Title: Green v. Young

State: virginia

Issuer: Virginia Supreme Court

Document:

PRESENT:  ALL THE JUSTICES 
GEORGE JUNIOR GREEN 
v. Record No. 012225  OPINION BY JUSTICE CYNTHIA D. KINSER 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   NOVEMBER 1, 2002 
S.K. YOUNG, WARDEN 
FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE CITY OF PETERSBURG 
Honorable James F. D’Alton, Jr. 
 
 
In this appeal, a prisoner challenges a circuit 
court’s dismissal of his petition for a writ of habeas 
corpus.  The issue is whether the prisoner was denied 
effective assistance of counsel when his attorney failed to 
object to a jury instruction that allowed the jury to find 
the prisoner guilty even if the Commonwealth failed to 
prove beyond a reasonable doubt each element of the charged 
offense.  Because we conclude that the prisoner has 
demonstrated that his trial counsel’s performance was 
deficient and that the deficient performance prejudiced his 
defense, we will reverse the judgment of the circuit court. 
I. MATERIAL FACTS AND PROCEEDINGS 
The appellant, George Junior Green, was indicted in 
the Circuit Court of the City of Petersburg on charges of 
first-degree felony murder, two counts of malicious 
wounding, conspiracy to commit robbery, four counts of 
robbery, and seven counts of using a firearm in the 
commission of those felonies.1  In June 1998, a jury found 
Green guilty on all charges except the two counts of 
malicious wounding and the two related firearm charges.  
After exhausting the direct appeal process, Green filed a 
petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the circuit court, 
alleging numerous claims. 
 
The circuit court heard evidence and argument of 
counsel at a plenary hearing.  In a subsequent order, the 
court dismissed Green’s petition for a writ of habeas 
corpus for the reasons stated in its findings of fact and 
conclusions of law set forth in the record of the plenary 
hearing.  We awarded Green an appeal from that judgment, 
limited to one assignment of error: whether Green’s trial 
attorney rendered ineffective assistance of counsel by 
failing to object to an “unconstitutional instruction given 
to the jury.” 
 
The instruction at issue was Instruction No. 10, the 
finding instruction for first-degree felony murder.  In its 
entirety, Instruction No. 10 reads as follows: 
 
 
George Green is charged with the crime of first-
degree felony murder.  The Commonwealth must prove 
                     
1 We note that the appellant was indicted and tried 
under the name of “George Green, Jr.”  However, the 
appellant used the name of “George Junior Green” when 
filing his petition for a writ of habeas corpus.  In this 
opinion, we will use the name appearing on the habeas 
corpus petition. 
 
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beyond a reasonable doubt each of the following 
elements of that crime: 
 
 
 
(1)  That Karla E. Pettiford was killed; and, 
 
 
 
(2)  That her killing occurred while the 
defendant and others were engaged in the act of 
robbery. 
 
If you find that the Commonwealth has failed to 
prove beyond a reasonable doubt each of the above 
elements of the offense as charged, then you shall 
find the defendant guilty, but you shall not fix his 
punishment until your verdict has been returned and 
further evidence is heard by you. 
 
If you find that the Commonwealth has failed to 
prove beyond a reasonable doubt any one of the 
elements of the offense, then you shall find the 
defendant not guilty. 
 
(Emphasis added.)  The portion of the instruction about 
which Green complains is the underscored sentence that 
instructed the jury to find the defendant guilty even if 
the Commonwealth failed to prove the elements of the 
offense beyond a reasonable doubt.  The instruction was not 
only provided to the jurors in written form but also read 
to them by the court.  Neither the court, the attorney for 
the Commonwealth, nor Green’s trial counsel noticed the 
obvious mistake in the instruction.  At the plenary hearing 
on the habeas petition, Green’s trial counsel conceded that 
the underscored language was “clearly erroneous.” 
 
