People v. Jackson

Defendant was found guilty by a jury of first-degree murder and armed robbery. After the jury returned its verdict, defendant requested that the circuit court poll the jury. Eleven of the 12 jurors confirmed that the signed verdict accurately reflected their verdict. The circuit court dismissed the jury without polling the twelfth juror, which constituted clear and obvious error. The defendant forfeited the issue by raising it for the first time on appeal. The appellate court held that the error in polling constituted a structural error that called into question the integrity of the judicial process and reversed under the second prong of the plain error rule. The Supreme Court reversed the appellate court’s judgment, finding that the polling error did not rise to the level of structural error requiring a reversal of the defendant’s conviction because a jury poll is not an essential element of a fair trial (describing it instead as an “important, nonessential process”). The court further explained that the forfeited error must instead be analyzed for prejudice under the first-prong error standards, which had not been invoked by the defendant. (ANNE M. BURKE, THEIS, NEVILLE, MICHAEL J. BURKE, and CARTER, concurring. HOLDER WHITE took no part in the decision.)