Task: songer_direct1

What follows is an opinion from a United States Court of Appeals.
Your task is to determine the ideological directionality of the court of appeals decision, coded as "liberal" or "conservative". Consider liberal to be  for the defendant. Consider the directionality to be "mixed" if the directionality of the decision was intermediate to the extremes defined above or if the decision was mixed (e.g., the conviction of defendant in a criminal trial was affirmed on one count but reversed on a second count or if the conviction was afirmed but the sentence was reduced). Consider "not ascertained" if the directionality could not be determined or if the outcome could not be classified according to any conventional outcome standards.

BLACKMUN, Circuit Judge.
Clarence E. Beardslee stands convicted by a federal jury of the murders of his mother, Charlotte Marie Schaeffer, and his eleven-year-old halfbrother, Gregory Eugene Schaeffer, at Mission, South Dakota, in June 1965. Both verdicts, rendered July 29, 1966, found him guilty of murder in the first degree, in violation, as charged in the indictment, of 18 U.S.C. § 1153, the so-called Ten Major Crimes Act, and § 1111. The jury, however, as § 1111(b) permits, qualified each verdict by adding to it the words “without capital punishment”. The defendant thus escaped the death penalty which the statute otherwise imposes. He received the alternatively prescribed life sentence on each conviction. This in forma pauperis appeal followed.
Beardslee, born May 27, 1948, was 17 years of age at the time his mother and half-brother were killed. He had completed his freshman year of high school. He possesses one-eighth Indian blood and is an enrolled member of the Sioux Tribé, Rosebud Reservation, South Dakota. Although the point was suggested in a pretrial motion and ruled adversely to the defense, no issue is before us as to the defendant’s status as an Indian, within the meaning of § 1153.
The indictment, filed August 20, 1965, is in two counts. The first charges that Beardslee, an Indian under the wardship of the United States, with premeditation and malice aforethought, murdered Mrs. Schaeffer, also a wardship Indian, “by means of shooting her with a rifle”. The second identically charges Beardslee with the murder of Gregory “by stabbing him with a knife”.
The evidence. The government’s case was based upon circumstantial evidence and admissions. The bodies of Mrs. Schaeffer and Gregory were discovered in their house on the night of June 18, 1965. The woman had been killed by a 30.06 rifle bullet. Gregory had died from multiple knife wounds. A 30.06 caliber rifle was in the living room. Three blood stained knives were found, one next to Gregory, one on a table, and one on the kitchen sink. No latent fingerprints were on the rifle. The fragments of the bullet were too mutilated for a positive identification as having been shot from the rifle. Beardslee’s fingerprints were on the knife found on the kitchen sink. The blood on the knife, however, could not be identified by group. A box of rifle shells was discovered hidden in the water tank of the lavatory. It contained 19 unused cartridges and the spent casing of one cartridge. That casing had been fired from the rifle. The kitchen wall clock was on the floor and had stopped at 3:43, indicating that the murders took place about that time on Friday morning, June 18.
Mrs. Schaeffer and Gregory had last been seen the night before. The defendant had been dropped off at the house about 9:30 p. m. on June 17. On the 18th he was seen at the Checkerboard Cafe in Mission at about 5:30 a. m. He was clean and well-groomed. He had his mother’s car and purchased gasoline for it at six a. m., when the service station opened, and drove east out of town. The car was found abandoned on the highway later that morning. One license plate was bent over and the other was under the car. The defendant was arrested in Oklahoma on June 24 for a traffic violation while driving a car with Texas license plates.
One day in the latter part of May, 1965, the defendant had remarked in a conversation with a friend that he was going to kill his mother and halfbrother and burn the house down. In a letter to his aunt about that time he wrote that he would some day kill “that little bastard” Gregory. Three or four days before the killings the defendant had attempted to purchase rifle shells at a service station and one or two days before the killings he did purchase a box of twenty 30.06 caliber rifle shells from a lumber company in Mission. On June 18 the defendant telephoned long distance to a friend of his aunt in New York State and indicated that he was in jail for murder and that he was going to turn himself in. A postcard written by Beardslee to an aunt sometime after June 18 reads: “Just like the T.V. show but I like it. The Fugitive. P. S. You won’t ever see me again for about twenty years. Don’t try. Don’t show this to anyone”. While in custody in the Deadwood, South Dakota, jail prior to trial the defendant threatened two other inmates with the statement, “I have killed two people already, and two more don’t make that much difference to me”.
