A Wake County jury determined yesterday that Starbucks is not liable for injuries suffered by Raleigh Police Department Lieutenant Matthew Kohr when a cup of hot coffee spilled on his lap. WRAL has the story here. The verdict was 10-2. The parties agreed to a non-unanimous verdict. Can they do that? Could the parties in a criminal case do that? Civil cases. In civil cases, they can do that. The parties may consent to “a verdict or a finding of a stated majority of the jurors” rather than a unanimous verdict. N.C. R. Civ. P. 48. In the interests of finality and of reducing litigation costs, parties to civil disputes sometimes agree to non-unanimous verdicts. Criminal cases. In criminal cases, I don’t think the parties can consent to a non-unanimous verdict. The state constitution provides that “[n]o person shall be convicted of any crime but by the unanimous verdict of a jury in open court.” And G.S. 15A-1201 states that “[i]n all criminal cases the defendant has the right to be tried by a jury of 12 whose verdict must be unanimous.” Both the constitutional provision and the statute now contain exceptions for bench trials, but neither addresses the possibility of the parties waiving unanimity or consenting to non-unanimity, or of the defendant alone doing so. I’m not aware of a North Carolina case directly on point, but I doubt that a non-unanimous jury verdict would be proper in a criminal case in this state, for two reasons. First, both the [...]
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