United States of America v. Terrell Armstead, Also Known As Rell, Also Known As Supreme 16

United States Court of Appeals
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT
Argued October 10, 2023 Decided September 3, 2024
No. 22-3052
UNITED S TATES OF A MERICA,
APPELLEE
v.
TERRELL ARMSTEAD, ALSO KNOWN AS R ELL, ALSO KNOWN AS
S UPREME 16,
APPELLANT
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the District of Columbia
(No. 1:19-cr-00369-1)
Jonathan Zucker, appointed by the court, argued the cause
and filed the briefs for appellant.
Mark Hobel, Assistant U.S. Attorney, argued the cause for
appellee. With him on the brief were Chrisellen R. Kolb, John
P. Mannarino, and Amy Larson, Assistant U.S. Attorneys.
Before: KATSAS , P AN , and GARCIA, Circuit Judges.

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Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge KATSAS .
KATSAS , Circuit Judge: A jury convicted Terrell
Armstead of sex trafficking through coercion but failed to
reach a verdict on various other charges. During jury
deliberations, the district court dismissed a juror who had failed
to disclose during voir dire that her father had been convicted
of prostitution and drug offenses. Deliberations remained
ongoing as the country was shutting down over COVID, so the
court then instructed the jury to return any partial verdict it had
reached. Armstead contends that the court impermissibly
dismissed the juror and demanded the partial verdict.
We reject both contentions. The district court permissibly
dismissed the juror for her lack of candor during voir dire—
misconduct that was apparent from the record and unrelated to
how the juror may have viewed the evidence. Moreover,
although the Sixth Amendment prohibits judges from coercing
juries to reach criminal verdicts, a judge retains discretion to
require the return of a partial verdict that the jury has reached
voluntarily. Here, with COVID making future deliberations
impossible, the district court did not abuse that discretion.
I
Armstead enticed vulnerable women to become
prostitutes, including one known here as “O.S.” Armstead put
O.S. to work propositioning customers in a strip club. He
branded her with a tattoo of his street name, forced her to give
him any money that she received, and held her car keys and
social-security card to prevent her from leaving him. Armstead
hit O.S., choked her, and threatened her with firearms.
A grand jury indicted Armstead on seven counts relating
to sex trafficking and one count of obstruction. Count Two of
the indictment charged him with trafficking O.S. through force,
fraud, or coercion, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1591(a) & (b)(1).

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The district court asked prospective jurors whether any of
them—or their close relatives or friends—had been a victim of
a crime, a witness to a crime, or “arrested for, convicted of, or
charged with a crime.” S.A. 8. Juror 10 answered no, but this
raised eyebrows. Defense counsel pressed her on whether she
really did not know anyone charged with a crime, or the victim
of a crime, despite having lived in Washington, D.C. for 53
years. She remained firm in her answer and was eventually
seated on the jury.
During the second day of jury deliberations, Juror 10 asked
the courtroom deputy what she could do if she did not “want to
be on this jury” anymore. S.A. 24. The district court then
probed whether she could continue to deliberate in good faith.
In response, Juror 10 revealed that her father had been
convicted on federal “prostitution and drug[]” charges, in what
she described as a “very high-profile case.” Id. at 30. She
explained that she had “thought this would be a good case” for
her to sit on, because she could “look outside the box.” Id. But
after deliberations started, she was “not comfortable” doing so
any longer. Id. at 31.
The government filed a motion to remove Juror 10 under
Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 23(b). That rule sets the
default number of jurors at twelve but allows the parties to
consent to a smaller jury. Fed. R. Crim. P. 23(b)(1) & (2). If
a jury of twelve begins deliberating, the rule also permits the
court to remove one juror for “good cause” and to take a verdict
from the remaining eleven jurors. Id. 23(b)(3). Armstead
opposed removal of Juror 10. He argued that, because her
revelations were bound up in her view of the evidence,
removing her would compromise his Sixth Amendment right
to a unanimous verdict.
The district court found good cause to dismiss Juror 10
based on her lack of candor during voir dire. The court noted
“five instances at least” where she had been asked about