In dismissing this particular claim, the circuit court 
characterized the mistake as a “typographical error,” which 
 
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“had to be read in a common sense fashion.”  The court 
reasoned that common sense would have told the jury that 
there was a mistake in the instruction, especially since 
the last sentence contained a correct statement of law, and 
that the jury, therefore, was not confused by the 
instruction.  Relying on Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 
668 (1984), the court concluded that Green had failed to 
show any prejudice resulting from his trial counsel’s 
failure to object to Instruction No. 10. 
II. ANALYSIS 
 
 
In a collateral attack on a judgment of conviction, a 
prisoner has the burden of proving by a preponderance of 
the evidence the claims asserted in the petition for a writ 
of habeas corpus.  Curo v. Becker, 254 Va. 486, 489, 493 
S.E.2d 368, 369 (1997); Nolan v. Peyton, 208 Va. 109, 112, 
155 S.E.2d 318, 321 (1967).  The question whether a 
prisoner is entitled to habeas relief is a mixed question 
of law and fact.  Curo, 254 Va. at 489, 493 S.E.2d. at 369.  
Consequently, a circuit court’s conclusions of law are not 
binding on this Court but are subject to review to 
ascertain whether the circuit court correctly applied the 
law to the facts.  Id.
 
As previously stated, Green alleges a violation of his 
right to effective assistance of counsel as guaranteed by 
 
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the Sixth Amendment and made applicable to the states under 
the Fourteenth Amendment.  In order to establish 
ineffective assistance of counsel, Green must prove that 
his trial counsel’s “performance was deficient,” meaning 
that “counsel made errors so serious that counsel was not 
functioning as the ‘counsel’ guaranteed the defendant by 
the Sixth Amendment.”  Strickland, 466 U.S. at 687.  Green 
must also show that “the deficient performance prejudiced 
the defense,” that is to say “counsel’s errors were so 
serious as to deprive the defendant of a fair trial[.]”  
Id.  Unless Green establishes both prongs of this two-part 
test, his claim of ineffective assistance of counsel will 
fail.  Id.
 
To satisfy the first prong of the Strickland test, 
Green “must show that counsel’s representation fell below 
an objective standard of reasonableness.”  Id. at 688.  In 
order to do so, he must “identify the acts or omissions of 
counsel that are alleged not to have been the result of 
reasonable professional judgment.”  Id. at 690.  Then, we 
must “determine whether, in light of all the circumstances, 
the identified acts or omissions were outside the wide 
range of professionally competent assistance.”  Id.
 
The alleged deficient performance in this case is the 
failure of Green’s trial counsel to object to Instruction 
 
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No. 10.  That instruction, as admitted by the Commonwealth 
and Green’s trial counsel, was an erroneous statement of 
law.  The particular sentence at issue violated a basic 
procedural safeguard required by the Due Process Clause, 
i.e., that the prosecution prove beyond a reasonable doubt 
every element of the charged offense.  See Sullivan v. 
Louisiana, 508 U.S. 275, 277-78 (1993); In re Winship, 397 
U.S. 358, 363 (1970); Dobson v. Commonwealth, 260 Va. 71, 
74, 531 S.E.2d 569, 571 (2000); Stokes v. Warden, 226 Va. 
111, 117, 306 S.E.2d 882, 885 (1983).  That safeguard is a 
firmly established component of our criminal justice 
system.  See Sullivan, 508 U.S. at 278 (citing Winship, 397 
U.S. at 364) (noting that the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt 
standard is followed by virtually all common law 
jurisdictions).  Since Instruction No. 10, without 
question, violated Green’s due process rights, any 
reasonably competent attorney would have known that it was 
incumbent upon him or her to object to the instruction.  
See Stokes, 226 Va. at 118, 306 S.E.2d at 885; see also 
Gray v. Lynn, 6 F.3d 265, 269 (5th Cir. 1993).  Thus, we 
conclude that the performance of Green’s trial counsel 
“fell below an objective standard of reasonableness.”  
Strickland, 466 U.S. at 688. 
 
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Of course, that determination does not necessarily 
mean that Green is entitled to habeas relief.  He must also 
establish that his counsel’s deficient performance 
prejudiced his defense.  To demonstrate prejudice, Green 
“must show that there is a reasonable probability that, but 
for counsel’s unprofessional errors, the result of the 
proceeding would have been different.”  Id. at 694.  In 
this particular case, our prejudice analysis must be guided 
by the Supreme Court’s decision in Sullivan v. Louisiana. 
 
