Opinion ID: 3011490
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: S 293(a)(3)

Text: The government concedes that the defendants may have been entitled to a lawful violence instruction on this record, but argues: the only part of that instruction that was requested, was supported by the evidence, and was not covered by other instructions was [subsection (3)], and the failure to instruct on this one clause was not plain error. Appellant's Br. at 44. However, as noted above, our review is not restricted to plain error. Inasmuch as Blanche preserved the objection, we must review for abuse of 12 discretion as to her appeal, but review for plain error as to Fonseca. Subsection 3 defines lawful violence to include violence for the preservation of peace, or to prevent the commission of offenses, 14 V.I.C. S 293(a)(3). As noted above, the trial court indicated that it was not inclined to charge on lawful violence because the defendants were charged with homicide, not assault and battery. 14 V.I.C. S 293(a) is contained in Chapter 13 of the Virgin Islands Code. Chapter 13 is, in turn, captioned: Assault and Battery. On the other hand, 14 V.I.C. S 927 is contained in Chapter 45 of the Virgin Islands Code which is captioned: Homicide. 14 V.I.C. S 927 establishes the defense of justifiable homicide, and states that such justification includes resisting any attempt to murder any person, or to commit a felony, or to do some great bodily injury upon any person14 V.I.C. S 927(2)(A) (emphasis added). The distinction between these two defenses is readily apparent. Section 293(a)(3) allows one to use violence to preserve the peace or prevent commission of offenses, without further defining the offenses that justify resort to violence. However, S 927 restricts the offenses that justify resort to deadly force to felonies. Common sense, as well as the statutory scheme and headings, therefore suggest that one can only use the kind of deadly force at issue here to prevent the commission of a felony. A contrary reading would mean that someone could employ deadly force to thwart a petty theft, or even a summary offense. We do not believe that to have been the intent of the legislature in enacting S 293(a)(3). Nevertheless, the evidence here established that one or both of the defendants assaulted Tariq with a billy club and possibly chemical mace before he was stabbed. Therefore, there may well have been an issue in a juror's mind about the legality of that initial assault by the defendants, and that may have been relevant to the juror's view of the defendants' subsequent right to use force against Tariq. Nevertheless, assuming arguendo that S 293(a)(3) is relevant in this context, the charge that the trial court gave adequately explained the governing legal principles and guided the jury's deliberations. The jury was 13 informed that the defendants had the right to use reasonable force to resist force being used against them. As we discuss below, the court's instructions correctly informed the jury of the circumstances in which the defendants could use deadly force, even if they were the initial aggressors. The defense's evidence at trial raised a classic issue of self-defense. The defendants attempted to show that Tariq had a propensity for violence; that he was the aggressor throughout the confrontation; appeared to be hiding a weapon in his rear pocket; and that the defendants had a reasonable and justifiable fear of him during this altercation, and took steps to defend themselves. The trial court instructed the jury accordingly. The court stated: Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury, also, if the defendant had a reasonable ground to believe and actually did believe that they were in imminent danger of death or serious bodily harm and deadly force was necessary to repel such danger, they would be justified in using deadly force in self-defense, even though it may thereafter have turned out that the appearances were false. The defense hinges on the defendants' subjective belief in imminent danger or death or serious bodily harm and the objective reasonableness of that belief. . . . You will note, too, that the defendants have raised not only the issue of self-defense, but defense of another or a third person. If a person reasonably believes that force is necessary to protect another person from what that person reasonably believes to be unlawful physical harm about to be inflicted by another and uses such force, then the person acted in self-defense of another person. App. IV, pp. 1253-1260. These instructions guided the jury in deciding whether Finney's and Fonseca's actions were legally justified at each step of the confrontation. The jurors knew that the defendants had a right to defend themselves against an 14 assault or aggression on the part of Tariq and, on this record, that is all that S 293(a)(3) required. 5