Commonwealth v. Greer

The question on appeal is whether the trial court abused its discretion in issuing Spencer1 instructions — that is, instructions to a deadlocked jury to continue to deliberate, with an open mind to reconsideration of views, without giving up firmly held convictions — in an instance where the jury foreperson volunteered to the trial court the fact of the deadlock as well as the numerical division among the jurors and the identity of the holdout jurors.2 A divided Superior Court panel held that the Spencer instructions were impermissibly coercive, primarily relying upon authority from the U.S.…