Case Name: STATE of Louisiana, Appellee, v. Sammy K. LEE, Appellant
Court: Louisiana Supreme Court
Jurisdiction: Louisiana
Decision Date: 1975-11-03
Citations: 331 So. 2d 455
Docket Number: No. 56244
Parties: STATE of Louisiana, Appellee, v. Sammy K. LEE, Appellant.
Judges: SANDERS, C. J., and MARCUS, J., dissent.
Reporter: Southern Reporter, Second Series
Volume: 331
Pages: 455–467

Head Matter:
STATE of Louisiana, Appellee, v. Sammy K. LEE, Appellant.
No. 56244.
Supreme Court of Louisiana.
Nov. 3, 1975.
Dissenting Opinion Nov. 24, 1975.
On Rehearing March 29, 1976.
Dissenting Opinion April 19, 1976.
Dissenting Opinion On Rehearing May 17, 1976.
James A. Hobbs, Jones, Blackwell, Chambliss, Hobbs & Henry, West Monroe, for defendant-appellant.
William J. Guste, Jr., Atty. Gen., Barbara Rutledge, Asst. Atty. Gen., J. Carl Parkerson, Dist. Atty., John R. Harrison, Asst. Dist. Atty., for plaintiff-appellee.

Opinion:
TATE, Justice.
The defendant Lee was convicted of second degree murder, La.R.S. 14:30.1 (1973), and sentenced to life imprisonment at hard labor. We must reverse. We find that the trial court erred in refusing to receive testimony as to the decedent's dangerous character in support of the accused's plea of self-defense, after the defendant had laid the requisite foundation by producing appreciable evidence that the decedent had made a hostile overt act against the accused. (Assignments of Error Numbers 1 through 5).
Context Facts
The defendant Lee and the victim Etch-ieson were part of a group of transient blacktop roof repairers, who with their families had moved from Mississippi to a mobile trailer park near Monroe, Louisiana, about a week before the offense charged. For the most part, they were related to one another by blood or marriage and moved from job-site to job-site over several southern states.
On the Sunday morning of the incident, Etchieson's daughter and Lee's son, both five years of age, had gotten into a fight while they waited near the road for the Sunday school bus. Etchieson came out of his trailer in anger and headed toward the children.
Lee's son ran towards his father, who was nearby standing with three other men preparing to go squirrel hunting. Lee had with him a 12-gauge shotgun.
Lee testified that Etchieson sprang at him and cut him with a knife and shouted, "I'm going to cut off your head." (The three state witnesses, the decedent's wife chiefly, testified Etchieson had no knife. ) Lee shot Etchieson, causing his almost immediate death. He immediately turned himself in to the police, who found a small reddened slashmark (scratch) on his left chest beneath a ripped shirt.
The decedent was a big man, over six feet in height, weighing about 210 pounds. The accused was a much smaller man.
The defense upon which the accused relied was that he shot the decedent in self defense, in the reasonable belief that his own life was in danger. The defendant Lee was permitted to describe his own difficulties with the decedent Etchieson and to testify to a violent act he had seen him commit; but state objections were sustained to questions asked of him and of another defense witness which prevented him from attempting to establish the decedent's dangerous and violent character. For reasons to be set forth, these objections erroneously hampered to a substantial degree the evidence he tendered for his plea of self-defense.
Evidence as to the Decedent's Dangerous Character in Support of Plea of Self-Defense
In direct contradiction to the state's three eyewitnesses, the first defense witness testified that she had seen the victim make two or three jumps toward defendant and swing at him with "something". After he was shot, the victim staggered back and dropped a knife.
The second defense witness testified that immediately after the shooting, she saw a knife laying on the ground beside the victim.
The defense counsel then attempted to elicit testimony from this witness as to the victim's dangerous character and reputation. The trial court sustained the state's objection to the introduction of this testimony. Similarly, when the defendant took the stand and attempted to respond to questions concerning his own knowledge of the victim's dangerous history, the trial judge refused to admit such testimony.
