Opinion ID: 2010891
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Instructional Arguments: Count Two (First-Degree Murder While Armed) and Count Three (PFCV)

Text: The trial court offered the jury two avenues to convicting Wheeler on the second count, first-degree murder while armed: as an aider and abettor and/or as a co-conspirator. His instructional arguments, therefore, unfold in the following order. First, the government concedes that the aiding-and-abetting instruction was deficient. Contrary to our en banc decision in Wilson-Bey, [20] this instruction did not require the jury to find that Wheeler, as an aider and abetter of the shooter, had intended to commit murder. More specifically, the instruction did not require the jury to find that Wheeler himself, after premeditation and deliberation, had formed the specific intent to kill Taylorthe same murderous intent that the government would have had to prove for the shooter. [21] Instead, the trial court's instruction erroneously permitted the watered-down finding that Wheeler was guilty of murder because it was the natural and probable consequence[ ] of a crime, committed by another, in which Wheeler had intentionally participate[d]. [22] Wheeler begins his argument, therefore, with the uncontested proposition that the jury's initial instruction on liability as an aider and abettor under the second count amounted essentially to a negligence instruction and thus expressed an invalid level of intent. [23] Wheeler next turns to the Pinkerton instruction for co-conspirator liability, which authorized the jury to find Wheeler guilty of counts two and three, murder and/or possession of a firearm, as a co-conspirator, if either crime was the natural consequence or the reasonably foreseeable consequence of the alleged conspiracy. [24] That instruction, he sayslike the aiding-and-abetting instructionfailed to incorporate the higher level of intent required for first-degree murder. From these observations, Wheeler argues that whether the jury used aiding-and-abetting or co-conspirator liability to find him guilty of count twoincluding the possibility that some jurors used one theory while the remaining jurors used the othereach instruction diluted the level of intent required to convict him of first-degree murder while armed. That is to say, each instruction allowed the jury to convict him of first-degree murder while armed if he acted negligently rather than with specific intent to kill with premeditation and deliberation. He adds, moreover, that even if this court were to view[ ] the coconspirator liability instruction as properly given, the murder conviction could not stand because some of the jurors may have convicted him under the defective aiding-and-abetting instruction, precluding jury unanimity under a valid instruction. [25] Although creative, these instructional arguments must fail.
As predicates for analysis, we note again that in convicting Wheeler, on count one, of conspiracy to murder, the jury found the specific intent to kill, with premeditation and deliberation, required by Wilson-Bey for conviction on count two of the murder itself. Furthermoreand this point is ultimately key to our analysisthe trial court's unchallenged conspiracy instruction on count one, although somewhat differently formulated, embraced all three critical elements of conspiracy specified in its Pinkerton co-conspirator liability instruction on count two, the validity of which we acknowledged in Wilson-Bey. [26] From these predicates, the analysis can proceed in two ways. First, even if one or more jurors, in deciding count two, focused on the erroneous aiding-and-abetting instruction, not on the valid Pinkerton co-conspirator liability instruction, they already would have foundby convicting on count onethat Wheeler had the specific, premeditated, and deliberate intent required by Wilson-Bey for the count two first-degree murder. Thus, the defect in the aiding-and-abetting instruction, permitting the jury to find Wheeler guilty of murder as the natural and probable consequence of another individual's actions, was eclipsedmade harmless beyond a reasonable doubtby the fact that the jury, in convicting of conspiracy to murder, unanimously found the higher, requisite intent for premeditated murder because a conspiracy to murder could hardly involve any lesser intent. Put another way, the jury's count one conspiracy conviction effectively provided the special verdict required to assure us that the jurors who found all the elements of aiding and abetting also added in a finding of the heightened mental state required by statute to prove first-degree murder. No member of the jury, therefore, could have relied exclusively on the lesser, negligence standard that Wheeler identifies as the presumed basis for conviction by one or more jurors under the aiding-and-abetting instruction. [27] But there is a second, alternative approach. Because the count one conspiracy satisfied the defining elements of the count two Pinkerton co-conspirator liability instruction, [28] all jurors can be said to have found Wheeler guilty of a conspiracy that embraces all substantive crimes that were a natural consequence or a reasonably foreseeable consequence of the conspiracy. In Wilson-Bey, we called criminal conspiracy an offense of the gravest character; as a partnership in crime, it justifies conviction of each conspirator for all reasonably foreseeable criminal acts of a co-conspirator (deemed at law to be the conspirator's agent) without proof of the mens rea otherwise required for the subsequent crime. [29] Under Pinkerton, therefore, the intent necessary for conviction of murder as an aider and abettor under Wilson-Bey yields to virtually the same state of mindthe lesser foreseeability or natural and probable consequences standardfound erroneous in the court's aiding-and-abetting instruction. In short, a conspiracyan agreement not necessarily present among aiders and abettorsis deemed a substitute for the particular state of mind required for convicting a nonconspiratorial accomplice of murder under Wilson-Bey. A jury finding that Wheeler had the state of mind required for conviction of first-degree murder was therefore not necessary for conviction under the Pinkerton theory. Ultimately, however, there is one overriding reality that makes the Wilson-Bey error harmless. Every juror found, at the very least, that Wheeler had joined a criminal conspiracy with an unknown co-conspirator, and every juror found that Taylor's murder was the natural or probable result of that conspiracy. Those findings suffice for Pinkerton co-conspirator liability, and Wheeler's conviction of first-degree murder accordingly must be upheld. [30]
Reliance on the count one conspiracy instruction to cure the defect in the aiding-and-abetting instruction, however, extends only to the intent to murder; the conspiracy instruction says nothing about the additional while armed language in count one of the indictment or about the validity of the count two instructions as applied to PFCV. [31] Thus, we must consider whether the aiding-and-abetting instruction and/or the Pinkerton co-conspirator instruction adequately covered the additional jury finding required for conviction of murder while armed, as well as the findings necessary for conviction of PFCV. [32] Had the jury not convicted Wheeler of conspiracy to murder, two decisions of this court, Wilson-Bey and Lancaster, [33] would have dictated that his conviction of aiding and abetting PFCV required, respectively, a proper instruction, followed by a jury finding, that Wheeler took specific steps to assist Taylor's killer in the actual possession of a firearm; a general participation in the criminal venture to prove aiding and abetting of the possessory firearms offense is not enough. [34] Thus, without a conspiracy, a jury finding on count two that it was reasonably foreseeable to the aider and abettor that some type of weapon was required to commit Taylor's murder would not suffice for conviction of PFCV. [35] Similarly, if Wilson-Bey were applicable to the when armed language in D.C.Code § 22-4502(a)an issue we do not decidewe could not conclude that the trial court's instruction, allowing the jury to rely on reasonable foreseeability of a firearm, satisfied the intent requirement for aiding and abetting an armed offense under § 22-4502(a). [36]