Case Name: PEOPLE v. DUNCAN
Court: Michigan Supreme Court
Jurisdiction: Michigan
Decision Date: 2000-05-23
Citations: 462 Mich. 47
Docket Number: Docket No. 112997
Parties: PEOPLE v DUNCAN
Judges: Cavanagh, Kelly, Taylor, Young, and Markman, JJ., concurred.
Reporter: Michigan Reports
Volume: 462
Pages: 47–70

Head Matter:
PEOPLE v DUNCAN
Docket No. 112997.
Decided May 23, 2000.
On application by the defendant for leave to appeal, the Supreme Court, in lieu of granting leave, reversed in part the judgments of the Court of Appeals and the circuit court with respect to the defendant’s felony-firearm convictions and denied leave to appeal his convictions of first-degree murder.
Timothy L. Duncan was convicted by a jury in the Muskegon Circuit Court of two counts of first-degree murder and two counts of possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony. The court, R. Max Daniels, J., instructed the jurors regarding the elements of first- and second-degree murder, and voluntary manslaughter, but entirely omitted any instruction regarding the elements of felony-firearm. Defense counsel did not object. The Court of Appeals, Makkey, P.J., and Griffin and Whitbeck, JJ., found the omission of felony-firearm instructions to be error, but nevertheless affirmed the felony-firearm convictions in an unpublished opinion per curiam on the ground that the error was harmless (Docket No. 200766). The defendant seeks leave to appeal.
In an opinion per curiam, signed by Justices Cavanagh, Kelly, Taylor, Yodng, and Markman, the Supreme Court held:
A conviction by a jury must be set aside where the court omitted instructions on all the elements of an offense. It is structural error requiring automatic reversal to allow a jury to deliberate a criminal charge where there is a complete failure to instruct the jury regarding any of the elements necessary to determine if the prosecution has proven the charge beyond a reasonable doubt. Thus, the defendant’s felony-firearm convictions must be reversed and the case remanded to the circuit court for further proceedings.
Reversed in part.
Justice Corrigan, joined by Chief Justice Weaver, dissenting, stated that the complete omission of felony-firearm instructions was not a structural error. The defendant was tried before an impartial judge, under the correct standard of proof and with the assistance of counsel. A fairly selected, impartial jury was instructed to consider all the evidence and argument in respect to the defense. The trial was not fundamentally unfair.
A felony-firearm charge falls within a unique category of offenses. Technically an independent offense, it is a sentence-enhancement mechanism used to deter the possession of firearms. Because it is sui generis, failure to instruct on its elements is not equivalent to a complete failure to instruct on substantive offenses.
In this case, by finding the defendant guilty of murder, the jury necessarily found that he possessed a firearm during the commission of a felony. Thus, it found the functional equivalent of the felony-firearm elements.
Jennifer M. Granholm, Attorney General, Thomas L. Casey, Solicitor General, Tony Tague, Prosecuting Attorney, and Danielle DeJong, Assistant Prosecuting Attorney, for the people.
State Appellate Defender (by Peter Jon Van Hoek) for the defendant-appellant.

Opinion:
Per Curiam.
A jury convicted the defendant of two counts of first-degree murder and two counts of felony-firearm. The Court of Appeals affirmed. We reverse the felony-firearm convictions because the jury was not instructed on any of the elements of that offense.
We issue this opinion to iterate a bright line rule: It is structural error requiring automatic reversal to allow a jury to deliberate a criminal charge where there is a complete failure to instruct the jury regarding any of the elements necessary to determine if the prosecution has proven the charge beyond a reasonable doubt.
i
In late 1994, the defendant used a shotgun to kill two persons. They were his former spouse and a man to whom she had been married before she wed the defendant. The decedents had remained good friends, and the defendant apparently would not accept his former spouse's preference for the company of the other man.
The defendant was charged with two counts of first-degree (premeditated) murder and two counts of possessing a firearm during the commission of the murders.
In introductory remarks to the prospective jurors, the circuit court read the felony-firearm charges in the information. The court thus told them that the prosecutor was alleging that the defendant
did carry or have in his possession a firearm—to-wit: a shotgun—at the time he committed or attempted to commit a felony—to-wit: premeditated murder.
The court added, "It's known as felony firearm."
After hearing prosecution and defense witnesses, as well as closing argument, the jurors were instructed by the court. In the course of these instructions, they learned the elements of first- and second-degree murder, and of voluntary manslaughter. However, the court entirely omitted any instruction regarding the elements of felony-firearm. Indeed, the only mention of felony-firearm was in relation to the verdict form. Defense counsel did not object to the omission.