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relatives with criminal records and not disclosed her father’s
convictions. S.A. 66–67. The court noted that this “suggests a
lack of candor, and there’s evidence to point towards
something more.” Id. at 67. But the court declined to
determine whether the juror had intentionally concealed
information to mislead the court, how the juror might view the
case, or whether she was a holdout during the ongoing
deliberations. Instead of forcing deliberations to start anew by
recalling the alternate juror, the court instructed the remaining
eleven jurors to continue deliberating.
The COVID pandemic rapidly spread as they did. On the
fifth day of deliberations, Friday, March 13, 2020, our
courthouse closed to the public. Also, the foreman informed
the district court that her child’s school had cancelled classes
for the upcoming week, which required her to find childcare.
During this conversation, the court asked her whether the jury
had reached “a unanimous verdict as to any of the counts.”
S.A. 127. She answered yes but did not give any more details.
Armstead and the government agreed to remind the jury that it
could return a verdict on any count, even if it had not reached
a verdict on all of them. The court gave the instruction in the
late afternoon, then the jury deliberated for some twenty more
minutes before calling it a day.
Things worsened over the weekend. The foreman’s
babysitter for Monday cancelled, leaving her without childcare
and afraid to expose her son to the pandemic. Armstead sought
a mistrial on the ground the jury could neither deliberate nor
render a verdict with one of eleven members participating
remotely. The district court agreed that the jury could not
deliberate remotely for practical reasons, but concluded that it
could remotely render a verdict. And it decided to ask the jury
to render any partial verdict it had reached. The court
instructed the jury:

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[L]et us know if you have received – reached a verdict
of guilty or not guilty with respect to any count. If
you have, what I am going to ask you to do is to
complete your verdict form and tell us what that
verdict is. Now, again, that is an “if.” If you have not
reached a verdict as to any particular count, I’m going
to ask you to simply say “no verdict” on the verdict
form, okay? So you’ll have your verdict form. As to
any particular count, if you have reached a verdict,
simply indicate what that verdict is. If you have not
reached a verdict as to a particular count, simply
indicate on the verdict form “no verdict,” okay?
…
Now, as I said, if and only if you have reached a
verdict as to any particular count, should you so
indicate. I’m not asking you to come to a conclusion
if you have not.
S.A. 163–64 (cleaned up). The jury then returned a guilty
verdict on Count Two—sex trafficking O.S. through force,
fraud, or coercion—and no verdict on the remaining seven
counts. Armstead requested a poll, which confirmed that the
jury was unanimous on the count of conviction.
After the government dropped the outstanding charges, the
court sentenced Armstead to 276 months in prison, followed
by 240 months of supervised release.
II
On appeal, Armstead challenges both the removal of Juror
10 during deliberations and the instruction asking the jury to
return any partial verdict it had reached. This Court reviews
both decisions for an abuse of discretion. See United States v.
McGill, 815 F.3d 846, 867 (D.C. Cir. 2016) (per curiam);

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United States v. Stover, 329 F.3d 859, 864 (D.C. Cir. 2003) (per
curiam). Under this standard, we consider only whether the
district court acted unreasonably or made a legal error. See
United States v. Jenkins, 50 F.4th 1185, 1195 (D.C. Cir. 2022);
United States v. Volvo Powertrain Corp., 758 F.3d 330, 345
(D.C. Cir. 2014).
A
Armstead’s challenge to the removal of Juror 10
implicates both Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 23(b)(3)
and the Sixth Amendment.
1
Rule 23(b)(3) provides: “After the jury has retired to
deliberate, the court may permit a jury of 11 persons to return
a verdict, even without a stipulation by the parties, if the court
finds good cause to excuse a juror.” A “variety of issues” can
support a finding of good cause under this rule, “including
illness, family emergency, or … jury misconduct.” McGill,
815 F.3d at 866. Misconduct “consists of actions by jurors that
[are] contrary to their responsibilities,” including “giving false
testimony during voir dire.” Id. at 866–67 (cleaned up). Other
courts have confirmed the latter point. For example, in United
States v. Ozomaro, 44 F.4th 538 (6th Cir. 2022), the Sixth
Circuit affirmed the dismissal of a deliberating juror for “lack
of candor” during voir dire. Id. at 544. And in United States
v. Delva, 858 F.3d 135 (2d Cir. 2017), the Second Circuit
affirmed the dismissal of a deliberating juror for “lying on voir
dire.” Id. at 157–59.
The district court had ample basis for concluding that Juror
10 did not candidly respond to questions in voir dire. As the
court explained, there were “five instances at least” where she
answered no to the question whether she had any relatives with
criminal convictions. S.A. 66–67. The relative in question was
her father, and the convictions in question were for

