UPDATED: Court Overturns Framingham Woman's OUI Conviction

The Massachusetts State Appeals Court has overturned a drunk driving conviction of a Framingham woman.

The Commonwealth court cited comments made by the trial judge for the its decision.

On January 24, 2013, Kristie Firmin was convicted for operating under the influence of alcohol, her second offense.

Firmin was arrested by Framingham Police on Feb. 29, 2012, after police observed her vehicle swerving down a road.

At the trial, after closing arguments, Framingham District Court Judge Douglas Stoddart said

“If I can give you some helpful hints -- because we do this every day -- it’s not fun or easy to be a juror, we know that. So, to the extent that you could create a collegial atmosphere in the room, that would be great. So, when the door shuts, it would be very helpful if people didn’t make pronouncements, you know, ‘This is the way I’m going to vote’, because then it’s hard to extract somebody from a corner and our goal is to get a unanimous verdict. “If we don’t get a unanimous verdict, it’s called a mistrial or a hung jury and we have to do this case all over again and we’re booked out until May now. So, we’d really appreciate it if you guys could resolve this. So, I guess I would suggest that, maybe let everybody, you know, just chat informally, not take formal votes right away and then, at some point during the deliberations, if you see a ground swell of support in one direction or the other.”

The judge also told the jury “Now, in terms of timing, I think what we’ll do is give you the case now, but we’re going to cut you loose at one o’clock. If you have a verdict real quick before 1:00, we’ll take it, but otherwise, we’ll see you back at 2:00.”

Court adjourned at 12:41 p.m. and the jury went to lunch 1-2 p.m.

Court reconvened at 2:28 p.m. whereupon the jury delivered the verdict.

The Massachusetts State Appeals court ruled in favor of the defendant.

“We agree with the defendant that because the jury deliberations were not “due and thorough,” the judge’s instruction was “inappropriate.”

“Moreover, the judge erroneously “digress[ed] from” the “approved language” which compelled the jury to reach a verdict.

The Appeals Court cited in in its ruling that since the defendant did not object to the judge’s instruction, the Court only made a determination “whether the timing [or the content] of the charge [was error] creat[ing] a substantial risk of a miscarriage of justice.”

The Appeals Court stated the Judge was wrong to state “the case would have to be retried if they could not reach a verdict and the court was booked until May, that the jurors should do “whatever voting or whatever [they] need to do” if they saw a “ground swell of support” in either direction, and that the court would take the verdict if it was reached within the approximate twenty minutes before the lunch break.”

The Appeals Court ruled that “we think that the judge’s instruction “may [have led] jurors to believe that they should compromise their own conscientious convictions in order to reach a verdict,” and, “in light of the fact that the jury returned a guilty verdict less than thirty minutes after returning from lunch, we agree that the instruction impermissibly “cast[s] the balance substantially more in favor of conviction.”

Accordingly, the judgment is reversed and the verdict is set aside, stated the document for Commonwealth vs Kristie L. Firmin.

The Middlesex District Attorney’s Office has the right to re-try the case, if they choose.