Supreme Court overturns sodomy conviction

A mother convicted of statutory sodomy involving her daughters has won a new trial.

The Missouri Supreme Court today unanimously reversed the 2007 conviction of Maura Celis-Garcia, sending the case back to Clay County Circuit Court for another trial.

The high court said that the trial judge, Judge Larry Harman, violated the woman’s constitutional right to a unanimous jury verdict. That’s because, the court held, the jury instructions didn’t require all of the jurors to agree that she had committed the same act or acts to find her guilty. There were allegations of sexual abuse at several different locations and times, but several instances were wrapped into a single criminal count involving each child.

“The verdict directors failed to differentiate between the various acts in a way that ensured the jury unanimously convicted Ms. Celis-Garcia of the same act or acts,” the court held in a decision written by Judge Patricia Breckenridge.

When multiple acts are charged in one count, the court said, either prosecutors have to pick a single instance for which they seek a conviction or the jury instructions must lay out the separate alleged acts and require jurors to unanimously agree that at least one of those acts took place to reach a conviction.

The court went further, noting that today’s approved jury instructions for use in Missouri courts don’t require jurors to differentiate among multiple acts unless the defendant requests it or the trial court decides they should. The Supreme Court said those instructions don’t protect a defendant’s right to a unanimous jury verdict in a multiple acts case, and ruled that jury instructions that conflict with this and similar caselaw aren’t binding.

The case is State v. Celis-Garcia, SC09080.