In that case, which was an appeal of a state court 
judgment of conviction, the question was “whether a 
constitutionally deficient reasonable-doubt instruction may 
be harmless error.”  508 U.S. at 276.  In addressing that 
question, the Court first noted “that the Fifth Amendment 
requirement of proof beyond a reasonable doubt and the 
Sixth Amendment requirement of a jury verdict are 
interrelated[,]” meaning that “the jury verdict required by 
the Sixth Amendment is a jury verdict of guilty beyond a 
reasonable doubt.”  Id. at 278.  Such a verdict was not 
returned in Sullivan because the trial judge’s jury 
instruction defining the term “reasonable doubt” was 
unconstitutional.  Id.  Consequently, the Court concluded 
that the instruction could not be harmless error.  Id. at 
 
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280.  The Court’s explanation for that conclusion is 
important to our analysis here: 
 
Harmless-error review . . . is not whether, in a trial 
that occurred without the error, a guilty verdict 
would surely have been rendered, but whether the 
guilty verdict actually rendered in this trial was 
surely unattributable to the error.  That must be so, 
because to hypothesize a guilty verdict that was never 
in fact rendere–no matter how inescapable the findings 
to support that verdict might be–would violate the 
jury-trial guarantee. 
 
* * * 
 
There being no jury verdict of guilty-beyond-a-
reasonable-doubt, the question whether the same 
verdict of guilty-beyond-a-reasonable-doubt would have 
been rendered absent the constitutional error is 
utterly meaningless.  There is no object, so to speak, 
upon which harmless-error scrutiny can operate.  The 
most an appellate court can conclude is that a jury 
would surely have found petitioner guilty beyond a 
reasonable doubt–not that the jury’s actual finding of 
guilty beyond a reasonable doubt would surely not have 
been different absent the constitutional error.  That 
is not enough. 
 
Id. at 279-80. 
 
 
As we have already pointed out, Instruction No. 10 
contained an incorrect statement of law–a statement that 
violated the Due Process Clause.  While we recognize that 
the last sentence of the instruction correctly told the 
jury to find Green not guilty if the Commonwealth failed to 
prove beyond a reasonable doubt each of the elements of 
first-degree felony murder, the fact remains that the jury 
received inconsistent directions with regard to that 
 
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offense.  “ ‘[J]uries are presumed to follow their 
instructions.’ ”  Zafiro v. United States, 506 U.S. 534, 
540 (1993) (quoting Richardson v. Marsh, 481 U.S. 200, 211 
(1987)); see also Strickland, 466 U.S. at 695 (“assessment 
of prejudice should proceed on the assumption that the 
decisionmaker is reasonably, conscientiously, and 
impartially applying the standards that govern the 
decision”).  But, the jury in this case could not have 
followed Instruction No. 10 in its entirety because of the 
internal inconsistency.  Although the circuit court 
believed that the jury would have recognized that there was 
a mistake in the instruction, we conclude that it would be 
pure speculation to assume that the jury ignored the 
misstatement of law in Instruction No. 10 but followed the 
correct one.  See Sullivan, 508 U.S. at 281 (misdescription 
of burden of proof vitiated jury’s finding, thus reviewing 
court would be engaging in speculation to determine what a 
jury would have done). 
 
Since the jury in this case could have found Green 
guilty of first-degree felony murder without finding that 
the Commonwealth had proved the elements of that offense 
beyond a reasonable doubt, we have the same situation here 
as the Supreme Court dealt with in Sullivan, the absence of 
a verdict of guilty-beyond-a-reasonable-doubt.  Without 
 
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such a verdict, there was no “object” in Sullivan upon 
which to apply a harmless error analysis, and the absence 
of that verdict in this case leaves us with no “result” 
upon which to apply a prejudice analysis.  In other words, 
we cannot determine whether, but for counsel’s deficient 
performance, the result of the proceeding would have been 
different because there was no “result,” i.e., no verdict 
of guilty-beyond-a-reasonable-doubt.  Accordingly, we 
conclude that Green has demonstrated his trial counsel’s 
error was so serious as to deprive him of a fair trial.2  
See Strickland, 466 U.S. at 687. 
                     