The jury found the defendant guilty of the murders and both counts of felony-firearm. The circuit court then imposed the mandatory sentences of life for first-degree murder and two-years for felony-firearm. Later, the court denied the defendant's motion for new trial.
After the Court of Appeals affirmed, the defendant applied to this Court for leave to appeal. Initially, we held the case in abeyance pending the decision in People v Carines, 460 Mich 750; 597 NW2d 130 (1999). Now that Carines has been decided, the present case is again before us.
ii
The Court of Appeals found that it was error for the circuit court not to instruct the jury regarding the elements of the felony-firearm charges. It neverthe less affirmed the felony-firearm convictions on the ground that the error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt utilizing either Justice Brickley's lead opinion in People v Vaughn, 447 Mich 217, 238, n 17; 524 NW2d 217 (1994), or the test stated in Justice Levin's dissent in Vaughn. 447 Mich 272.
in
As explained in People v Grant, 445 Mich 535; 520 NW2d 123 (1994), constitutional error such as occurred here must be classified as either structural or nonstructural. If the error is structural, reversal is automatic. People v Anderson (After Remand), 446 Mich 392, 404-405; 521 NW2d 538 (1994). If the constitutional error is not structural, it is subject to the harmless beyond a reasonable doubt test. Id. The United States Supreme Court recently explained that most constitutional errors can be harmless, but that a limited class of constitutional errors are structural and subject to automatic reversal. Neder v United States, 527 US 1, 8; 119 S Ct 1827; 144 L Ed 2d 35 (1999).
Structural errors, as explained in Neder, are intrinsically harmful, without regard to their effect on the outcome, so as to require automatic reversal. Id. at 7. Such an error necessarily renders unfair or unreliable the determining of guilt or innocence. As the United States Supreme Court said in Rose v Clark, 478 US 570, 577-578; 106 S Ct 3101; 92 L Ed 2d 460 (1986), structural errors deprive defendants of basic protections without which a criminal trial cannot reliably serve its function as a vehicle for determination of guilt or innocence.
The Court in Neder stated as follows citing several examples of structural error:
Indeed, we have found an error to be "structural," and thus subject to automatic reversal, only in a "very limited class of cases." Johnson v United States, 520 US 461, 468; 117 S Ct 1544; 137 L Ed 2d 718 (1997) (citing Gideon v Wainwright, 372 US 335; 83 S Ct 792; 9 L Ed 2d 799 (1963) (complete denial of counsel); Tumey v Ohio, 273 US 510; 47 S Ct 437; 71 L Ed 749 (1927) (biased trial judge); Vasquez v Hillery, 474 US 254; 106 S Ct 617; 88 L Ed 2d 598 (1986) (racial discrimination in selection of grand jury); McKaskle v Wiggins, 465 US 168; 104 S Ct 944; 79 L Ed 2d 122 (1984) (denial of self-representation at trial); Waller v Georgia, 467 US 39; 104 S Ct 2210; 81 L Ed 2d 31 (1984) (denial of public trial); Sullivan v Louisiana, 508 US 275; 113 S Ct 2078; 124 L Ed 2d 182 (1993) (defective reasonable-doubt instruction). [Id. at 8.]
In the situation in the case at bar, the defendant was deprived of a "basic protection." The trial court's failure to instruct regarding any of the elements of felony-firearm, while allowing the jury to render a verdict on felony-firearm, sent the jury to its deliberative duties deprived of its essential tool: the law that was to be applied to the facts. Such a defect improp erly left the jury to speculate, i.e., the absence of any instructions regarding the elements of felony-firearm left the jury to guess what the prosecuting attorney might be required to prove. As we stated in People v Lambert, 395 Mich 296, 304; 235 NW2d 338 (1975), juries cannot be allowed to speculate. The court must inform the jury of the law by which its verdict must be controlled. Incontrovertibly, when a jury is allowed to speculate, the subsequent verdict is not a rehable indicator of the defendant's guilt or lack thereof.
It is also possible that the failure to provide any of the elements of the charge may have suggested to the jury that the two charges were tie-barred, i.e., if the jury found defendant guilty of murder, they were then to find defendant guilty of felony-firearm. Such tie-barring would rim counter to our fundamental constitutional law as it directs the jury to return a verdict. Rose explained that a court may not direct a verdict of guilty against a defendant no matter how clear the defendant's culpability. Rose, supra at 578.
