Opinion ID: 1279175
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Reasonableness of Self-Defense

Text: As can be seen from the instruction which the court gave the jury, supra, and contrary to the holding of the majority, [6] the law requires that Richard Jahnke must have acted as a reasonably prudent person, similarly situated would act  before self-defense is available. It is not, however, necessary that the perceived danger must in fact be present and imminent  it need only to have appeared to be so under the circumstances. In this case, therefore, the appearance of imminent danger must have been present in the mind of the defendant, not the trial court or this court. I concede that, in the ordinary self-defense fact situation it is not necessary to rely upon expert testimony to explain the perception of the accused at the moment of crisis when he or she resorts to the use of deadly force. Particularly is this true where the victim's past acts of violence which are known to the defendant are made available to the jury's consideration. [7] This is so because, given the surrounding facts and the victim's past acts of violence of which the accused was aware, it is usually within the ken of the lay juror that there either was or was not an assault in response to which the defendant was either justified or not justified in believing himself to be in imminent danger and that he either did or did not behave as a reasonable person similarly situated when he resorted to the use of deadly force. In these circumstances, the lay juror can call upon his or her life's experiences to structure the reasonableness test. In other words, when the jury is allowed to be made aware of what the defendant knew about the assailant's propensity for violence, and the evidence is that the defendant's back was against the wall as he looked down the barrel of a gun, there is, of course, no need to call up expert testimony to explain whether the resort to deadly force was or was not the behavior of a reasonable person. In this situation, the lay juror is able to place him or herself at the scene and in the shoes of the accused and decide whether or not it was reasonable for the defendant to believe that he would be killed or receive serious bodily harm unless he resorted to the use of deadly force. In these situations, the jury is capable of judging imminence of danger and reasonableness of response without the help of anyone. It is in these circumstances that courts like to say that juries are composed of reasonable people who know how reasonable people behave  and, of course, this is so. Since, however, we are involved with a battering and brutalizing factor in this case which the defense urges is causally connected with the reasonableness of Richard Jahnke's conduct, the appellant contends the jury was confronted with an unusual self-defense fact situation characterized by a psychiatric overlay. This being so, the question becomes this: Are the life's experiences of the lay juror adequate to enable him or her to make an informed reasonableness decision in this case, or do the facts describe the kind of an area where the lay juror requires assistance from an expert witness? In my judgment, it was so necessary that the jury have the help of an expert that it was not even a discretionary decision with the trial court. Especially is this true in this case when the court's erroneous grounds for rejecting the offer of proof are taken into account (discussion infra). Therefore, it is my view that it was error not to make available the expert testimony in circumstances such as those with which we are concerned here. In Hawthorne v. State, Fla.App., 408 So.2d 801, 806 (1982), the court said: We agree with the view expressed by the Georgia Supreme Court in Smith v. State [247 Ga. 612, 277 S.E.2d 678 (1981)] insofar as it concluded that jurors would not ordinarily understand `why a person suffering from battered-woman's syndrome would not leave her mate, would not inform police or friends, and would fear increased aggression against herself....' 277 S.E.2d at 683. [8] In addition, the exclusion of the proffered expert testimony in the case at bar runs afoul of the announced policy of the courts of this state which allows a qualified expert to testify whenever the specialized knowledge will    assist the trier of fact to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue   . Rule 702, W.R.E. The expert may testify by opinion or otherwise, and he may base his opinion or inference on facts that were known at or before trial. Rule 703, W.R.E. Further, if the facts or data upon which he bases his opinion are those which are reasonably relied upon by experts in the field, they need not be admissible in evidence. Rule 703, W.R.E. Whether or not the proffered testimony will assist the trier of fact to understand the evidence or determine the fact in issue is to be resolved by a common-sense inquiry which asks whether the untrained layman would be qualified to determine the issue to the best possible degree without enlightenment from those having a specialized understanding of the subject matter. Rule 702, F.R.E., Advisory Committee Note. These rules and explanatory concepts comport with the historical position of this court. In Long v. Big Horn Construction Company, 75 Wyo. 276, 295 P.2d 750, 753 (1956), we said: The general rule is that witnesses must testify to facts within their knowledge and may not state their opinions, such opinions being deemed irrelevant. There are exceptions to this rule, of course, such as witnesses who possess peculiar skill or knowledge, whose opinions may be received when the facts are such that the court presumptively without such skill or knowledge is likely to prove incapable of forming a correct judgment relative to the matter in hand without the aid of such opinion. It will, however, be my purpose here