This was the government’s case.
Beardslee did not take the stand. The principal defense was insanity at the time of the killings. (Beardslee’s competency to stand trial is not questioned). Testimony was introduced to the effect that the defendant was raised, for the most part, by his grandmother and aunt and was little cared for by his mother; that he had never known his father; that his mother was twice divorced; that she was a woman of loose morals; that she mistreated him and preferred Gregory to him; and that a short time before the killings he had witnessed his mother in bed having intercourse with a man. On the insanity issue the defense relies upon the testimony of Howard C. Wilinsky, M.D., then a staff psychiatrist at the United States medical center for federal prisoners at Springfield, Missouri. Beardslee had been sent to Springfield, pursuant to a defense motion under 18 U.S.C. § 4244, for an examination as to his competency to stand trial. Dr. Wilinsky testified that the defendant was competent to stand trial but, in his opinion, was not responsible for his actions on the night of the killings; that he was suffering an acute schizophrenic reaction ; and that he was legally insane. The government countered with psychiatric opinion, on a hypothetical question, that the defendant was merely a psychopath who had stabbed a woman on a previous occasion and who was fully responsible for his actions.
The issues. These relate to federal jurisdiction; the trial court’s instructions on degrees of murder and insanity; the court’s refusal to limit.the testimony of two government witnesses; and the court’s comments on the evidence. The pertinent facts will be recited as these issues are respectively considered. No point is raised as to the sufficiency of the evidence or as to the identity of the defendant as the perpetrator of the homicides.
A. Jurisdiction. The threshold question of federal jurisdiction is posed by the defense position that the alleged crimes did not take place “within the Indian country”, as is required for the application of § 1153, the exclusive federal jurisdiction statute set forth in pertinent part in footnote 1, supra. This necessary component of the crimes was submitted to the jury when it was instructed that, in passing on the innocence or guilt of the defendant, it must “decide the question whether or not the offenses were committed in Mission, Todd County, in the Rosebud Reservation of South Dakota”. It was also submitted to the court on the defense’s several motions to dismiss.
There is no dispute as to the facts which bear upon jurisdiction. The alleged offenses were committed within the original outer boundaries of the Rosebud Reservation but in a house on land then owned by non-Indians and rented to Mrs. Schaeffer by these non-Indian owners. The lot on which the house stands was part of an area which had been platted as an addition to the town of Mission in Todd County. The United States issued a patent for the land to an Indian allottee on July 5, 1912. This Indian title was thereafter extinguished by a conveyance to non-Indians in August 1959. The plat was dedicated September 1, 1959. Thus the site is within the reservation’s outer boundaries but on platted land owned by a non-Indian.
“Indian country”, as that term is employed in § 1153, is defined in 18 U.S.C. § 1151. The definition of clause (a) of § 1151 would seem clearly to include the town of Mission, and the site of the alleged offenses, for it is “within the limits” of the Rosebud Reservation “notwithstanding the issuance of” the 1912 patent. The defense, however, pivots its jurisdictional argument on clause (c), which would include, within the definition of Indian country, “all Indian allot-, ments, the Indian titles to which have not been extinguished”. It is then urged that, by inference, an Indian title which has been extinguished is outside the definition.
We decide this issue against the. defense. We do so in view of the following:
1. The Rosebud Reservation was established by, and is described in, § 2 of the Act of March 2, 1889, 25 Stat. 888. The boundaries of Todd County, in which the town of Mission is located, are laid down in S.D.Code, § 12.0162 (1939). All of Todd County is obviously within the original boundaries of the Rosebud Reservation. Only three Acts of Congress have affected the territory of the reservation since its establishment in 1889 and none of these concern Todd County. Act of April 23, 1904, 33 Stat. 254; Act of March 2,1907, 34 Stat. 1230; Act of May 30, 1910, 36 Stat. 448. No part of the Todd County portion of the reservation has ever been formally opened. Instead, that portion has remained closed since 1889. The general geographical situation is thus clear.
