stacked evidentiary deck.”
Case Summaries
