A Knox County juror who was the lone holdout against imposing a death sentence may have felt coerced to change his vote by a judge's jury instructions, the Tennessee Supreme Court said Friday in a unanimous opinion affirming the defendant's conviction, but ordering a new sentencing hearing.
The judge presiding over the first degree murder trial of William Pierre Torres should have accepted the jury's report that after deliberating for six hours it was deadlocked 11-1, Chief Justice Frank Drowota wrote for the court. Instead the judge told jurors to resume deliberations. The judge said, in part, that jurors should not hesitate to "re-examine your own views and change your opinion if convinced it is erroneous..." He also said they should "deliberate with a view to reaching an agreement, if you can do so without violence to your own individual judgment."
The supplemental instruction omitted three sentences that are part of a charge adopted by the Tennessee Supreme Court in State v. Kersey, a 1975 case. The Kersey charge should have included, "‘The verdict must represent the considered judgment of each juror. In order to return a verdict, it is necessary that each juror agree thereto. Your verdict must be unanimous,'" Drowota wrote, quoting from the Kersey opinion.
"Over defense objections, the trial court returned the jury to open court and gave the instruction, despite the fact that the note expressed an unequivocal deadlock," Drowota wrote. "The note did not request further instructions and the trial court did not ask the jurors whether further instructions and deliberations might assist them in returning a verdict. Instead the trial court simply gave the instruction and ordered the jury to continue deliberation. Just one hour later, the jury returned with a unanimous verdict of death."
Drowota said the dissenting juror probably had held out for six hours and likely concluded that the trial court was instructing "him," one of four men on the jury, to reconsider his position. The jury's note to the judge identified the hold-out juror as "he."
Under state law, if the jury is deadlocked in a capital sentencing hearing, the judge "shall instruct the jury that in further deliberations, the jury shall only consider the sentences of imprisonment for life without possibility of parole and imprisonment for life." Because of the law, the "rationale for giving the Kersey charge - avoidance of the societal costs of a retrial - is not as compelling in a capital sentencing hearing because the jury's inability to agree on the sentence does not result in a retrial," Drowota wrote.
He said judges have the authority to give the Kersey instruction when a jury has not reached a decision after a short period of time, but should exercise discretion to determine whether a jury has been "ultimately" unable to agree on punishment. In Torres' case, the single juror, identified by gender, "may have been coerced into surrendering views conscientiously held, and under such circumstances, ‘the jury's province is invaded and the requirement of unanimity is diluted,'" Drowota wrote, citing State v. Kersey.
"Having determined that the defendant is entitled to a new sentencing hearing, we need not address the other issues raised..... The sentence of death is vacated and the case is remanded to the trial court for a new sentencing hearing... at which the jury shall only consider the sentences of imprisonment for life without possibility of parole and imprisonment for life," the chief justice wrote.
Torres was convicted in 1999 of first degree murder by aggravated child abuse for killing his 15-month-old son, Quintyn Pierre James Wilson. Following a sentencing hearing, jurors found that the aggravating circumstances, as defined by state law, outweighed mitigating evidence. The two aggravating circumstances found by the jury were that the murder was committed against a person less than 12 years old and the defendant was at least 18 years old and that the murder was "especially heinous, atrocious or cruel in that it involved torture or serious physical abuse beyond that necessary to produce death."
Torres was caring for the baby when he called the victim's mother at work and told her to come home. Torres told the mother, who was his girlfriend, that their son had fallen from his crib. He was later declared dead at a hospital where doctors noted "very suspicious marks" on his body. The baby's face and scalp also were bruised and swollen and bruises were visible. An autopsy found that he had been subjected to "blunt force trauma" and had died as a result of hemorrhaging and a brain injury that were not consistent with a fall. Under questioning by police, Torres denied injuring his son, but later said he had shaken him because he was crying.
The conviction and sentence of death were affirmed by the state Court of Criminal Appeals.