2. The Supreme Court decisions seem clearly to indicate and favor federal jurisdiction. In United States v. Celestine, 215 U.S. 278, 285, 30 S.Ct. 93, 95, 54 L.Ed. 195 (1909), Mr. Justice Brewer, a recognized authority on Indian affairs, observed, “[W]hen Congress has once established a reservation, all tracts included within it remain a part of the reservation until separated therefrom by Congress”. With this premise established, the Court found itself confronted, some 50 years later, with the case of Seymour v. Superintendent, 368 U.S. 351, 82 S.Ct. 424, 7 L.Ed.2d 346 (1962), a habeas corpus proceeding by an Indian who was a state prisoner. He had pleaded guilty to a state charge and now challenged his conviction upon that plea because of a claimed absence of state court jurisdiction. His alleged offense took place in an -area which, concededly, was part of a reservation created in 1872 but which was not in.a portion restored by Congress to the public domain in 1892. However, the Act of March 22, 1906, 34 Stat. 80, implemented by a 1916 Presidential Proclamation, 39 Stat. 1778, provided for settlement and entry on surplus lands on the diminished reservation. Nevertheless, this was held by the Court not to wipe out the remainder of the reservation. Mr. Justice Black said, p. 355 of 368 U.S., p. 427 of 82 S.Ct., “Nowhere in the 1906 Act is there to be found any language similar to that in the 1892 Act expressly vacating the South Half of the reservation and restoring that land to the public ’ domain”. An alternative contention by the state that the land on which the attempted burglary occurred was within the governmental townsite, and thus outside Indian country, was rejected. Then, after quoting the above language from United States v. Celestine, the Court said, p. 359, 82 S.Ct. p. 429:
“We are unable to find where Congress has taken away from the Colville Indians any part of the land within the boundaries of the area which has been recognized as their reservation since 1892. Since the burglary with which petitioner was charged occurred on property plainly located within the limits of that reservation, the courts of Washington had no jurisdiction to try him for that offense.”
Similarly here, we find no legislation by which Congress has taken away from the Rosebud Sioux any part of the land of Todd County, all of which is within the boundaries of the area which has been recognized as their reservation since 1889.
The Seymour case similarly refused to embellish the words “notwithstanding the issuance of any patent” in § 1151(a) with a requirement that the patent be one issued to an Indian. An opposite holding, it was said, would result in “an impractical pattern of checkerboard jurisdiction * * * where the result would be merely to recreate confusion Congress specifically sought to avoid”. P. 358 of 368 U.S., p. 428 of 82 S.Ct. See United States v. Frank Black Spotted Horse, 282.F. 349, 354 (D.S.D.1922).
3. Federal jurisdiction is not present, of course, even though an Indian may be the defendant, where the offense site was never reservation land or is on a disestablished portion of a reservation, however that disestablishment may have been effected. This is the obvious inferential holding of Seymour and is the direct holding in the following cases, among others: De Marrias v. South Dakota, 319 F.2d 845 (8 Cir. 1963), affirming 206 F.Supp. 549 (D.S.D.1962); Ellis v. Page, 351 F.2d 250 (10 Cir. 1965); Tooisgah v. United States, 186 F.2d 93, 97-98 (10 Cir. 1950); Bird in the Ground v. District Court, 239 F.Supp. 981, 983-984 (D.Mont.1965). See United States v. La Plant, 200 F. 92, 93 (D.S.D.1911). The Supreme Court of South Dakota has so ruled repeatedly. State v. Sauter, 48 S.D. 409, 205 N.W. 25, 28 (1925) ; Application of De Marrias, 77 S.D. 294, 91 N.W.2d 480 (1958); State ex rel. Hollow Horn Bear v. Jameson, 77 S.D. 527, 95 N.W.2d 181 (1959); State v. De Marrias, 79 S.D. 1, 107 N.W.2d 255 (1961), cert. denied 368 U.S. 844, 82 S.Ct. 72, 7 L.Ed.2d 42; Lafferty v. State ex rel. Jameson, 80 S.D. 411, 125 N.W.2d 171 (1963); Wood v. Jameson, 81 S.D. 12, 130 N.W.2d 95 (1964); State v. Barnes, 81 S.D. 511, 137 N.W.2d 683 (1965); State ex rel. Swift v. Erickson, S.D., 141 N.W.2d 1 (1966).