The reason for this is the Sixth Amendment's clear command that the state must afford a trial with a jury at the defendant's request in serious criminal cases. Duncan v Louisiana, 391 US 145; 88 S Ct 1444; 20 L Ed 2d 491 (1968). This means that when a jury is empaneled, the jury, not a judge, renders the verdict. This, does not happen when the jury is effectively led to tie one conviction to another. Indeed, this Court has even recognized that a jury is not required to reach consistent verdicts with regard to a felony-firearm charge and the accompanying felony. People v Lewis, 415 Mich 443; 330 NW2d 16 (1982).
To compel the conviction of felony-firearm is to deprive the defendant of his constitutional right to a jury trial and thus requires automatic reversal no less than in the situation where other basic protections are not afforded. It is no answer when such rights are denied for the state to argue that the deprivation was harmless.
Neder and Carines, supra, held that an instructional error regarding one element of a crime, whether by misdescription or omission, is subject to a harmless error analysis. Our holding today is not inconsistent with these cases. With some but not all elements missing, the jury still may be able to fulfill its intended function. But, with all elements missing, such as in a case where only the title of the crime was given to the jury, the reliability of the subsequent verdict is grossly undermined. Thus, we find that the failure to provide the jury with the definition of any of the elements of the crime charged is an error of much greater magnitude than presenting less than all elements and fits within the limited class of cases that are properly characterized as structural and therefore automatically reversible. Defendant is entitled to a new trial on the felony-firearm charges because the jury's verdict, uninformed of the elements of the crime, did not reliably serve its function of determining guilt or innocence.
Our decision is supported by Harmon v Marshall, 69 F3d 963 (CA 9, 1995), where the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit found that a complete failure to instruct on any elements of an offense is a ground for automatic reversal. The court in Harmon explained:
As the district court quite properly concluded, this error requires automatic reversal. The error undoubtedly affected Harmon's constitutional right to a proper jury verdict. See [Sullivan v Louisiana, 508 US 275, 277-278; 113 S Ct 2078; 124 L Ed 2d 182 (1993)] (Due Process Clause and Sixth Amendment require that the fact finder determine beyond a reasonable doubt the facts necessary to establish each element of offense). We find it difficult to imagine a more fundamental or structural defect than allowing the jury to deliberate on and convict Harmon of an offense, for which it had no definition. See id. at [282-283] (deprivation of the "basic protection" of having a jury make the requisite finding of guilt "unquestionably qualifies" as a "structural defect" under [Arizona v Fulminante, 499 US 279; 111 S Ct 1246; 113 L Ed 2d 301 (1991)]). In effect, the jury was free to convict Harmon without finding that the State proved any of the requisite elements of the crime. There is no way we can determine the extent to which Harmon's convictions were actually affected by the failure to instruct, because we simply cannot tell how the jury reached its decision.
Marshall insists that the evidence establishing Harmon's guilt on these very serious charges was overwhelming. We agree. But this does not change our result. We cannot judge the defendant guilty; that role is reserved for the jury. Id.

We reiterate that this is not a case where jury instructions simply omitted or misstated one or more elements of an offense, but a wholesale failure to define an offense for the jury. This is tantamount to telling the jury to "go in there and do whatever you think is right." The failure to instruct at all deprived Harmon of his basic right to jury findings on the elements of the crime with which he was charged, "without which a criminal trial cannot reliably serve its function." Sullivan [508 US 281] (citation and internal quotation marks omitted); Fulminante, 499 US 310 (trial infected with structural defect "cannot reliably serve its function as a vehicle for determination of guilt or innocence, and no criminal punishment may be regarded as fundamentally fair") (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). See also Adams v Aiken, 41 F3d 175, 178-179 (CA 4, 1994) (under the teachings of Sullivan, the retroactive application of the new rule that a deficient reasonable doubt instruction violates due process is not barred by [Teague v Lane, 489 US 288; 109 S Ct 1060; 103 L Ed 2d 334 (1989).]), cert den [515 US 1124] 115 S Ct 2281; 132 L Ed 2d 284 (1995), accord Nutter v White, 39 F3d 1154, 1157-1158 (CA 11, 1994). We think it plain that there can be no funda mental fairness in a system that allows a jury to convict a defendant of a crime, for which it has utterly no definition. [Harmon, supra at 966-967 (emphasis added).]
We agree with this portion of the analysis in Harmon.
In sum, a jury's conviction must be set aside where the court omitted instructions on all the elements of an offense. Because the failure to instruct on all elements of an offense is structural error, not "trial error," we do not employ the harmless analysis of Neder/Carines. Rather, we find that such a complete failure is a structural defect affecting the very framework of the trial process. Fulminante, supra. Accordingly, we reverse the defendant's felony-firearm convictions and remand this case to the circuit court for further proceedings in accordance with this opinion. If the prosecuting attorney chooses, he may retry the defendant on the felony-firearm charges.
