Opinion ID: 759483
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Instructions on malice

Text: 153 Coe next contends that his conviction is illegitimate because the jury was not instructed that it must find malice to find murder, even felony murder. Coe bases this argument on the language of the old Tennessee murder statutes, TENN.CODE. ANN. §§ 39-2401-02 (1982), since repealed, which defined murder as requiring malice aforethought and defined felony murder as first-degree murder. He also points to the jury instructions in this case, which said that malice is an element of second-degree murder. 154 Because we defer to the Tennessee Supreme Court's construction of the elements of Tennessee crimes, Coe's argument is decisively rejected by the clear holding of the Tennessee Supreme Court in State v. Middlebrooks, 840 S.W.2d 317, 335-41 (Tenn.1992), cert. dismissed, 510 U.S. 124, 114 S.Ct. 651, 126 L.Ed.2d 555 (1993). In Middlebrooks, a capital case, the Tennessee Supreme Court held that the prosecution does not need to prove malice (or premeditation or specific intent) in order to convict a defendant of felony murder. Id. at 336. The court said that malice is implied from the underlying felony, ibid., but the court did not thereby set up an impermissibly mandatory jury instruction as discussed above. Rather, the court simply explained as a theoretical matter how the required mens rea was automatically supplied in this particular type of murder. Ibid. 155