People v. Wilson (2008)

In People v. Wilson (2008) 44 Cal.4th 758, the trial court dismissed the lone African-American juror during the death-penalty-phase jury deliberations of a case against an African-American defendant. The juror was the lone holdout for a life sentence. He had initially voted for death but changed his vote based on his own experience with circumstances similar to the defendant's negative family dynamics. (Wilson, supra, 44 Cal.4th at pp. 813-814.) The trial court cited four reasons for dismissing the juror: (1) he concealed racial bias during voir dire; (2) he relied on facts outside the evidence; (3) contrary to the court's instruction he considered life without parole as worse than death; (4) he prejudged the appropriate penalty, as shown by a comment to another juror during the guilt phase. (Id. at pp. 816-820.) The Supreme Court addressed each of the reasons given by the trial court and found that "none of the grounds was established to a demonstrable reality." (Id. at p. 841.) The juror in Wilson made a comment at a break during the guilt phase of the trial, wondering out loud whether a person can be held responsible when that person has no authority figure. (Wilson, supra, 44 Cal.4th at pp. 836-838.) In addressing this ground for discharge, the Supreme Court initially discussed whether the comment was a violation of the admonition not to discuss the case, even though violation of the admonition was not the ground upon which the trial court relied in discharging the juror. The court noted that trivial violations of the admonition do not require removal of the offending juror. (Id. at p. 839.) The court stated that the juror's "solitary and fleeting comments to a fellow juror, made during a break early in the guilt phase portion of the trial, were a technical violation of both section 1122 and the court's admonition to the jury not to discuss the case. But the violation was a trivial one: one, possibly two sentences, spoken in rhetorical fashion and not in an obvious attempt to persuade anyone. The juror to whom the comment was made averred that he did not respond, and none of the other jurors reported hearing the comments." (Id. at pp. 839-840.) The Supreme Court then moved on to the reason given by the court for discharging the juror -- prejudging the penalty -- and held that the comment made by the juror did not establish a demonstrable reality that the juror prejudged the question of penalty. (Id. at pp. 840-841.) In People v. Wilson (2008) Sadewater drove Wilson to a market that Wilson intended to rob; during the course of the robbery, Wilson fatally shot the store clerk. Wilson and Sadewater were charged with attempted robbery and first degree murder. Wilson was convicted of murder and the jury found the robbery-murder special-circumstance allegation to be true. In a separate trial, a jury convicted Sadewater of being an accessory after the fact and attempted robbery, but acquitted her of murder. On appeal from convictions of attempted robbery and special circumstance murder, Wilson contended that the trial court had a sua sponte duty to instruct on the lesser included offense of first degree premeditated murder and second degree murder because Sadewater's conviction suggested that her jury believed the attempted robbery and the earlier killing were separate crimes. Our Supreme Court was unpersuaded: "But whatever the jury might have thought in that trial, it is not evidence in this case. (See People v. Palmer (2001) 24 Cal.4th 856, 858 'If substantial evidence supports a jury verdict as to one defendant, that verdict may stand despite an apparently inconsistent verdict as to another defendant'.)" (Wilson, at p. 17.)