2 In Henderson v. Kibbe, 431 U.S. 145, 154 (1977), the 
Supreme Court of the United States held that the “burden of 
demonstrating that an erroneous instruction was so 
prejudicial that it will support a collateral attack on the 
constitutional validity of a state court’s judgment is even 
greater than the showing required to establish plain error 
on direct appeal.”  Id.  The question there was whether a 
trial judge’s failure to instruct on the issue of causation 
was constitutional error requiring habeas corpus relief.  
Id. at 147.  The Court framed the relevant test as 
“ ‘whether the ailing instruction by itself so infected the 
entire trial that the resulting conviction violates due 
process,’ . . . not merely whether ‘the instruction is 
undesirable, erroneous, or even “universally 
condemned.” ’ ”  Id. at 154 (quoting Cupp v. Naughten, 414 
U.S. 141, 147 (1973)); see also, United States v. Frady, 
456 U.S. 152, 169 (1982).  Unlike the present case, 
Henderson did not involve a claim of ineffective assistance 
of counsel.  Nevertheless, Instruction No. 10 “so infected” 
the trial that we cannot be confident that the jury found 
Green guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of first-degree 
felony murder.  Thus, Green’s conviction violated the Due 
Process Clause. 
 
 
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Even if we treat the jury’s verdict in this case as a 
“result” to which the Strickland prejudice analysis can be 
applied, we reach the same conclusion.  The right to a jury 
verdict of guilty-beyond-a-reasonable-doubt is a “ ‘basic 
protectio[n]’ whose precise effects are unmeasurable, but 
without which a criminal trial cannot reliably serve its 
function.”  Sullivan, 508 U.S. at 281 (quoting Rose v. 
Clark, 478 U.S. 570, 577 (1986)).  “The right to trial by 
jury reflects . . . ‘a profound judgment about the way in 
which law should be enforced and justice administered.’ ”  
Id. (quoting Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U.S. 145, 155 
(1968)). 
 
When, as here, a jury is not properly instructed about 
its responsibility to find a defendant not guilty if the 
prosecution fails to prove the elements of the offense 
beyond a reasonable doubt, there is a reasonable 
probability, sufficient to undermine our confidence in the 
outcome, that, but for trial counsel’s failure to object to 
the erroneous instruction, the result of the trial would 
have been different.  See Strickland, 466 U.S. at 694-95.  
Thus, Green has demonstrated prejudice to his defense as a 
result of his counsel’s deficient performance.  In our 
opinion, there can be no doubt that deprivation of the 
right to a verdict of guilty-beyond-a-reasonable-doubt is 
 
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prejudicial and has “consequences that are necessarily 
unquantifiable and indeterminate.”  Sullivan, 508 U.S. at 
282. 
 
We are not persuaded otherwise by the Commonwealth’s 
argument that the error did not occur in a vacuum because 
the jury was told during voir dire, opening statements, 
closing arguments, and in other instructions that the 
Commonwealth must prove Green’s guilt beyond a reasonable 
doubt.  We note that those other instructions primarily 
defined the elements of the additional charges for which 
Green was standing trial and that the jury, with proper 
instructions, found Green not guilty of the two malicious 
wounding charges and the two related firearm offenses.  
Instruction No. 10 was the only instruction that addressed 
the elements of first-degree felony murder.  Just as the 
jury instruction in Sullivan was a “structural defect[] in 
the constitution of the trial mechanism,” the instruction 
in this case also qualifies as a “structural error.”  
Sullivan, 508 U.S. at 281-82. 
III. CONCLUSION 
 
For these reasons, we will reverse the judgment 
appealed from, set aside Green’s convictions for felony 
first-degree murder and the use of a firearm in the 
commission of that felony, and remand the case to the 
 
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circuit court with directions to issue the writ of habeas 
corpus and require that Green be returned to the custody of 
said court to be tried on the indictments at issue. 
Reversed and remanded. 
 
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