4. Other courts almost uniformly have upheld federal jurisdiction or denied state jurisdiction, where the offense was committed by an Indian within the boundaries of a reservation but on particular land not owned by an Indian. Disestablishment thus is not effected by an allotment to an Indian or by conveyance of the Indian title to a non-Indian. Hilderbrand v. United States, 287 F.2d 886 (10 Cir. 1961), affirming 190 F.Supp. 283, 285-287 (D.Kan.1960), cert, denied 366 U.S. 932, 81 S.Ct. 1655, 6 L.Ed.2d 391; Hilderbrand v. Taylor, 327 F.2d 205 (10 Cir. 1964); Williams v. United States, 215 F.2d 1 (9 Cir. 1954), cert. denied 348 U.S. 938, 75 S.Ct. 338, 99 L.Ed. 735; Guith v. United States, 230 F.2d 481 (9 Cir. 1956); In the Matter of High Pine, 78 S.D. 121, 99 N.W.2d 38 (1959); In re Hankins’ Petition, 80 S.D. 435, 125 N.W.2d 839 (1964); State v. Lussier, 269 Minn. 176, 130 N.W.2d 484, 488 (1964); State ex rel. Irvine v. District Court, 125 Mont. 398, 239 P.2d 272 (1951); Application of Andy, 49 Wash. 2d 449, 302 P.2d 963 (1956) ; Hatten v. Hudspeth, 99 F.2d 501 (10 Cir. 1938); Davis v. Johnston, 144 F.2d 862 (9 Cir. 1944), cert. denied 323 U.S. 789, 65 S.Ct. 311, 89 L.Ed. 629. See Smith v. Temple, S.D., 152 N.W.2d 547, 548 (1967). See also the civil cases of Williams v. Lee, 358 U.S. 217, 79 S.Ct. 269, 3 L.Ed.2d 251 (1959), and Smith v. Temple, supra, 152 N.W.2d 547, where the effect of Article VI § 20 of the South Dakota Constitution was considered. Chief Judge Murrah said it well when he observed,
“[T]he allotment of lands in severalty or the conveyance of land to non-Indians did not operate to disestablish the reservation or create a state jurisdictional enclave within the limits of the reservation”. Ellis v. Page, supra, p. 252 of 351 F.2d.
5. Although a different and now obsolete statute was involved, this court in effect decided this issue in Kills Plenty v. United States, 133 F.2d 292 (8 Cir. 1943), cert. denied 319 U.S. 759, 63 S.Ct. 1172, 87 L.Ed. 1711, a case concerning, coincidentally enough, an offense within the original boundaries of the Rosebud Reservation but in the townsite of Mission and “not on Indian lands”. The governing statute was § 329 of the old criminal code, then 18 U.S.C. § 549. This former § 549 was not restricted in its application, as the present § 1153 is, to an Indian defendant, but applied instead to “any person” charged with one of the specified major crimes “committed within the limits of any Indian reservation in the State of South Dakota”. This court recognized that various then existing Indian statutes might have different meanings and consequences, citing the result reached in State v. Johnson, 212 Wis. 301, 249 N.W. 284 (1933). This court’s attitude, however, is apparent from Judge John B. Sanborn’s comment at p. 295 of 133 F.2d:
“We think that, unquestionably, it was the intention of the State of South Dakota, in 1901, to cede to the United States jurisdiction to deal with certain criminal offenses committed within the territorial limits of the Indian reservations in that State so long as they remained Indian reservations, and that it was the intention of the United States, in 1903 and thereafter, to assume and exercise that jurisdiction with respect to the crimes enumerated in § 549, Tit. 18 U.S.C.A. We regard the contention that the State of South Dakota was without authority to cede such jurisdiction to the United States with respect to patented lands within the limits of Indian reservations as without merit.”
6. Finally, we are not persuaded by the defense arguments that clause (c) of § 1151 is significant in the present' factual context; that it carries a necessary inference that, where the title to an Indian allotment has been extinguished, as was the case with respect to the house and lot Mrs. Schaeffer was renting, the property no longer is Indian country; and that Seymour and Kills Plenty are distinguishable because they do not apply the definition of Indian country contained in § 1151(c). Clause (c) came into the statute as the result of the holding in United States v. Pelican, 232 U.S. 442, 34 S.Ct. 396, 58 L.Ed. 676 (1942), namely, that lands allotted to Indians remained within the definition of Indian country even though the rest of the reservation was opened to settlement. See Reviser’s Note following 18 U.S.C.A. § 1151 (1966), and 80th Congress House Report No. 304. Clause (c) is an addition to and not a limitation upon the definition of Indian country embraced in the preceding portions of § 1151. We regard clause (c) as applying.to allotted Indian lands in territory now open and not as something which restricts the plain meaning of clause (a)’s phrase “notwithstanding the issuance of any patent”. Although this result tends to produce some checkerboarding in non-reservation land, it is temporary and lasts only until the Indian title is extinguished. The congressional purpose and intent seem to be clear. See State ex rel. Hollow Horn Bear v. Jame-son, supra, pp. 184-185 of 95 N.W.2d.
