The Utah Court of Appeals recently released a case about jury unanimity in DUI cases. To be clear, this was an ineffective assistance of counsel case, not directly a unanimity case, but the analysis is the same.
The question was essentially do DUI jury instructions need a special verdict form to ensure that the jury is unanimous on which prong of the DUI statute they are finding the defendant guilty. It is always good to keep up with the relevant caselaw on unanimity, and that has been developing and progressing steadily the last few years here in Utah. However, the Court of Appeals took a different line on this one. The ultimate holding was that counsel was not defficient in the case because the three prongs in the DUI statute are not separate offenses, but simply different means, or theories, in how one violates the DUI statute.
An example quoted by the Court of Appeals is a murder case where a person both poisons and suffocates a victim. The jury does not have to be unanimous on whether it was the poison or the suffocation that killed the person, they just have to be unanimous that the defendant murdered the person. The means or theories can be different.
It is always good to simplify a case as much as possible. In DUI cases I often advise to not include the prongs you are not going to be arguing in jury instructions just to simplify the case for the jury and not get into the weeds. The writing on the wall with unanimity had led me to believe that special verdict forms for DUI cases were a good idea. The Cissel case stands for that being unnecessary. You will have to determine what works best for you in each case, but the DUI statute under Cissel is not viewed as separate offenses or events, but simply alternate means or theories, and unanimity on a special verdict form as been trending in Utah case law does not apply.
Of course, the Utah Supreme Court could take this case and go another way. There is also the chance that over time caselaw develops that take these arguments a different direction. However, as of this writing, that is the standard for analyzing these DUI cases under unanimity.
You can read the full opinion here: State v. Cissel
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