The evidence was sought in support of a plea of self-defense, authorized by La.R.S. 14:20: "A homicide is justifiable: (1) When committed in self-defense by one who reasonably believes that he is in imminent danger of losing his life or receiving great bodily harm and that the killing is necessary to save himself from that danger ."
Evidence of the decedent's dangerous character or of his threats against the accused may be admissible in support of this plea of self-defense, provided that the accused first produces evidence that the decedent had made a hostile demonstration or overt act against the accused at the time of the incident. See La.R.S. IS :482 (quoted below).
As explained in State v. Brown, 172 La. 121, 133 So. 383, 386 (1931), summarizing the well-settled principle: "An overt act is a hostile demonstration of such character as to create in the mind of a reasonable person the belief that he is in immediate danger of losing his life or of suffering great bodily harm. The term 'overt act,' as used in connection with prosecutions for murder where the plea of self-defense is involved, means any act of the de ceased which manifests to the mind of a reasonable person a present intention on his part to kill defendant or do him great bodily harm."
As amended by Act 239 of 1952, La.R.S. 15:482 provides: "In the absence of evidence of hostile demonstration or of overt act on the part of the person slain or injured, evidence of his dangerous character or of his threats against accused is not admissible." (Italics ours.) The 1952 amendment specifically permitted dangerous character evidence, if "evidence" instead of "proof" (the pre-1952 wording) was made of the overt act or hostile demonstration. See 13 La.L.Rev. 64 (1952).
Prior to the 1952 amendment, this court had held.that by the pre-1952 wording the "proof" of the overt act must be established to the satisfaction of the trial judge before evidence of the decedent's dangerous character or of his threats against the accused could be received. State v. Terry, 221 La. 1109, 61 So.2d 888 (1952), 14 La. L.Rev. 226-28 (1953); State v. Tobias, 218 La. 226, 48 So.2d 905 (1950). State v. Thornhill, 188 La. 762, 178 So. 343 (1938); State v. Richardson, 175 La. 823, 144 So. 587 (1932); State v. Dreher, 166 La. 924, 118 So. 85 (1928). Chief Justice O'Niell repeatedly dissented from these rulings, strongly urging that by them the trial judge, by rejecting the credibility of defense witnesses on a merit-issue, was permitted to invade the trial jury's function of evaluating the evidence. See: 11 La.L. Rev. 231-32 (1951); Note, 2 La.L.Rev. 376 (1940).
The legislative intent reflected by the 1952 amendment was to overrule legislatively our decisions that permitted the trial judge's discretion to determine incredible the defendant's evidence of an overt act and thus, without jury evaluation of it to withhold from the jury evidence tendered by the defendant in support of his position that he was acting reasonably in self-defense. This is the explicit purport of the amendment, and the prior academic and judicial criticism of the former interpretation (unique to Louisiana) re-enforces our view that such was the legislative intent.
Despite the specific evidence by the first and second defense witnesses that the decedent had attacked the accused with a knife, the trial court did not permit the dangerous-character evidence to go to the jury, apparently upon its own credibility evaluation that the evidence was untruthful. As our trial brother stated, "In view of the uniformity of positive evidence from state's witnesses as to what had occurred and the absence of any weapon connected with the deceased, the Court was extremely doubtful that at this point in the trial there had been sufficient evidence to show an overt act or hostile demonstration by the deceased toward defendant at the time of the shooting." (Italics ours.)
The trial court thus committed error in its ruling, for it ignored the effect of the 1952 amendment. By it, when appreciable evidence is in the record relevantly tending to establish the overt act, the trial court cannot exercise its discretion to infringe on the fact-determination function of the jury by disbelieving this defense testimony and thus, deny the accused a defense permitted him by law. See: State v. McMillian, 223 La. 96, 64 So.2d 856 (1953); Pugh, 14 La.L.Rev. 226-28 (1953) ; 13 La. L.Rev. 64 (1952).