We therefore conclude, and without particular difficulty, that federal jurisdiction over the offenses charged here has been established and is exclusive. In summary: The site is within the original boundaries of the Rosebud Reservation. The Todd County portion remains closed. Neither the platting nor the extinguishment of the Indian allotment title of 1912 take the site outside Indian country. Clause (c) is an addition to, not a subtraction from, the statutory definition.
B. The trial court’s instructions on first degree murder.
The court first read to the jury the two counts of the indictment and then gave the customary precaution that the indictment is not evidence and creates no presumption or inference of guilt. It then turned to § 1111(a) and gave the first degree instruction which we set out by way of footnote. All this is obviously taken from Mathes and Devitt, Federal Jury Practice and Instructions, § 38.02 to.06 (1965).
The defense asserts that this instruction was basic error and that the error was compounded by the Court’s failure to give the first degree murder instruction which the defense proffered. It is argued that the instruction as given told the jury that there were only two elements in first degree murder, namely, the act of killing and the doing of such act with malice aforethought; that, however, there is a third essential and distinct element, namely, premeditation; that the court failed to instruct as to this; that, as a consequence, the defendant was prejudiced because it was then easier for the jury to find him guilty of first degree murder; that, although the court did read all of § 1111(a) to the jury, a raw statute is meaningless and nearly impossible for lay jurors to understand; that the reading of the statute did not cure the defective instruction; that the court’s inclusion of premeditation as a part of the definition of malice aforethought amounted to saying that malice aforethought and premeditation are one and the same thing; that they are not synonymous; that premeditation was charged in both counts of the indictment and was argued by the United States attorney to the jury and yet the court did not instruct that it was an element of the crime; and that the most that can be said about the instruction is that it was ambiguous and not understandable.
The defense rests its argument primarily on the case of Ornelas v. United States, 236 F.2d 392, 394 (9 Cir. 1956). There, confronted in a § 2255 proceeding with a restrictively drawn indictment, the court observed that the terms “premeditation” and “malice aforethought” are not synonymous.
In the present context we do not disagree with this observation. We fail, however, to see how it is of assistance to the defense on the first degree aspect of the present instructions.
What is important here are the first sentence and parts of the second sentence of § 1111(a), namely,
“Murder is the unlawful killing of a human being with malice aforethought. Every murder perpetrated by * * any * * * kind of willful, deliberate, malicious, and premeditated killing * * * is murder in the first degree.”
Clearly, under the first sentence of § 1111(a), malice aforethought is a necessary factor in the federal crime of murder. And clearly, murder by premeditated killing is, under the second sentence, first degree murder. Thus, a charge which, for first degree murder, requires the two elements of killing and malice aforethought and, as a part of the latter, premeditation, meets and fulfills both sentences of the statute and is not thereby prejudicial.
We have read and deliberated upon the trial court’s first degree murder instruction with care and in its entirety and we fail to perceive the error which the defense asserts. It is true that the court emphasized that there were “two essential elements” and that these were the killing and the doing of that act “unlawfully and with malice aforethought”. This, however, is the exact content of the first sentence of § 1111(a). To that point the court was following the statute precisely. It went on, however, just as the statute goes on. It emphasized that malice aforethought “may be manifested by wilfully doing any unlawful act”; that malice “does imply an intent wilfully to take the life of a human being”; that malice aforethought “requires premeditation, which is a period of time to deliberate, or think a matter over, before acting”; and that “no matter how small * * * which bears upon the questions of malice, and premeditation, should escape careful consideration”. Also, § 1111 (a) was read in its entirety, although in two segments, the first consisting of its first sentence and the second of the remainder of the section.