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“prostitution and drugs,” in a federal case that she described as
“very high-profile.” Id. at 30. Moreover, she did not answer
no merely once or twice, without time to recollect. And after
her change of heart about participating on the jury, she all but
admitted to withholding information in order to be seated.
Specifically, she told the district court that she had thought this
would be a “good case” for her to sit on, because her personal
experience would enable her to “look outside the box.” Id.
Armstead objects that the district court did not make a
specific factual finding on whether Juror 10’s repeated false
denials were willful or inadvertent. To be sure, the court
generously distinguished between the juror’s “lack of candor”
and her “possibly intentionally misleading the Court and the
parties,” in part to avoid what it recognized as “Fifth
Amendment concerns at this point.” S.A. at 62–63. But the
court did find “certainly, at a minimum” that Juror 10 had
shown “a lack of candor.” Id. at 67. In ordinary usage, that
phrase denotes some degree of dishonesty. See, e.g., United
States v. Vinton, 594 F.3d 14, 23 (D.C. Cir. 2010) (“lack of
candor” evinces “malicious purposes”). Moreover, the record
summarized above, and the court’s extensive recounting of its
concerns, make clear that the dismissal was not based on a
merely innocent failure of recollection.
2
The Sixth Amendment guarantees criminal defendants the
right to a “trial, by an impartial jury.” Construing this text
against “the common law, state practices in the founding era,
[and] opinions and treatises written soon afterward,” the
Supreme Court has held that a jury “must reach a unanimous
verdict in order to convict.” Ramos v. Louisiana, 140 S. Ct.
1390, 1395 (2020). This unanimity requirement “constrains”
a good-cause determination under Rule 23(b)(3). United States
v. Wilkerson, 966 F.3d 828, 834 (D.C. Cir. 2020). In particular,
a district court may not dismiss a deliberating juror “if the

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request for discharge stems from doubts the juror harbors about
the sufficiency of the government’s evidence.” United States
v. Brown, 823 F.2d 591, 596 (D.C. Cir. 1987).
After Brown, this Court repeatedly has held that a district
court may dismiss a deliberating juror for reasons
“independent” of the juror’s possible views of the evidence.
See McGill, 815 F.3d at 868. In United States v. Ginyard, 444
F.3d 648 (D.C. Cir. 2006), we reasoned that a deliberating juror
could be dismissed for an “employment-related need,” despite
reasons for believing that the juror was skeptical of the
government’s evidence. Id. at 652. In McGill, we held that a
deliberating juror could be dismissed for sneaking notes
outside the jury room, 815 F.3d at 869–70, even if the juror was
apparently a holdout for the defense, see id. at 862–66. And in
Wilkerson, we upheld a dismissal where the juror had indicated
strong disagreement not with the sufficiency of the
government’s proof, but with the law governing the case. 966
F.3d at 835–36.
The dismissal of Juror 10 was permissible under these
precedents. The district court reserved the question whether
Juror 10 wished to be removed based on her assessment of the
evidence or her possible status as a holdout. S.A. 57–58. And
it found good cause based entirely on her untrue statements
during voir dire. This case is like McGill insofar as the good
cause exists “independent of” the juror’s possible views of the
case. See 815 F.3d at 867–68. But in one respect, this case is
even easier—here, the misconduct occurred before the juror
heard any evidence. By the end of voir dire, there was good
cause to justify excusing the juror, even though it was not
discovered until after deliberations had begun.
Armstead reads our precedent differently. According to
him, a juror cannot be dismissed if her misconduct is related in
any way to her reluctance to convict—even if the misconduct
is by itself enough to constitute good cause. Armstead’s theory

