Opinion ID: 1143715
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: issue iv: insufficiency of evidence for second-degree murder conviction

Text: The majority affirm that the evidence justified the second-degree murder conviction. After allowing for the fact that the jury was denied knowledge of the victim's past arrest record (Issue IV), and that they were denied the defendant's expert witness' testimony of the effect fear might have in impairing judgment (Issue I), I could agree based only on the testimony given. But the information permitted to be introduced was not all the specifics which should have been available to the jury. My dissent unfolds from the assertion that the evidence was insufficient because proper evidence was excluded, not that the information as it was before the jury was insufficient for a second-degree murder conviction. In the present opinion this court says: Malice has been defined as intentional killing without legal justification or excuse and under circumstances which are insufficient to reduce the crime to manslaughter. Necessarily, a full examination by the trial court should always be made which fairly allows a determination whether or not the circumstances are insufficient to reduce the crime to manslaughter. Under § 6-2-105(a)(i), W.S. 1977, a person is guilty of voluntary manslaughter if he or she unlawfully kills any human being without malice, express or implied, voluntarily, upon a sudden heat of passion. To infer malice then is to assert that there are no circumstances which would allow an inference of voluntary manslaughter, i.e., no sudden heat of passion. The majority say, In this case, appellant walked into his apartment and loaded his rifle   . From the facts developed at trial, one might well say, In this case, appellant rushed into his apartment to call the police and upon hearing his wife's screams, loaded his rifle. While heat of passion is often brought to mind as the kind of emotion a husband might experience in suddenly finding that his wife has an additional lover, State v. Saxon, 87 Conn. 5, 86 A. 590, 594 (1913), I submit that sudden heat of passion would grip any man or woman who suddenly hears a blood-chilling scream from a loved one, knowing he or she is in a potentially very dangerous confrontation with a trouble-provoking and antagonistic individual. [T]he legal definition of heat of passion should incorporate the reactive passions of fear and terror as fully as it includes the aggressive passion of rage in order to recognize a close relationship between heat-of-passion manslaughter and imperfect self-defense. Comment, Provoked Reason in Men and Women: Heat-of-Passion Manslaughter and Imperfect Self-Defense, 33 U.C.L.A.L.Rev. 1679, 1682 (1986). This court, while properly disapproving the concept of diminished capacity as an infringement on the legislature, Dean v. State, Wyo., 668 P.2d 639, 644 (1983), has never authoritatively [2] discussed the defense of imperfect self-defense when linked to heat-of-passion manslaughter. However, this court came close in discussing the psychological factors faced by a long-battered youth who killed his father. Jahnke v. State, Wyo., 682 P.2d 991, 1013 (1984). The legislature set the parameters of defense for mental illness or deficiency in § 7-11-304, W.S. 1977. To allow any defendant to argue diminished capacity outside the conceptual limits of § 7-11-304 would necessitate a violation of the constitutional demand for separation of powers. Art. 2, § 1, Wyoming Constitution. This is not the case which would obtain in allowing the development of an imperfect self-defense, since the legislature has not codified self-defense, and this court allows self-defense as unobtrusive upon the legislature's province. Mewes v. State, Wyo., 517 P.2d 487, 488 (1973). An imperfect self-defense lies within the radius of self-defense, as in this case where the defendant came to the help of his wife, on asserting the justification of defense of another, stepped into the position of the person defended. Leeper v. State, Wyo., 589 P.2d 379, 383 (1979). Perfect self-defense is defined by Illinois in People v. Brown, 104 Ill. App.3d 1110, 60 Ill.Dec. 843, 847, 433 N.E.2d 1081, 1085 (1982), as follows: A person is justified in the use of force against another when and to the extent that he reasonably believes that such conduct is necessary to defend   . Ill. Ann. Stat. 1977, Ch. 38, § 7-1. and imperfect self-defense: A person who intentionally or knowingly kills an individual commits voluntary manslaughter if at the time of the killing he believes the circumstances to be such that, if they existed, would justify or exonerate the killing    but his belief is unreasonable. Ill. Ann. Stat. Ch. 38, § 9-2(b). See also Lambert v. State, 70 Md. App. 83, 519 A.2d 1340, 1346, cert. denied 309 Md. 605, 525 A.2d 1075 (1987). The notion of an imperfect self-defense is that the actor honestly but unreasonably took the steps he took. The concept of reasonableness is as firmly entrenched in the law of self-defense as it is in the law of heat-of-passion manslaughter. 33 U.C.L.A.L.Rev., supra at 1700. Since this court says: `   Malice may be inferred from all of the other facts and circumstances,' quoting from Leitel v. State, Wyo., 579 P.2d 421, 424 (1978), it would seem strange if malice may be inferred from all the circumstances, but heat of passion cannot. Yet, when the defendant is denied the opportunity to develop fully all the circumstances from which heat of passion arising from terror or fear could be inferred, he is denied the opportunity to preclude an inference of malice. Where he has not been given that opportunity, the whole story is kept from the jury and, in that sense, the whole evidence might be insufficient to convict for murder in the second degree. I am not unaware of the restrictive posture as defensively applied in enunciation by this court in Buhrle v. State, Wyo., 627 P.2d 1374 (1981), and at least peripherally continued in Krucheck v. State, Wyo., 702 P.2d 1267 (1985). Unless this court is adopting a standard that what is not admissible for defense is admissible for prosecution, these two cases in restrictive structure cannot be accommodated to much of the current literature in comparable cases, but more specifically, even after ignoring the vouching-for-the-truthfulness aspect, to what this court now stated in Brown v. State, supra. Buhrle is today in the obvious minority. See Note, A Trend Emerges: A State Survey on the Admissibility of Expert Testimony Concerning the Battered Woman Syndrome, 25 J.Fam.L. 373 (1986). At the time of writing, the author found only three other states in concurrence, Louisiana, Ohio and Texas, compared to seven where unconditionally admissible, and six where conditionally admissible. 33 U.C.L.A.L.Rev., supra; Rosen, The Excuse of Self-Defense: Correcting a Historical Accident On Behalf of Battered Women Who Kill, 36 Am.U.L.Rev. 11 (1986). To be noted is that the Dyas test, Dyas v. United States, D.C.App., 376 A.2d 827, cert. denied 434 U.S. 973, 98 S.Ct. 529, 54 L.Ed.2d 464 (1977), adopted in Buhrle is more restrictive than the liberalized test of Rule 702 in our Rules of Evidence. Compare as considered on another basis, State v. Zespy, Wyo., 723 P.2d 564 (1986).    Thus, the more liberal Rule 702 requires only that the expert's scientific, technical or other specialized knowledge assist the trier of fact; there is no requirement that expert testimony be beyond the understanding of the jury. 25 J.Fam.L., supra at 374.