We think that what the defense argument comes down to is that the instructions were erroneous because, on the facts here, they imposed only two elements and made premeditation a subpart of the second element of malice aforethought, rather than listing the essential elements as three in number, namely, the killing, malice aforethought, and premeditation. This, it seems to us, is a distinction without a difference.
It would, of course, not have been error for the trial court to instruct that there were three essentials, rather than two. We feel, however, that it did no less than this when it clearly and positively made premeditation an essential element of malice aforethought. It did this in its own words, which we have quoted above, and it did this, too, in its reading of the indictment with the specific charges of killing “with premeditation and malice aforethought”, and with its reading of § 1111(a). It did not make the one synonymous with the other and thereby come in conflict with what was said in Ornelas. Neither did it charge that, without premeditation, the defendant could be convicted of first degree murder. Premeditation was spelled out as an essential. Thus, all that was contained in the alternative instruction proposed by the defense was covered in the instructions given by the court.
We therefore perceive no error in the first degree murder aspect of the court’s charge. Further, we cannot assume that the jury was not intelligent enough to be aware of the essentials of the crime under the instruction as given.
C. The court’s instruction on second degree murder.
This issue causes us far more difficulty. Concluding the first degree instruction, set forth in footnote 6, the court went on:
“So, murder which is perpetrated by any kind of wilful killing, with malice aforethought, is murder in the first degree. But if done without malice aforethought, that is to say, without the wilful and malicious and premeditated intent to take life, which is an essential element of first-degree murder, then the offense is murder in the second degree.”
This, too, is obviously taken from Mathes and Devitt, Federal Jury Practice and Instructions, § 38.06 (1965).
The defense objected on the ground that the instruction was to the effect that second degree murder is a willful killing without malice aforethought and made it indistinguishable from first degree [voluntary] manslaughter [as defined in 18 U.S.C. § 1112(a)]. An instruction proposed by the defense would have required, for second degree murder, malice aforethought but “without deliberation or premeditation”. It is argued that the jury was not given the opportunity to convict the defendant of the lesser crime of second degree murder but was restricted, on a conviction choice, to first degree murder and voluntary manslaughter.
There is, we think, a good bit of merit in this contention. Section 1111(a) is clear and positive when it says that “murder” (not first degree murder alone) is the unlawful killing of a human being “with malice aforethought”. It is murder which is so defined. The statute then goes on to define murder in the first degree and concludes by stating, “Any other murder is murder in the second degree”. Second degree murder is still murder which has been defined as unlawful homicide “with malice aforethought”.
Generally, that which distinguishes first from second degree murder is the presence in the former of premeditation. Hiatt v. Brown, 175 F.2d 273, 277, note 3 (5 Cir. 1949), reversed on other grounds, 339 U.S. 103, 70 S.Ct. 495, 94 L.Ed. 691 (1950); 40 C.J.S. Homicide § 35(d), p. 895; 26 Am.Jur., Homicide, § 38, p. 181. Malice aforethought, on the other hand, is usually considered as the element which distinguishes murder, in whatever degree, from manslaughter. Government of the Virgin Islands v. Lake, 362 F.2d 770, 774 (3 Cir. 1966); Wakaksan v. United States, 367 F.2d 639, 645 (8 Cir. 1966), cert. denied 386 U.S. 994, 87 S.Ct. 1312, 18 L.Ed.2d 341; Stevenson v. United States, 162 U.S. 313, 320, 16 S.Ct. 839, 40 L.Ed. 980 (1896). At common law there were no degrees of murder. A killing with malice aforethought was murder and a killing without malice aforethought was manslaughter. Fisher v. United States, 328 U.S. 463, 472-473, 66 S.Ct. 1318, 90 L.Ed. 1382 (1946). It has been said that, when murder is divided into degrees by statute, express malice is required for murder in the first degree and implied malice is sufficient for murder in the second degree. See Lee v. United States, 72 App.D.C. 147, 112 F.2d 46, 48, note 2 (1940). Perhaps considerations of this kind led Mathes and Devitt and the trial court to the formulation of the instruction employed. Nevertheless, under § 1111(a), malice aforethought is required for both first and second degree murder and malice aforethought and premeditation are not synonymous. The statute and its wording cannot be escaped.
The government argues that, although a “casual reading” of the statute “might lead one to believe that the instructions were incorrect”, they were taken from the Mathes and Devitt work; that, if malice aforethought includes premeditation, then malice aforethought is not an element of second degree murder and that this is precisely and only what the trial court instructed.