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would make it all but impossible to remove jurors for lying
during voir dire, where questions are asked precisely to
discover possible biases or leanings that may color jurors’ view
of the case. But the misconduct justifying removal is a juror’s
withholding of information during voir dire, not the juror’s
possible biases or leanings in the case. And this lack of
candor—which occurs before the juror has heard any
evidence—is distinct from any possible “evidence-based
inclination to acquit,” McGill, 815 F.3d at 869, even if the
underlying subject of the voir dire testimony may affect the
juror’s good-faith view of guilt or innocence. For these
reasons, we agree with our sister circuits that a deliberating
juror may be removed for lack of candor during voir dire. See
Ozomaro, 44 F.4th at 544; Delva, 858 F.3d at 157–59.
3
Alternatively, Armstead complains that the district court
did not adequately probe Juror 10’s motivation during voir
dire. As Armstead himself recognizes, probing too much about
why a juror wants to be dismissed risks improperly intruding
on the confidentiality of deliberations. See Wilkerson, 966
F.3d at 835–36. And Armstead did not ask the district court to
probe further when it proposed to dismiss the juror for lack of
candor. In any event, as explained above, the misconduct here
turned not on why Juror 10 might have wanted to be excused
during deliberations, but on whether her answers during voir
dire lacked candor. On that point, the record speaks for itself,
and the district court explained in detail the compelling
evidence that the juror did not answer questions candidly.
B
Armstead further contends that the district court abused its
discretion in asking the jury to return whatever partial verdict
it had reached when further deliberations became impossible.
He contends that the instruction impermissibly interfered with

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the jury’s deliberative process. Armstrong does not identify
any source of positive law for this claim, but we think it must
be the Sixth Amendment.1
1
The Sixth Amendment guarantees a “trial, by an impartial
jury,” and history shows that this requires a “unanimous verdict
in order to convict.” Ramos, 140 S. Ct. at 1395. So, the judge
may not coerce or pressure the jury—or any individual juror—
into voting to convict. We have developed this point in cases
addressing how judges may respond to announced jury
deadlocks. “When efforts to secure a verdict from the jury
reach the point that a single juror may be coerced into
surrendering views conscientiously entertained, the jury’s
province is invaded and the requirement of unanimity is
diluted.” United States v. Thomas, 449 F.2d 1177, 1181 (D.C.
Cir. 1971) (en banc). And an instruction is impermissibly
coercive if it “shows a substantial propensity for prying
individual jurors from beliefs they honestly have.” United
States v. Driscoll, 984 F.3d 103, 114 (D.C. Cir. 2021) (cleaned
up). The same principles govern whether judges may ask for
partial verdicts, which likewise may coerce juries into
surrendering conscientiously held views for the sake of
reaching a verdict. But in both contexts, “neutral” comments—
ones that do not pressure jurors “to yield a conscientious
1 As explained above, Rule 23(b)(3) addresses the size of a jury
and when a deliberating juror may be dismissed. It says nothing
about how a jury may or must deliberate. Rule 31(b)(2) states that,
“[i]f the jury cannot agree on all counts as to any defendant, the jury
may return a verdict on those counts on which it has agreed.” This
rule entitles a jury to return a partial verdict, but does not speak to
when the court may prod it to do so.

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conviction”—are generally permissible. United States v.
McKinney, 822 F.2d 946, 950 (10th Cir. 1987).
Nothing in the instruction here pressured the jury to reach
a verdict, much less to find Armstead guilty. Indeed, it is hard
to imagine a less coercive instruction. The district court
required the jury to report any “verdict of guilty or not guilty”
on any individual count—without suggesting a preference for
one outcome over the other. S.A. 163. Repeating the word if
nine times, the court further instructed the jury to report any
partial verdict “if” it had reached one and to report the absence
of a verdict “if” not. Id. at 163–64. Here is one example:
“Now, again, that is an ‘if.’ If you have not reached a verdict
as to any particular count, I’m going to ask you to simply say
‘no verdict’ on the verdict form.” Id. at 163. Here is another:
“If you have not reached a verdict as to a particular count,
simply indicate on the verdict form ‘no verdict.’” Id. at 164.
Here is a third: “[I]f and only if you have reached a verdict as
to any particular count, should you so indicate. I’m not asking
you to come to a conclusion if you have not.” Id. Given the
clear and easy choice between returning a verdict or simply
reporting “no verdict,” even Armstead acknowledges that the
instruction “did not use coercive language” to pressure a
verdict. Appellant’s Reply Br. at 12.
This case looks nothing like a typical case of jury coercion.
In deadlock cases, for instance, an aggressive instruction to
continue deliberating may suggest that holdout jurors should
abandon their honestly held positions. See, e.g., Driscoll, 984
F.3d at 110–11; United States v. Black, 843 F.2d 1456, 1463–
64 (D.C. Cir. 1988). But the instruction here did not seek to
direct future deliberations at all. Instead, it simply asked the
jury to report any partial verdict it had already reached, while
simultaneously prohibiting them from reporting a verdict
unless they had already reached one. Nothing in the instruction

