Allen v. United States
The Supreme Court upheld the murder conviction and death sentence of a man tried three times for killing Philip Henson in Indian Territory, rejecting numerous challenges to the trial judge's jury instructions on intent, self-defense, flight, and reasonable doubt.
Most significantly, the Court approved a supplemental instruction urging a deadlocked jury to keep working toward a unanimous verdict by having jurors in the minority reconsider their views in light of the majority's — language that became the model for what courts still call an 'Allen charge' given to stuck juries.
“the flight of the accused is competent evidence against him as having a tendency to establish his guilt”
The Court's ruling that evidence of flight after a crime may properly be considered by a jury.
How it got here: Allen was convicted twice before, both reversed by the Supreme Court; after a third conviction in the federal Circuit Court, he again sought review by writ of error.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Allen was tried three times in federal court in Arkansas for the murder of Philip Henson, a white man, in the Cherokee Nation of the Indian Territory. His first two convictions had been reversed by the Supreme Court in earlier appeals. After his third conviction and death sentence, he challenged numerous parts of the trial judge's instructions to the jury.
The question before the Court
After a man was convicted a third time of murder, could the trial judge's jury instructions — including special guidance urging a deadlocked jury to keep deliberating — stand on appeal?
Why it matters
Trial judges across the country still rely on the reasoning here when a jury reports it cannot agree: courts may tell jurors to keep talking and to weigh their own doubts against the views of their fellow jurors, so long as the instruction doesn't demand that anyone abandon a genuine conviction. This ruling also reaffirmed several boundaries on murder and self-defense instructions still used in homicide trials.
What changes now
The judgment and death sentence were affirmed, ending Allen's third appeal on these grounds. The supplemental deadlocked-jury instruction approved here became widely known afterward as the 'Allen charge,' a model still referenced by trial courts facing juries that report they cannot reach a unanimous verdict.
What this does not decide
The Court did not hold that any instruction pressuring jurors toward unanimity is proper — it approved this specific wording, which asked jurors only to reconsider their views in light of others' opinions, not to abandon conscientiously held convictions. Instructions that go further to coerce a verdict remain open to challenge.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court reviewed instructions telling jurors they could infer both willfulness and malice aforethought from the prosecution's version of events, holding that a judge may tell a jury it is free to draw such inferences from proven facts without directing a particular verdict.
- On the question of intent, the Court approved instructing jurors that malice aforethought need not have existed for any set time before the killing but may arise at the very instant of the fatal act, consistent with the common-law understanding of murder (as opposed to statutory schemes requiring proof of separate premeditation for first-degree murder).
- Addressing self-defense, the Court held that to justify a killing, the danger faced must be deadly or capable of causing serious bodily harm, and reaffirmed that a person attacked outside his own home generally must retreat if he safely can before using deadly force — a rule the Court distinguished from its prior rulings in Beard v. United States and Alberty v. United States, which involved attacks on a person's own premises.
- On flight after the killing, the Court held that evidence of flight is properly considered by a jury as some evidence of guilt, but distinguished this case from Hickory v. United States and Alberty v. United States, where instructions had gone further and told jurors flight was tantamount to a near-automatic sign of guilt.
- Reviewing the instruction on the presumption of innocence, the Court found no error because, unlike in Coffin v. United States, the trial judge had separately and adequately explained that the presumption of innocence remains until overcome by proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
- Finally, addressing a supplemental instruction given after the jury reported it could not agree, the Court held it was proper to tell jurors that while each must reach an individual conclusion, a dissenting juror should consider whether a doubt not shared by many other honest, intelligent jurors was truly reasonable, and that jurors in the minority on either side should weigh the collective judgment of their peers.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Distinguishes Hickory v. United States (160 U.S. 408)
Unlike the flatly stated 'wicked flee' axiom held erroneous there, this instruction on flight was not misleading.
Distinguishes Alberty v. United States (162 U.S. 499)
That case's stronger language treating flight as a near-confession does not make this milder flight instruction erroneous.
Distinguishes Beard v. United States (158 U.S. 550)
That case involved an attack on the defendant's own premises, so no duty to retreat applied there.
Distinguishes Coffin v. United States (156 U.S. 432)
Here the judge separately explained the presumption of innocence, unlike the inadequate charge found erroneous there.