Opinion ID: 1266535
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Guilt-Determination Phase Jury Instructions and Jury Inquiry

Text: Powell assigns error to the trial court's granting of Commonwealth's instructions 5, 7, and 10 and in refusing his instruction U. [9] Powell further assigns error to the answer given by the trial court in response to the jury inquiry for clarification whether the rape of Kristie could serve as the gradation crime for the capital murder of Stacey. The thrust of all these objections is Powell's contention that under the wording of the amended indictment, the Commonwealth was limited to proving that the killing of Stacey occurred during the commission of or subsequent to the rape of Kristie, and not, as the trial court instructed the jury, that the killing occurred  before, during, or after that rape. (Emphasis added). The Commonwealth concedes that the language of the amended indictment fails to track the current wording of Code § 18.2-31(5), which provides for a premeditated killing  in the commission of, or subsequent to, rape. (Emphasis added). It contends, however, that the phrase during the commission of, or subsequent to does not limit the offense charged under the amended indictment because that phrase includes the commission of a rape after the murder. We disagree with the Commonwealth. An indictment is a written charge against the accused for a specific crime that informs the accused of the nature and character of the offense charged against him. Code § 19.2-220. It is elementary that what need not be proved need not be alleged, but sometimes . [the indictment] alleges something that it was not necessary to allege, requiring proof of what . . . has [been] alleged unless the unnecessary allegation can be rejected as surplusage. Mitchell v. Commonwealth, 141 Va. 541, 555, 127 S.E. 368, 373 (1925). If the unnecessary word or words inserted in the indictment describe, limit or qualify the words which it was necessary to insert therein, then they are descriptive of the offense charged in the indictment and cannot be rejected as surplusage. Id. at 560, 127 S.E. at 374. Code § 18.2-31(e), as the current subsection (5) was formerly designated, originally defined capital murder as the willful, deliberate, and premeditated killing of a person during the commission of, or subsequent to, rape. In Harward v. Commonwealth, 229 Va. 363, 330 S.E.2d 89 (1985), comparing this language to language used in other subsections of Code § 18.2-31, we held that [t]he phrase `in the commission of includes a killing before, during, and after the underlying felony, while the language `during the commission of, or subsequent to' excludes a killing which occurs before a rape of another person. Id. at 366, 330 S.E.2d at 91. In response to Harward, the General Assembly in 1988 amended subsection (e) to define the requisite killing to constitute capital murder as one in the commission of, or subsequent to, [the] rape of any person. The Commonwealth contends that the discussion in Harward of the distinction between during the commission of, or subsequent to and in the commission of is dictum, and that we have subsequently rejected the distinction in Spencer, 238 Va. at 286, 384 S.E.2d at 781, relying on Coleman, 226 Va. at 51, 307 S.E.2d at 875. The Commonwealth's reliance on Spencer and Coleman is misplaced in the present case. In Spencer and Coleman, the issue was whether the evidence failed to show that the murder victim was alive at the time of the rape, not whether the rape of another person occurring after the death of the murder victim could serve as the gradation crime for capital murder. It remains a valid principle that the Commonwealth is limited to the prosecution of the crime charged in the indictment because the accused is entitled to notice of the offense charged. Thus, in the present case, once the Commonwealth chose, for whatever reason, to depart from the language of Code § 18.2-31(5) and to insert into the amended indictment the exact language that had been interpreted in Harward to exclude the killing of the murder victim before the rape of another person, it became bound to the more limited proof that the gradation crime was a rape occurring before or during the killing. Accordingly, we hold that the trial court erred in instructing the jury that the gradation crime of rape was one occurring before, during, or after the murder and in subsequently responding to the jury inquiry that the rape of Kristie, which according to the evidence occurred after the killing of Stacey, could serve as the gradation crime for the capital murder of Stacey. [10]