to show that the considerations of Rules 702, 703 and 704, W.R.E. [9] (discussed infra) were, by and large, not even taken into account by the court when the expert testimony was offered or, if these rules were considered, the exclusion rulings run contra to the provisions of the aforesaid Wyoming Rules of Evidence. In contemplating the overall problem which brings on my dissent, it is initially necessary to be aware of at least these following facts: Richard Jahnke, a sensitive boy who had never been in any sort of trouble in his life, had been beaten regularly and unmercifully by his father since he was two years old. On the night of the homicide he had received a severe beating, and when his father and mother left the house to go to dinner that night, his father said: I'm disgusted with the shit you turned out to be. I don't want you to be here when I get back. The father also said: I don't care what I have to do, I'm going to get rid of you. I don't know how but I'm going to get rid of you, you bastard. The boy felt he had to protect his sister who was hysterical when the mother and father left for dinner. He did not believe that there was any place or anyone where or to whom they could go for safety. The mother testified that the elder Jahnke always carried a gun, and Richard believed he had one with him that night. Mrs. Jahnke said that when the father said to Richard, I'm going to get rid of you  He was trying to frighten him and maybe do something else besides just throwing him out of the house. When Richard was in the garage after having stationed his father's guns around the house for backup, he reflected upon past confrontations with his father and he was afraid the father would kill him when he returned and found what Richard had done with the guns. Even as he contemplated these things, the father drove the car into the driveway. Richard said he wanted to go and hug him and tell him he loved him, but he remembered when he had done this before, he had received a beating for his efforts. He knew from past experience that when his father stomped after him that he was in for a beating. He testified about how his father approached the garage door that night: A. Yes. I remember he was stomping. When he stomped down the hall when he was really mad and really prepared to beat someone up, beat on one of us. I remember being a little kid, just sitting in my room. My dad stomping after me to hit me, that I could never stop him. This time I stopped him. In the transfer hearing, [10] the doctor was cross-examined to the following effect: Q. Did his father  Did he tell you his father made any aggressive acts toward him upon his return to the family home that evening? A. No, he didn't  He didn't make any aggressive acts other than the way he walked. So far as Richard was concerned, this was the way he walked when a beating was about to take place. He stomped. It reminded him of his father's behavior before beatings. But that was his interpretation, sir. Q. Did he tell you that's what provoked him into shooting his father through that closed garage door? A. I think that was the thing that, the factor that provoked the shooting. Since the defendant's behavior is to be judged by the fact-finders according to how they understand the confrontation facts appeared to the self-defense defendant and whether or not his perception and responsive behavior was reasonable  it is of utmost importance that the jury be possessed of all the relevant facts and circumstances of which the defendant was either aware or which otherwise influenced his crisis behavior. This is required in order that the fact-finders be made qualified to decide whether the defendant was justified in believing that the danger was present and imminent in a way which would excuse his use of deadly force. It is therefore necessary that the jury, in the usual self-defense prosecution, be aware of the victim's propensities for violence of which the defendant had knowledge, and in the unusual self-defense case it is equally important that the jury also be informed about the psychological factors which may have impacted upon the behavior of the defendant. The case of Jahnke v. State falls into the latter category; the case of Mortimore v. State, 24 Wyo. 452, 161 P. 766 (1916), falls into the former category. In Mortimore v. State, supra the 17-year-old defendant was charged with murdering his father in the first degree, to which charge he pled self-defense. The defendant appealed from the judgment entered upon a guilty-of-manslaughter verdict in order that he be relieved from the judge's sentence of not less than two nor more than three years in the state penitentiary. While the defendant, who shot his father as he appeared to be in the process of choking his older brother, was permitted to introduce a limited amount of testimony pertaining to the violent character of the deceased, much of this kind of evidence was excluded. The evidence of the deceased's past violent acts was offered to show the defendant's knowledge of the character of the deceased for violence and brutality based upon young Mortimore's personal observation. We held that such evidence of specific acts of violence which are known to the defendant and tend to show that the defendant acted in self-defense or, as in the Mortimore case, in defense of another, was admissible, 1 Wharton, Criminal Evidence (10th Ed.), § 63A, and that the trial court's exclusion of this evidence was reversible error. In Mortimore we said that the past specific acts of violence of the deceased should be admitted to explain the defendant's motive and what he might reasonably have apprehended as the danger. [11] We referred to Sneed v. Territory, 16 Okl. 641, 86 P. 70, 8 Ann.Case 354 (1906), where the Oklahoma court held this kind of testimony to be admissible in that it showed knowledge in the defendant of the violent temper of the deceased  and his liability to attack without cause. This we said was important  from the standpoint of the accused  in determining the danger apprehended by him `   and from which the defendant might estimate the conduct of the deceased, the character of the attack made upon him and what one might expect from his assailant as well as that which he might at the moment deem necessary to guard himself against.' 