Title: Rojas v. State

State: florida

Issuer: Florida Supreme Court

Document:

552 So. 2d 914 (1989)
Joey Luis ROJAS, Petitioner,
v.
STATE of Florida, Respondent.
No. 73622.

Supreme Court of Florida.
November 22, 1989.
James B. Gibson, Public Defender and Brynn Newton, Asst. Public Defender, Daytona Beach, for petitioner.
Robert A. Butterworth, Atty. Gen., and Paula C. Coffman and Pamela D. Cichon, Asst. Attys. Gen., Daytona Beach, for respondent.
GRIMES, Justice.
We review Rojas v. State, 535 So. 2d 674 (Fla. 5th DCA 1988), because of conflict with Spaziano v. State, 522 So. 2d 525 (Fla. 2d DCA 1988), and Ortagus v. State, 500 So. 2d 1367 (Fla. 1st DCA 1987). We have jurisdiction under article V, section 3(b)(3), of the Florida Constitution.
Rojas was convicted of second-degree murder. The issue before us concerns the manner in which the jury was instructed on the crime of manslaughter.
The judge began the instructions by essentially tracking the appropriate portion of the Florida Standard Jury Instructions in Criminal Cases, stating:
The judge continued by defining the elements necessary to prove first-degree premeditated murder and second-degree murder. With respect to manslaughter, he stated:
On appeal, the Fifth District Court of Appeal acknowledged the necessity to give a contemporaneous definition of justifiable and excusable homicide as part of the instruction on manslaughter. However, the court followed the rationale of Garcia v. State, 535 So. 2d 290 (Fla. 3d DCA 1988), in which the Third District Court of Appeal had held under similar circumstances that the trial judge's failure to give the complete manslaughter instruction was harmless error.
The seminal case on this issue is Hedges v. State, 172 So. 2d 824 (Fla. 1965), in which this Court pointed out that manslaughter was in the nature of a residual offense and that a complete definition of manslaughter requires an explanation that justifiable homicide and excusable homicide are excluded from the crime. Consistent with the principle of Lomax v. State, 345 So. 2d 719 (Fla. 1977) (failure to instruct on lesser included offense constitutes prejudicial error), a substantial number of murder convictions have been set aside because of a Hedges error in the manslaughter instruction. E.g., Walker v. State, 520 So. 2d 606 (Fla. 1st DCA 1987); Niblack v. State, 451 So. 2d 539 (Fla. 2d DCA 1984); Pouk v. State, 359 So. 2d 929 (Fla. 2d DCA 1978). In Hedges, the failure to refer to justifiable and excusable homicide while defining manslaughter occurred when the jury requested a reinstruction on the different degrees of murder. However, subsequent cases have applied the same principle to instructions first given to the jury before it retires for deliberation. Brown v. State, 467 So. 2d 323 (Fla. 4th DCA 1985); Delaford v. State, 449 So. 2d 983 (Fla. 2d DCA 1984). The error has been deemed fundamental when it occurs during the original instructions, Alejo v. State, 483 So. 2d 117 (Fla. 2d DCA 1986), but an objection is required to preserve the error when it occurs during a reinstruction. Castor v. State, 365 So. 2d 701 (Fla. 1978).
In the Garcia case relied upon below, the defendant, who was convicted of second-degree murder, complained of the failure of the judge to define justifiable and excusable homicide while reinstructing the jury on manslaughter. The Third District Court of Appeal held that the error was harmless upon the following reasoning:
535 So. 2d  at 292. However, this Court recently disapproved similar reasoning in Stockton v. State, 544 So. 2d 1006, 1008 (Fla. 1989), when we said:
Relying upon its opinion in Stockton, this Court has now quashed the Garcia opinion of the Third District Court of Appeal. Garcia v. State, 552 So. 2d 202 (Fla. 1989). Thus, it follows that we cannot accept the harmless error analysis adopted by the Fifth District Court of Appeal in the instant case.[1]
The fact that the judge defined excusable and justifiable homicide in the beginning of the homicide instructions did not suffice to make the manslaughter instruction legally adequate. Recognizing the need to refer to justifiable and excusable homicide in the context of defining manslaughter, this Court in 1985 approved a recommendation of the Standard Jury Instructions Committee to add after the definition of the elements of manslaughter the following language:
As in Spaziano and Ortagus, the total omission of any reference to justifiable or excusable homicide in the definition of manslaughter was fatal.
We quash the opinion of the district court of appeal and remand for further proceedings.[3]
It is so ordered.
EHRLICH, C.J., and OVERTON, McDONALD, SHAW, BARKETT and KOGAN, JJ., concur.
[1]  We do not recede from the subsequent refinement of Lomax v. State, 345 So. 2d 719 (Fla. 1977), which holds that the failure to give an accurate instruction on a lesser included offense which is two steps removed from the crime of which the defendant is convicted constitutes harmless error. State v. Abreau, 363 So. 2d 1063 (Fla. 1978). We recently applied this principle by holding that a Hedges error did not affect a conviction for first-degree murder in our original opinion in Banda v. State, 536 So. 2d 221 (Fla. 1988), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 109 S. Ct. 1548, 103 L. Ed. 2d 852 (1989), to which the Third District Court of Appeal in Garcia referred and upon which the Second District Court of Appeal based its decision in Tobey v. State, 533 So. 2d 1198 (Fla. 2d DCA 1988). This portion of our opinion in Banda was later withdrawn only because, upon motion for rehearing, the appellant explained that he was not arguing that the judge had erred in failing to give a complete instruction on all the lesser included offenses of homicide.
[2]  In view of the fact that the standard jury instructions already provide for the definitions of justifiable and excusable homicide to be given during the trial judge's introductory remarks, the current standard jury instruction on manslaughter adequately reminds the jury that justifiable and excusable homicide are not contained within the definition of the crime. However, because reinstructions often occur several hours later, a note was added which advised the judge that in the event of any reinstruction on manslaughter, the original instructions on justifiable and excusable homicide should be given at the same time.
[3]  This opinion is directed only to the failure to instruct on justifiable and excusable homicide as it relates to the definition of manslaughter. In those cases in which there is evidence to support the defenses of justifiable or excusable homicide, the standard jury instructions provide for longer and more explicit instructions to be given on these defenses. We do not pass on the conclusion of the district court of appeal that the evidence in the instant case did not warrant the longer instruction on justifiable or excusable homicide.