Eleventh Circuit Finds No Error in judge Directing Jurors to Resolve a "Metaphysically Impossible" Verdict

Sometimes a jury renders an inconsistent verdict. For example, in the recent case, United States v. Gatlin, 90 F.4th 1050 (11th Cir. 2024), "the jury initially returned a verdict finding Gatlin guilty of sex trafficking a minor but, on the special interrogatory, failed to find either of the conditions that could support such a verdict." In response, "[r]ather than resolve this inconsistency on its own one way or the other, the district court clarified the instructions for the jury and directed them to continue deliberating."

So, was this proper?

On appeal, the Eleventh Circuit noted that

The dilemma we face here is nearly identical to the one addressed by then-Judge Gorsuch sitting on the Tenth Circuit in United States v. Shippley, 690 F.3d 1192 (10th Cir. 2012). In Shippley, the defendant was charged with conspiracy relating to a scheme to traffic “considerable amounts of high quality cocaine.”...The jury was issued two documents to fill out: a general verdict form and a set of special interrogatories asking which drug kinds and quantities were involved....At the conclusion of the trial, “the jury returned with a guilty verdict on the general verdict form, [but] it answered ‘no’ to each of the special interrogatories, indicating that Mr. Shippley conspired to distribute none of the drugs at issue in the case.”...The district court was “[p]erplexed,” “sought advice from counsel,” and then, after reinstructing the jury, asked them to “deliberate again.” Id. “[F]urther deliberations quickly yielded an unambiguous guilty verdict.”...The defendant appealed, asserting that the district court's direction to the jury to keep deliberating violated Powell....

The Tenth Circuit ultimately rejected the defendant's Powell argument. Initially, then-Judge Gorsuch distinguished Powell on its face, saying that “nothing in Powell...speaks to the propriety of ordering further deliberations in the face of inconsistent verdicts against the same defendant on the same count”; rather, it “simply hold[s] the district court was allowed to enter a guilty verdict on one count despite a logically inconsistent verdict on another.”...Then-Judge Gorsuch stated:

Even accepting for argument's sake Mr. Shippley's premise that Powell...implicitly require[s] (rather than permit[s], as [it] hold[s]) a district court to accept a verdict logically inconsistent as between counts or defendants, that still does not speak to our case. In our case, it wasn't just logically incongruous to enter the jury's verdict, it was metaphysically impossible. Powell...involved logical inconsistencies between counts .... However illogical, the verdicts ... could be given full effect. This case, by contrast, involves an inconsistency on the same count with the same defendant—an inconsistency that simply could not have been given full effect. Something had to give in our case that didn't have to give in [Powell]. To enter an acquittal, the district court would have needed to disregard the fact that the jury expressly found Mr. Shippley guilty. To enter a guilty verdict, the court would have needed to overlook the special verdict findings that Mr. Shippley did not conspire to distribute any of the drugs at issue in the case. And nothing in Powell...speaks either explicitly or implicitly about what a court's to do in these circumstances, let alone suggests the district court committed an error of constitutional magnitude (or otherwise) in proceeding as it did in this case.

Applying this analysis to the case at hand, the Eleventh Circuit concluded that

We are persuaded by then-Judge Gorsuch's reasoning in Shippley that directing the jury to continue deliberations under these circumstances was not error. Here, the district court had not accepted the jury's verdict and, as a result, the verdict was not final....Gatlin asked the district court to enter a judgment of acquittal because the jury did not answer affirmatively either of the special interrogatories that would allow a guilty verdict. But doing so would have required the district court to overlook the jury's unanimous finding of guilt as to Count 1 on the general verdict form. And the inverse—simply accepting the general finding of guilt—was equally untenable. Here, as in Shippley, “it was metaphysically impossible” to give effect to the jury's verdict.

-CM