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pressured any juror to abandon conscientiously held views
about the case.
2
With no colorable argument of coercion, Armstead must
instead urge a bright-line rule: Forcing the jury to return a
verdict that it has already reached impermissibly intrudes on
the jury’s deliberative process. But the Sixth Amendment, in
guaranteeing trial by an impartial jury, says nothing about the
timing or structure of deliberations through which jurors reach
their honestly held positions. And the ostensible right of a jury
to structure its deliberations has no deep historical pedigree.
To the contrary, legislatures and judges have long played a role
in structuring how juries deliberate.
Start with the judge’s authority to require more
deliberations after the jury announces a deadlock. Even when
a jury declares itself to be “hopelessly deadlocked,” the court
may order it to continue, so long as the order does not coerce
jurors into surrendering their beliefs. See, e.g., Black, 843 F.2d
at 1463; Fulwood v. United States, 369 F.2d 960, 961–63 (D.C.
Cir. 1966). Such an order surely impacts the deliberative
process; the jury wishes to stop deliberating, but the court
makes it continue to avoid a mistrial if possible. Yet we have
repeatedly held that such instructions do not violate the Sixth
Amendment as long as they are noncoercive. See, e.g.,
Driscoll, 984 F.3d at 113; United States v. Lloyd, 515 F.3d
1297, 1302–03 (D.C. Cir. 2008).
Courts structure jury deliberations in other ways as well.
For example, when a defendant is charged with greater and
lesser-included offenses, some states require the jury to resolve
the charges in descending order of severity, acquitting on the
greater offense before considering the lesser. See, e.g., People
v. Richardson, 184 P.3d 755, 764 n.7 (Colo. 2008) (en banc);
Hughes v. State, 66 S.W.3d 645, 651 (Ark. 2022). This

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practice has deep roots, and it clearly involves structuring of
the jury’s deliberations. More precisely, it “‘requires the jury
to reach a partial verdict’ on the greater offenses first.”
Richardson, 184 P.3d at 764 n.7 (quoting State v. Tate, 773
A.2d 308, 321 (Conn. 2001)). Yet as Judge Friendly concluded
nearly a half-century ago, such an “acquittal-first” system is
not “wrong as a matter of law.” United States v. Tsansas, 572
F.2d 340, 346 (2d Cir. 1978). Indeed, we are aware of no
authority holding that this longstanding and widespread
practice violates the Sixth Amendment.
Armstead’s argument also finds no support in founding-
era common law, state practices, judicial opinions, or treatises.
If it did violate the Sixth Amendment for judges to structure
jury deliberations even without coercion, one might expect to
see some discussion of this point in these historical sources.
See Ramos, 140 S. Ct. at 1395. Yet Armstead fails to cite a
single historical source for his position, and we have not found
one either. To the contrary, founding-era common law cuts
against Armstead’s position. William Blackstone, “the
preeminent authority on English law for the founding
generation,” Alden v. Maine, 527 U.S. 706, 715 (1999),
observed that judges could deny the jury “meat, drink, fire, or
candle” in order to “accelerat[e] unanimity” and thus avoid
“causeless delay.” 3 W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the
Laws of England 375 (1769). We do not suggest that coercing
verdicts in this way would be permissible under modern
standards barring the coercion of a verdict. See Jenkins v.
United States, 380 U.S. 445, 445–46 (1965) (per curiam).
Nonetheless, it is striking just how dramatically Armstead’s
proposed rule diverges from founding-era practices and
understandings.
3
With text and history cutting against him,
Armstead invokes caselaw from other jurisdictions. But far

