Title: State v. Shannon

State: minnesota

Issuer: Minnesota Supreme Court

Document:

514 N.W.2d 790 (1994) STATE of Minnesota, Respondent, v. Verdell SHANNON, Appellant. No. C5-93-1029. Supreme Court of Minnesota. April 8, 1994. *791 John Stuart, State Public Defender, Steven P. Russett, Asst. State Public Defender, St. Paul, for appellant. Hubert H. Humphrey, III, Atty. Gen., St. Paul, and Michael O. Freeman, Hennepin County Atty., Linda M. Freyer, Asst. Hennepin County Atty., Minneapolis, for respondent. Considered and decided by the court en banc without oral argument. COYNE, Justice. Defendant, Verdell Shannon, was tried on a charge of intentional second-degree murder. The trial court agreed to submit second-degree felony murder and first-degree heat-of-passion manslaughter. In his closing statement the prosecutor made a misleading argument on heat-of-passion manslaughter which he called "heat of passion murder" that confused the jury. When the jury, during its deliberations, asked a question indicating that it was confused, the trial court committed plain error of a prejudicial nature in failing to correct the confusion. The jury acquitted defendant of intentional murder but found him guilty of felony murder. Because the jury might appropriately have found defendant guilty only of heat-of-passion manslaughter if the prosecutor had not made a misleading argument and the trial court had corrected the jury's confusion that resulted from it, we reverse defendant's conviction and remand for a new trial. In State v. Thunberg, 492 N.W.2d 534, 537 (Minn.1992), a case out of Hennepin County, the same county in which this case was tried, we ruled that in instructing a jury on heat-of-passion manslaughter, a trial court should follow the words of the statute;[1] adequacy of provocation is to be judged from the perspective of a "person of ordinary self-control under like circumstances," not from the perspective of a "sober person of ordinary self-control under like circumstances."[2] Our decision in Thunberg was filed November 20, 1992. Trial in the instant case commenced on January 25, 1993, two months after Thunberg was filed. In his closing argument, in which he urged the jury to find petitioner guilty of the charged offense, intentional murder, the prosecutor, Fred Karasov, made the following statement in support of his argument that defendant did not kill in the heat of passion: This statement was improper in two respects: (a) it is clearly inconsistent with what we said in Thunberg; (b) it is an improper argument urging the jurors to decide the case from their own perspective. Defense counsel did not object. The trial court, in its instructions, simply read the words of the statute, as we said in Thunberg a trial court should do. During its deliberations, the jury, obviously confused (presumably as a result of the prosecutor's misleading statement in closing argument), asked the trial court the following question: Without objection by defense counsel, the trial court responded by stating as follows: The jury acquitted defendant of the charge of intentional murder but found him guilty of unintentional felony murder. Defendant on appeal argues that if the jury had not been misled or confused as to the meaning of heat-of-passion manslaughter, it might well have found him guilty of heat-of-passion manslaughter and that therefore he should be given a new trial. The court of appeals, in its unpublished decision, affirmed, pointing to defense counsel's failure to object. State v. Shannon, Case No. C5-93-1029, 1994 WL 1115 (Minn. App., Jan. 4, 1994). The state, while relying on defense counsel's failure to object, also argues in effect that defendant does not have a right to complain because he was not even entitled to have heat-of-passion manslaughter submitted. This argument is really two arguments: (a) that if a defendant claims the killing was an accident or otherwise unintentional, then the trial court should not submit heat-of-passion manslaughter, because the statute refers to intentional killing in the heat of passion; (b) that as a matter of law, the circumstances in this case would not provoke a person of ordinary self control to kill. The state finds support for the first argument in State v. Lohmeier, 390 N.W.2d 882, 885 (Minn.App.1986), pet. for rev. denied (Minn., Oct. 29, 1986), where the court of appeals erroneously implied that the defendant's testimony that he did not intend to kill the victim precluded an instruction on heat-of-passion manslaughter. That implication, however, is directly contrary to what Justice Rogosheske said in the leading case of State v. Leinweber, 303 Minn. 414, 417-19, 228 N.W.2d 120, 123-24 (1975) (emphasis added): In the instant case the defendant and the victim, his girlfriend, were both users and abusers of alcohol and crack cocaine. They got involved in a domestic dispute while under the influence of both substances. The victim repeatedly turned up the volume on defendant's stereo, and he kept turning it down because he did not want her to ruin his equipment and he did not want a neighbor to call the police. The dispute escalated to a physical altercation in which apparently both the victim and defendant participated (as evinced by scratch marks found on defendant's body after he was arrested). Defendant claimed in his testimony that his memory was hazy and that he was not exactly sure what he did. He did not think he choked the victim to death during the dispute but he admitted that he might have done so. We believe that this is the kind of case in which it is appropriate to submit heat-of-passion manslaughter, as the trial court did. Leinweber, supra, supports this conclusion. The ultimate question, then, is whether we should grant relief to defendant despite his counsel's failure to object. Applying the general rule that absent objection only plain error will be reviewed on appeal, the court of appeals denied relief. We have decided, however, that in this case the defendant should be granted a new trial. In all probability the improper, misleading, and confusing argument of the experienced prosecutor, who knew or should have recognized its impropriety, created the confusion that the trial court declined to correct. Satisfied that the error constitutes plain error of a prejudicial nature, we reverse defendant's conviction and remand for a new trial. Reversed and remanded for a new trial. [1] A person commits heat-of-passion manslaughter if he or she "intentionally causes the death of another person in the heat of passion provoked by such words or acts of another as would provoke a person of ordinary self-control under like circumstances, provided that the crying of a child does not constitute provocation." Minn. Stat. § 609.20(1) (1992). [2] We held in Thunberg that the trial court's use of the "sober person" standard did not require a new trial because it was doubtful whether the jury even should have been given a heat-of-passion manslaughter instruction and the evidence was such that a reasonable juror could not have determined, even if accurately instructed, that the defendant was guilty only of heat-of-passion manslaughter. 492 N.W.2d at 537-38.