We are not convinced by the government’s argument and suspect that it founders on its premise that under § 1111 (a) malice aforethought includes premeditation. It may, but it also may not. Whatever the situation may be under other statutes in this area of closely and technically defined criminal offenses, we cannot escape the plain language of § 1111(a) or the conclusion that, under this applicable and controlling federal statute, malice aforethought is an essential element of murder in the second degree as well as of murder in the first degree.
In Ornelas v. United States, supra, p. 394 of 236 F.2d, the Ninth Circuit said flatly that the first sentence of § 1111 (a) defining murder as “the unlawful killing of a human being with malice aforethought” is “as much applicable to second degree murder as first degree murder”. We must agree. See Green v. United States, 355 U.S. 184, 190, 78 S.Ct. 221, 2 L.Ed.2d 199 (1957), and Government of the Virgin Islands v. Lake, supra, p. 774 of 362 F.2d, commenting on essentially identical statutes and Judge W. J. Campbell’s charge reported at 4 F.R.D. 392, 395. See, also, Fisher v. United States, supra.
We realiize that it is not without embarrassment to both the trial court and to us when we hold erroneous an instruction set forth as a model in so excellent a work, and one so well accepted, as the Mathes and Devitt volume on Federal Jury Practice and Instructions. We feel, however, that we are right in the conclusion we have reached. We observe, incidentally, that the cases cited by the authors in support of their § 38.06 do not, as we read them, lend foundation for the proposition that a murder done without-malice aforethought is murder in the second degree. The trial court’s charge under consideration in Fisher v. United States, supra, see footnote 3, p. 469 of 328 U.S., p. 1321 of 66 S.Ct., clearly prescribed malice as “a basic element of' murder in both the first and the second degrees” in the District of Columbia.. Faust v. North Carolina, 307 F.2d 869 (4 Cir. 1962), cert. denied 371 U.S. 964, 83 S.Ct. 547, 9 L.Ed.2d 511, concerned a. state conviction; the North Carolina law enunciated in the state appeal, State v. Faust, 254 N.C. 101, 118 S.E.2d 769, 772, 96 A.L.R.2d 1422 (1961), reveals that malice is an essential of second degree murder. Hansborough v. United States, 113 U.S.App.D.C. 392, 308 F.2d 645 (1962), also concerned the District of Columbia statute, and the court, in speaking of second degree murder, stated p. 647, that it must “result from a willful and malicious act”. The same thing may be said of Lee v. United States, supra, p. 48 of 112 F.2d.
We have no alternative than to conclude that the trial court’s instruction here to the contrary, namely, that if murder is “done without malice aforethought” (although embellished with the phrase, “that is to say, without the willful and malicious and premeditated intent to take life”), it “is murder in the second degree”, is inconsistent with the statute and is error.
The question, then, is whether this error is prejudicial to the defendant. In this connection, we note that the trial court gave the jury lesser offense instructions as to second degree murder (as it had defined it) and voluntary manslaughter. If, under the evidence, these lesser included offense instructions need not have been given, the fact they were given could not possibly have been prejudicial to the defendant even though there was error in the definition of second degree murder. Thus, if the evidence justified only a conviction of murder in the first degree, on the one hand, or an acquittal, on the other, the error in the second degree murder instruction and the fact of giving that instruction were not prejudicial. The defense had proposed lesser included offense instructions as to second degree murder, voluntary manslaughter, and involuntary manslaughter.
The government argues that any error in the second degree murder instruction was, indeed, harmless; that the defense sought to dispute premeditation only with evidence of insanity; that insanity is a complete defense to any crime which involves intent as a necessary element ; that insanity therefore does not support an instruction as to any lesser included offense; that the defendant’s admissions clearly demonstrate premeditation, are corroborated by the physical evidence, and eliminate the possibility of second degree murder or voluntary manslaughter; and that the trial court gave the lesser included offense instructions only out of an abundance of caution.
The applicable standard was recently set out by the Supreme Court in the income tax evasion case of Sansone v. United States, 380 U.S. 343, 349-350, 85 S

Question: What is the ideological directionality of the court of appeals decision?
A. conservative
B. liberal
C. mixed
D. not ascertained
Answer:

Answer: B