Title: State v. Huemphreus

State: iowa

Issuer: Iowa Supreme Court

Document:

270 N.W.2d 457 (1978) STATE of Iowa, Appellee, v. Billy Gene HUEMPHREUS, Appellant. No. 60660. Supreme Court of Iowa. October 18, 1978. *458 Oehler, Radig, Hoy, Muller & Richard, P. C., Iowa City, for appellant. Richard C. Turner, Atty. Gen., Lona J. Hansen, Asst. Atty. Gen., and Jack W. Dooley, County Atty., for appellee. Considered by REYNOLDSON, C. J., and LeGRAND, REES, UHLENHOPP and HARRIS, JJ. LeGRAND, Justice. Defendant was tried on a county attorney's information charging him with murder in violation of § 690.1, The Code. The jury returned a verdict finding him guilty of the included offense of manslaughter. On his appeal, the court of appeals affirmed the judgment sentencing him to a term of not more than eight years in the penitentiary. § 690.10, The Code. We granted further review, and we now affirm the judgment. The sole issue presented concerns the trial court's instruction on self-defense. Before considering this matter, we relate the circumstances under which the case arose. Defendant was convicted of stabbing Henry C. Kober to death following an altercation on a public highway near Iowa City. The two men were long-time friends and business associates. After defendant and his wife were divorced, Mr. Kober began keeping company with her. There was evidence defendant objected to this relationship, although he testified he did not. In any event defendant admits he resented the improper influence he says this affair had on his young daughter. This led to several confrontations between the two men, and on at least one occasion Mr. Kober threatened defendant with physical harm for slurring remarks about his former wife. Quite understandably, the business relationship between the two men deteriorated, and they soon decided to terminate their association. On the night of the fatal fracas, defendant, who suspected Kober was wrongfully removing some tools and equipment from the business premises, went looking for his ex-partner. He saw a truck which he thought was Kober's and we set out defendant's testimony to pick up the story from there: * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * The trial court instructed on the issue of self-defense in Instructions 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, and 22. Defendant objects only to Instruction 22 dealing with the circumstances under which an aggressor may revive his right of self-defense. We set that instruction out in full: "One who is the aggressor and brings on a conflict and presses the combat, cannot claim the benefit of the law of self-defense to shield him from the consequences of having slain his adversary. It is only one acting on the defensive who can claim that right. If you find from evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was the aggressor at the time in question and made the first show of force, and thus brought on the conflict and pressed the fight until Henry C. Kober was slain then defendant cannot claim to have acted in self-defense. If you find that the defendant was the aggressor but that he did, in good faith, withdraw from the fight and signify to the deceased that he had so withdrawn and abandoned further combat, and if you further find that the deceased had reasonable grounds for believing that the defendant had so withdrawn and abandoned further combat, and if you further find that the deceased after said withdrawal of the defendant continued the combat and advanced upon defendant in a threatening attitude and with threatening words, then and in that event the defendant thereafter would have the right of self-defense as explained to you in these instructions." Defendant's principal complaint is that the instruction fails to allow him the benefit of an attempted, as well as actual, withdrawal from hostilities. We find no merit in his position. Without foreclosing the possibility that such a distinction might be important under some circumstances, it has no validity here. Despite defendant's vigorous arguments to the contrary, the gist of either withdrawal or attempted withdrawal is notice to one's adversary. This may consist of either conduct or words sufficient to furnish reasonable grounds for the adversary to recognize an intention to call off hostilities. One against whom a flight has been provoked cannot know he is no longer in *462 danger from a mere subjective decision on the part of his attacker. To put it another way, there can be no withdrawal or attempted withdrawal unless the other party knows about it. This is the general rule to which we have been shown no exception. The following appears in 40 C.J.S. Homicide § 121 (1944): The rule is stated as follows in 40 Am.Jur.2d Homicide § 150 (1968): What defendant would really like to have is the same right of self-defense that a nonaggressor would have; but this can't be. The aggressor, if he is to reclaim the defense, must first rid himself of that onus. All authorities agree this can be accomplished only after the victim has notice that the fight is over. See United States v. Peterson, 157 U.S.App.D.C. 219, 228, 483 F.2d 1222, 1231 (1973), cert. denied 414 U.S. 1007, 94 S. Ct. 367, 38 L. Ed. 2d 244; State v. Brown, 313 So. 2d 581, 584 (La.1975); State v. Haakenson, 213 N.W.2d 394, 400 (N.D. 1973); State v. Craig, 82 Wash. 2d 777, 514 P.2d 151, 156 (1973); State v. Graham, 292 Minn. 308, 195 N.W.2d 442, 444 (1972); People v. Moore, 43 Cal. 2d 517, 275 P.2d 485, 490 (1954); State v. Mayberry, 360 Mo. 35, 226 S.W.2d 725, 727 (1950); State v. Broadhurst, 184 Or. 178, 196 P.2d 407, 431 (1948), cert. denied 337 U.S. 906, 69 S. Ct. 1046, 93 L. Ed. 1718; Annot. 55 A.L.R.3d 1000, 1003-04 (1974). We have set out defendant's testimony on self-defense. There is not a scintilla of evidence that he did anything to quit the fray. There is only his testimony about his secret decision to do so. Even that is equivocal. He said only that he wanted to "keep away from Kober" and there was no time to "turn and run." Under the record it appears he stayed and fought. How was Kober supposed to take defendant's actions? Here was an opponent who had sought him out and provoked the fight. There was a history of past difficulty between them including past physical confrontations. At no time did defendant renounce the battle. In fact during the encounterwhen he was supposed to have lost his taste for the frayhe armed himself with a knife, a weapon he did not originally display. Although defendant attempts to argue that he tried to retreat but couldn't because of the ice and snow, his testimony belies this. Not once did he give *463 this as a reason for his inability to stop the fight. Defendant neither said nor did anything furnishing reasonable grounds for notice to Kober that the danger was past and combat was ended. We doubt defendant was entitled to a withdrawal-from-combat instruction at all. Certainly the one given was as favorable as he could reasonably hope for. While the state must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that defendant did not act in self-defense, still the issue must be submitted on the evidence in the record and not on some imaginary and unsupported theory. We have reviewed two of our own opinions upon which defendant relies heavily and which he says entitle him to a new trial because of reversible error in Instruction 22. State v. Fisher, 246 N.W.2d 918, 920-21 (Iowa 1976) and State v. Whitnah, 129 Iowa 211, 214, 105 N.W. 432, 433 (1905). Those cases do not lend support to defendant under the record before us. The judgment is affirmed. AFFIRMED.