Opinion ID: 2185674
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Justifiable Homicide Instruction

Text: Holloway argues that the trial court erred when it refused to instruct the jury on justifiable homicide pursuant to SDCL 22-16-34 and 22-16-35. [3] State argues there is insufficient evidence in the record to show that Holloway was defending an attempt to commit a felony upon him or that he had reasonable grounds to apprehend a design to commit a felony. State further argues that the jury was instructed on self-defense and, therefore, considered and rejected Holloway's claim that he was defending himself, not robbing the victim. In order for this court to reverse, we must find that if the requested instruction had been given, the jury might, and probably would have returned a different verdict. State v. Willis, 370 N.W.2d 193, 200 (S.D.1985); State v. Bittner, 359 N.W.2d 121, 125 (S.D.1984). While the justifiable homicide instructions and self-defense instructions are not identical, the giving of either one would require the jury to consider whether or not it believed Holloway was defending himself against Aune. Thus, the jury was instructed on self-defense, and still convicted Holloway of manslaughter in the first degree, apparently rejecting Holloway's claim that he was employing reasonable force to defend himself against Aune. We find ample evidence in the record to support this conviction and defeat Holloway's claim that he was defending himself. We cannot, therefore, say that with a justifiable homicide instruction the jury might, and probably would have, returned a different verdict or that the trial court, after hearing all the testimony, abused its discretion in refusing to give the proposed justifiable homicide instruction. Willis, supra . Accordingly, we hold the trial court did not err when it refused to instruct the jury on justifiable homicide. Holloway additionally offers affidavits from several of the jurors to support his contention that the jury might have returned a different verdict had they been instructed on justifiable homicide. These affidavits do not contain any statement pertaining to alleged extraneous prejudicial information filtering into the jury deliberations, nor improper outside influence having been brought to bear upon a juror. A statute and previous cases in South Dakota prohibit jurors from impeaching their verdict absent any alleged external information or influence, thus these affidavits are excluded from consideration in this appeal. SDCL 19-14-7. Shamburger v. Behrens, 418 N.W.2d 299 (S.D.1988); State v. Luna, 378 N.W.2d 229 (S.D.1985); Buchholz v. State, 366 N.W.2d 834 (S.D.1985).