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from establishing that courts may never ask juries to return
partial verdicts voluntarily reached, it supports the opposite
point: Courts retain discretion to consider doing so. For
example, in United States v. Heriot, 496 F.3d 601 (6th Cir.
2007), the Sixth Circuit affirmed a decision to require the jury
to return partial verdicts it had already reached. See id. at 606–
08. The court stressed the “delicacy” of the decision to do so,
which it reviewed only “for abuse of discretion.” Id. at 608. It
acknowledged a risk that accepting a partial verdict sometimes
might improperly force the jury to truncate deliberations
prematurely, but it found no reason to think this had actually
occurred in the case at bar. See id. Likewise, in McKinney, the
Tenth Circuit affirmed a decision to require the jury to return
any partial verdicts it had reached by a time certain. See 822
F.2d at 950. In doing so, the court stressed that the instruction
was “neutral” as to whether the jury should reach any verdict,
by confirming “that no individual juror was ever required to
yield a conscientious conviction” to return a verdict. See id.
Armstead counters with United States v. Moore, 763 F.3d
900 (7th Cir. 2014), and United States v. Benedict, 95 F.3d 17
(8th Cir. 1996), which reversed decisions to require the return
of partial verdicts. But both cases recognized the
“discretionary and fact-dependent” nature of that question.
Moore, 763 F.3d at 910; see Benedict, 95 F.3d at 19 (“partial
verdicts may be appropriate in certain circumstances”). In
Moore, the district court ordered the partial verdict on the first
day of deliberations, over the objection of both parties; and the
jury, forced to decide the case piecemeal, ended up rendering
an inconsistent verdict. See 763 F.3d at 904–08. Likewise, in
Benedict, the district court ordered the partial verdict less than
a full day into deliberations, over the objection of the jury itself,
which was grappling with two closely interrelated counts. See
95 F.3d at 18 (jury had “indicated that they were making
progress and asked to continue deliberating”). At bottom, both
cases rest on concerns about “the premature conversion of a
tentative jury vote into an irrevocable one,” before the jury has

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had an “opportunity to fully consider the evidence.” Id. at 19;
see Moore, 763 F.3d at 912–13 (same).
This case involves nothing like those two. Here, the jury
had deliberated for five days; it expressed no wish to continue
deliberating; and the emerging pandemic made any further
deliberations impossible. In short, there were no more
deliberations that the district court could have “cut short.” See
Moore, 763 F.3d at 913 (cleaned up). So the court sensibly
asked the jury to turn in whatever verdict it had already
reached, if any, while making it perfectly clear that the jury had
no duty at all to reach such a verdict in the first place.
Armstead’s reliance on United States v. Taylor, 507 F.2d
166 (5th Cir. 1975), is even more misplaced. There, a juror
died after the jury had voted among themselves but before any
verdict was announced in open court. Id. at 167. The
remaining eleven jurors announced in open court their votes to
convict, and they revealed that the deceased juror had also
voted the same way in the jury room. Id. The Fifth Circuit
held that no “verdict was returned” from the vote in the jury
room, because a “jury has not reached a valid verdict” until the
decision is announced “in open court.” Id. at 168–69. And the
remaining eleven jurors could not render such a verdict
because, at the time, Rule 23 required a twelve-member jury.
Id. at 169. But a valid resolution of Count Two exists here,
where the requisite number of jurors unanimously returned a
guilty verdict in open court and then confirmed it in a jury poll.
Taylor, which turned on the obvious point that votes taken in
the jury room do not finally resolve anything, has nothing to
say about the partial verdict announced in this case in open
court.2
2 Armstead further contends that once the foreman could no
longer deliberate, the district court had no choice but to declare a
mistrial. This argument rests entirely on the premise that the court

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III
We affirm the judgment of the district court.
So ordered.
could not request the partial verdict, which fails for the reasons we
have given.

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