The trial court's ruling is inconsistent with such post-1952 decisions of this court, as State v. Harding, 307 So.2d 338 (La. 1975), State v. Poindexter, 231 La. 630, 92 So.2d 390 (1957), and State v. McMillian, 223 La. 96, 64 So.2d 856 (1953). (In fairness to the trial court, however, we must admit that there were a series of post-1952 rulings by this court which repeated the pre-1952 formulation by which the trial court had discretion to reject the evidence as to an overt act; which decisions over looked without discussion the effects of the 1952 amendment. )
The statute and jurisprudence require that an overt act be established before the dangerous-character and threat evidence concerning the decedent may be introduced. La.R.S. 15:482. State v. Burkhalter, 319 So.2d 392 (La.1975); State v. Houston, 316 So.2d 724 (La.1975); State v. Jackson, 308 So.2d 265 (La.1975); State v. Walker, 296 So.2d 310 (La.1974); State v. Warren, 271 So.2d 527 (La.1973); State v. Rollins, 271 So.2d 519 (La.1973); State v. Robinson, 263 La. 25, 267 So.2d 182 (1972); State v. Cannon, 231 La. 877, 93 So.2d 200 (1957).
But, once the overt act is established, this type of evidence is admissible in support of a plea of self-defense in a murder prosecution for two distinct purposes: (1) to show defendant's reasonable apprehension of danger which would justify his conduct; and (2) to help determine who was the aggressor in the conflict. See: 11 La.L.Rev. 231 (1951); 1 Wigmore on Evidence, Sec. 63 (3d ed. 1940); McCormick on Evidence, Sec. 295, pp. 700-701 (2d ed. 1972).
When the evidence is introduced for the first purpose, it is admissible to show the accused's state of mind, based on what he himself knew of the decedent's reputation or threats. As explained in State v. McMillian, 223 La. 96, 64 So.2d 856, 857, reversing for refusal to permit introduction of evidence concerning specific prior acts between the parties, such evidence "was admissible and relevant to show the reasonableness of the defendant's fear of an impending attack or of suffering great bodily harm at the time of the homicide. It would have tended to negative intent and was thus relevant and admissible under [La.R.S.15:] Article 441 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which provides: 'Relevant evidence is that tending to negative the commission of the offense and the intent.' " See also 2 Wigmore on Evidence, Sections 246, 247 (3d ed., 1940) and McCormick on Evidence, Section 295 (2d ed., 1972).
The reason for the overt-act foundation required to let in such evidence to prove aggression is explained by Wigmore, Section 63 at pp. 489-490: "There ought, of course, to be some other appreciable evidence of the deceased's aggression, for the character-evidence can hardly be of value unless there is otherwise a fair possibility of doubt on the point; moreover, otherwise the deceased's bad character is likely to be put forward to serve improperly as a mere excuse for the killing . See also McCormick on Evidence, Sections 193, 295 (2d ed., 1972).
Based on these authorities, the trial court committed error in failing to permit the accused to elicit from a witness evidence as to the dangerous character of the accused and in failing to permit the accused to testify as to his own knowledge of prior acts by the decedent which manifested the decedent's dangerous character.
In the context of the facts, the series of questions to the first defense witness (Footnote 2) were to develop incidents of violence known to all members of the closely-knit family group with which both the decedent and the accused had lived in various places over the preceding year or so; while questions 2 and 3 (Footnote 2), as asked, were subject to objection as not tied in more specifically to this aim, the effect of sustaining the state's objection was to terminate examination of this witness to this end. Question 1, however, sought to elicit evidence as to the decedent's known dangerous character, relevant both on the aggressor issue and on the accused's state of mind.
It is true that questions two through five (see Footnotes 2 and 3) sought to elicit testimony of specific acts by the victim. The traditional rule is that character evidence is established by general reputation, not by specific acts. La.R.S. 15:479.
Nevertheless, the evidence of specific acts is relevant not to show the victim's character, but to show the defendant's state of mind. See State v. McMillian, 223 La. 96, 64 So.2d 856 (1953); 2 Wigmore on Evidence, Sec. 248 (3d ed., 1940). The accused's state of mind (his reasonable belief of his own danger) is a material issue in this case. La.R.S. 14:20.
