Opinion ID: 1435297
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Jury Decides Credibility

Text: Henry asserts that the jury could have held him responsible for the reckless killing of Canty in view of the unknown sequence of the shooting. He contends the jury could infer from his testimony that he fired the gun wildly in the bathroom. In refusing to instruct the jury on Murder in the Second Degree, the trial judge stated, Three different parts of the body within a very short period of time. It seems to me that reckless is absurd under those conditions. I'm not going to give it. More than one hundred years ago, in Stevenson v. United States , the United States Supreme Court addressed the question presented by Henry in this case: The ruling of the trial judge, in effect, was to say that, as matter of law, there was nothing in all this evidence, if true, which would permit the jury to find that the [defendant], when he fired his [gun], was so much under the influence of sudden passion, caused by these circumstances and by this [confrontation], as not to have been actuated by that malice which the law defines as a necessary ingredient in the crime of murder. . . . . ... Whether such a state of mind existed in this case, and whether the [defendant] fired the shot under the influence of passion, and without malice, cannot be properly regarded as a question of law. [27] Despite the trial judge's belief that Henry's contention of recklessness was absurd, it is well settled that the jury is the sole judge of the credibility of witnesses and is responsible for resolving conflicts in the testimony. [28] In ruling upon a request to instruct the jury on a lesser included offense, the trial judge must give full credence to [the] defendant's testimony. [29] The trial judge may not intrude upon the province of the jury which may find credibility in testimony that the judge may consider completely overborne by the simply overwhelming evidence of the prosecutor. [30] As the United States Supreme Court held in Stevenson: A judge may be entirely satisfied, from the whole evidence in the case, that the person doing the killing was actuated by malice; that he was not in any such passion as to lower the grade of the crime from murder to manslaughter by reason of any absence of malice; and yet, if there be any evidence fairly tending to bear upon the issue of [a lesser included offense], it is the province of the jury to determine from all the evidence what the condition of mind was, and to say whether the crime was murder or [the lesser included offense]. [31] Henry's testimony presented evidence from which the jury could find the elements of the lesser included offense of Murder in the Second Degree. The conclusion that the United States Supreme Court reached a century ago in Stevenson is equally applicable in Henry's case: The [defendant] may have been guilty of murder. There was certainly sufficient evidence on that issue to render it necessary to submit it to the jury. We have no power and no inclination to pass upon that question of fact. We only decide that the question as to the grade of the crime, whether [first degree] murder or [second degree murder], should have been submitted to the jury.... [32] Similarly, based on the evidence presented in the record, the trial judge was required to instruct the jury on the lesser included offense of Murder in the Second Degree. [33] A defendant is entitled to a lesser included offense instruction even if it depends on an inference of a state of facts that is ascertained by believing defendant as to part of his testimony and [State's] witnesses on the other points in dispute. [34] The weight of the evidence is for the jury to decide. [35]