We reverse in part the judgments of the circuit court and the Court of Appeals. With regard to the defendant's appeal of his first-degree murder convictions, we deny leave to appeal.
Cavanagh, Kelly, Taylor, Young, and Markman, JJ., concurred.
MCL 750.316; MSA 28.548.
MCL 750.227b; MSA 28.424(2).
MCL 768.29; MSA 28.1052 provides that "[t]he court shall instruct the jury as to the law applicable to the case . . . ." MCR 6.414(F) provides that "the court must instruct the jury as required and appropriate . . . ." We note:
[I]n order to convict the defendant of felony-firearm, the prosecution was legally required to prove two things: first, that the defendant carried or possessed a firearm . . . ; second, that the firearm was carried or possessed during the course of any felony or attempted felony. [Wayne Co Prosecutor v Recorder's Court Judge, 406 Mich 374, 397-398; 280 NW2d 793 (1979). See CJI2d 11.34.]
Without telling the jury the elements of felony-firearm, the court explained that one such charge related to the murder of the defendant's former spouse, and the other related to the murder of the second victim.
The murder sentences were concurrent, as were the felony-firearm sentences. People v Sawyer, 410 Mich 531; 302 NW2d 534 (1981). As provided by statute, the felony-firearm sentences "shall be served consecutively with and preceding [the] term of imprisonment imposed for the [murder] conviction[s]." MCL 750.227b(2); MSA 28.424(2)(2).
Unpublished opinion per curiam, issued July 10, 1998 (Docket No. 200766).
Unpublished order, entered June 15, 1999 (Docket No. 112997).
As indicated, the circuit court read the information to prospective jurors on the first day of proceedings. As the Court of Appeals observed, however, that reading was insufficient:
The trial court made these comments during the jury selection stage of the trial proceeding and do [sic] not authoritatively state the elements that the prosecution was required to prove to establish that defendant committed the crime of felony-firearm. In accordance with well-established practice, we conclude that the trial court's duty to sua sponte instruct the jury on all elements of a charged crime must be discharged during its final instructions to the jury. Thus, the trial court erred by failing to instruct the jury on the elements of felony-firearm during its final jury instructions.
In Neder, the Court "reaffirmed" Rose. Id. at n 2.
The dissent indicates that felony-firearm charges are sui generis and that it would not treat the omission to instruct on its elements as equivalent to a complete failure to instruct on murder, criminal sexual conduct, armed robbery or other substantive offenses. Post at 59-60. From this statement we discern that the dissent would agree that structural error occurs when there is a complete failure to instruct regarding the ele mente of any substantive crime other than felony-firearm. We are unable to agree that the complete failure to instruct the jury regarding the elements of felony-firearm is not structural error. The title of the crime is not self explanatory. A jury may not be allowed to determine, uninformed by the elements of a crime, if a defendant is guilty of a crime. This allows for speculation. We also disagree with the dissent's claim that felony-firearm is for all practical purposes a sentence enhancement mechanism. If this were true, we would not need to submit felony-firearm charges to juries. Further, such a view suggests that the court should have told the jury that it had to convict defendant of felony-firearm if it found that defendant was guilty of first-degree murder. As explained later, the jury was free to acquit defendant of felony-firearm even if it convicted defendant of first-degree murder.
See also People v Newland, 459 Mich 985 (1999) (a felony-firearm conviction must be reversed where the trial court failed to instruct the jury on the law by which the verdict was to be controlled).
The dissent would overlook the error on the basis of the "functional equivalence" test, i.e., the error is harmless when other facts found by the jury are so closely related to the omitted element that no rational jury could find those facts without also finding the missing element. However, the "functional equivalence" test assumes the error was not structural. Because we find the error to have been structural, the "functional equivalence" test does not apply. Indeed, in Neder the Court specifically stated that such a test "would be inconsistent with our traditional categorical approach to structural errors." Neder, supra at 14.
13 While Harmon was decided before Neder, we believe that Neder does not undermine Harmon in any respect because this is not a case where the court omitted one element of an offense, but, rather, omitted all the elements of an offense. The dissent's claim that our decision is contrary to Neder or Neder's dissent is simply inaccurate because Neder is distinguishable. We are holding that the complete failure to instruct the jury regarding any of the elements of a crime is structural error. Neither the Neder majority nor dissent addressed such a situation. Moreover, the dissent's reliance on Justice Scalia's dissent in Neder is also misplaced because he specifically stated that all elements of a crime cannot be taken from a jury. Neder, supra at 30.