Therefore, though prior threats and violent acts, (whether against the accused or against others) might be inadmissible as character evidence, they are admissible if defendant knew of them at the time of the offense. As the objections of the state and the rulings of the trial court show (with regard to Question 1 also), the defendant was denied the right to produce evidence of prior dangerous acts of the decedent unless directed against the accused himself or else witnessed by the latter.
The erroneous rulings had the effect of depriving him of substantial evidence in support of proving his own state of mind, that is, his reasonable belief that he himself, from what he knew or had heard of the decedent's violent propensities, was in danger of serious bodily harm when the decedent came up to him as a result of the fight between their two children.
Harmless Error?
Alternatively, the state argues that the rulings, if erroneous, were harmless. The state points out that the accused was permitted to testify as to his own difficulties with the decedent and as to a violent incident he himself witnessed.
Nevertheless, the effect of the rulings was to deprive the accused of the opportunity to establish the known dangerous character of the decedent, insofar as resulting from a pattern of violent incidents involving others in the itinerant group besides the accused himself (whose testimony, in the absence of corroboration, the jury might regard as self-serving). As noted above, the accused had a statutory right to present such evidence. The substantial curtailment of this right cannot be regarded as harmless. See La.C.Cr.P. art. 921; Pugh, Louisiana Evidence Law 550— 65 (1974).
We must therefore reverse, since the defendant was erroneously denied the right to introduce evidence in support of his claim of self-defense. In reversing, we acknowledge that, except for this error, the state's conduct of the trial was fair and dispassionate.
Other Assignments
Since the issues are not likely to recur, we will do no more than note two other substantial issues raised: Assignment 9, the denial of a new trial despite production of two previously unavailable witnesses who substantially contradicted trial testimony of the decedent's wife, the state's chief witness (see Footnote 1); and—Assignment 6, the refusal to permit a demonstration before the jury by defense counsel of the operation of the shotgun, cf. State v. Roy, 220 La. 1017, 58 So.2d 323 (1952).
Decree
For the reasons assigned, we reverse the conviction and sentence, and we remand for a new trial in accordance with law.
Reversed and remanded.
SANDERS, C. J., and MARCUS, J., dissent.
SUMMERS, J., dissents and assigns reasons.
. However, on the motion for new trial, two witnesses were produced, allegedly not discoverable by the exercise of due diligence prior to the trial. (They were in Texas and Florida then, neither of them being in Louisiana from immediately after the shooting.) They testified respectively that (a) one saw the knife in Etehieson's hand and saw Etchieson's wife pick it up and throw it in the back of a pickup after the shooting, and (b) one heard Etchieson's wife admit (contrary to her trial testimony) that her husband had cut Lee prior to the shooting.
. Q. No. 1: "Did you ever . . . ever hear or ever know of any . . . dangerous characteristics of Lane's?"
Q. No. 2: "Had you ever seen Lane . do anything violent?"
Q. No. 3: "Did you ever see him do anything physical to anyone?"
These questions form the basis of Assignments 1-3. The second and third questions may have been subject to objection as vague, but the thrust of the state's objection was that the witness could not be asked whether she had seen the decedent do any particular violent act in proof of his dangerous character.
. The questions asked of the defendant himself, to which objections were sustained (Assignments 4 and 5), were:
Q. No. 4: At the time of the incident, "had you ever heard of any violent acts he had committed on anyone?"
Q. No. 5: "Do you know of any overt act that Lane Etchieson had ever committed towards anyone?"
. Although the results may have been correct in some or all of the following eases, the expressions in them repeating the pre-1952 discretion of the trial court to exclude self-defense testimony are overruled as incorrect: State v. Groves, 311 So.2d 230 (La.1975); State v. Weathers, 304 So.2d 662 (La.1974); State v. Mitchell, 290 So.2d 829 (La.1974); State v. Foreman, 256 La. 999, 240 So.2d 736 (1970); State v. Cooper, 249 La. 654, 190 So.2d 86 (1966); State v. Knight, 227 La. 739, 80 So.2d 391 (1955).
. However, as noted above, such evidence is inadmissible until the issue of self-defense has been raised by the introduction of evidence of the victim's overt acts or hostile demonstration at the time of the offense.