161 P. at 773. We quoted from Boyle v. State, 97 Ind. 322 (1884), where the Indiana Supreme Court said that whoever is forced to rely upon the appearance of his assailant ought to be allowed to prove every fact of which he had knowledge, including his past violent acts, for permitting this proof, said the court, bears upon the reasonableness of the defendant's apprehension of danger at the time of the homicide. 161 P. at 773. In Mortimore v. State, supra, we approved the decision in People v. Harris, 95 Mich. 87, 54 N.W. 648 (1893), where the Michigan court held that it was competent to show past acts of violence which were likely to affect the mind of the accused or to warrant his apprehension of danger. We quoted the Michigan court as follows: `Suppose that the defense could have shown that the accused had been informed of the fact, or had had personal knowledge of the fact, that in another encounter the deceased had brutally kicked or bitten or choked or stamped upon his antagonist, can it be said that such knowledge or information would not have materially increased his apprehension of danger?    His guilt must depend upon the circumstances as they appeared to him, and his mental condition must necessarily be materially affected by any knowledge he possessed of the physical strength or violent temper of the deceased, or his violence when in anger.' 161 P. at 773. See also State v. Goettina, 61 Wyo. 420, 158 P.2d 865, 875 (1945), and State v. Velsir, 61 Wyo. 476, 159 P.2d 371, 161 A.L.R. 220 (1945), to the same effect. Even as in Mortimore v. State , where we find a 17-year-old boy shooting a brutalizing father who was in the act of choking the defendant's brother, in this case a 16-year-old boy shot and killed his father as he stomped up the driveway in a familiar manner which the accused testified he believed was a prelude to another beating. [12] In each instance, the Wyoming courts have permitted the jury to know about the past violent acts of the victim of which the defendants were aware  this for the purpose of permitting the jury to decide whether or not the behavior of the accused was reasonable in the self-defense sense of the word. But there is a singular difference between Mortimore and Jahnke. In Mortimore, the assailant was in the very act of choking his son when the defendant shot and killed his father, and, once the jury became familiar with the past violent acts of the deceased which were known to young Mortimore, the case presented the usual, ordinary and understandable self-defense situation. The scenario became one which could readily be comprehended by lay jurors because they were then confronted with a fact situation which was within the realm of their understanding according to their life's experiences. In this appeal, however, we do not have defensive behavior with which the lay juror is naturally familiar, and yet a doctor of psychiatric medicine was denied the opportunity to testify that Richard Jahnke's behavior was that of a battered individual whose consequent perception of the imminence of danger is different than the perception of the nonbrutalized person and who would have explained how the battered person responds to danger. Here, unlike with young Mortimore, the father was not engaged in the process of apparently choking another human being. Here, the victim was stomping up the driveway in a familiarly menacing way into the face of the fears and anxieties of his son whom he had beaten for 14 years and who recognized the stomping as a preface to violence. Here, we have a boy who, from long experience, had come to know what to expect from this confrontation  who believed he would be beaten or would be killed by gun  who did not try to escape because he did not believe that he had any place to go and who did not feel that he could leave his sister unprotected  who taught his sister to fire the gun in case his father should kill him  all in what he believed to be his only defense against further savagery which he knew from past experience would surely come. Could a jury understand this behavior as falling within the requirements of the self-defense instruction without help from an expert psychiatric witness? The asking of the question is to answer it. Therefore, in the ordinary self-defense situation where there are no psychiatric implications and where the jury is permitted to know what the accused knew about the violent character of his victim, there need be no expert testimony touching upon the reasonableness of the defendant's behavior. In normal circumstances, these are things that jurors can fathom for themselves. However, when the beatings of 14 years have  or may have  caused the accused to harbor types of fear, anxiety and apprehension with which the nonbrutalized juror is unfamiliar and which result in the taking of unusual defensive measures which, in the ordinary circumstances, might be thought about as premature, excessive or lacking in escape efforts by those who are uninformed about the fear and anxiety that permeate the world of the brutalized  then expert testimony is necessary to explain the battered-person syndrome and the way these people respond to what they understand to be the imminence of danger and to explain their propensity to employ deadly force in their self-defensive conduct. Given this information, the jury is then qualified to decide the reasonableness of a self-defense defendant's acts at the time and place in question.