Opinion ID: 848794
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: today's holding is consistent with early michigan common law

Text: Today's holding is consistent with our courts' historical understanding of the law of murder. Michigan courts have historically concluded that a manslaughter instruction is appropriate on a murder charge if a manslaughter instruction is supported by a rational view of the evidence. See, e.g., Hanna v. People, 19 Mich. 316, 321 (1869)(in consideration of M.C.L. § 768.32's similarly worded predecessor, without this provision, the common law rule would, under the statute, dividing murder into degrees, have authorized a conviction not only for murder in the second degree, but for manslaughter also, under an indictment for murder in the first degree, all these being felonies included in the charge )(emphasis added). See People v. Treichel, 229 Mich. 303, 307-308, 200 N.W. 950 (1924), stating: This Court has repeatedly held, where the charge as laid includes murder in the first degree, and the proofs establish such degree, and no lesser degree, it is not error for the court to instruct the jury that, in order to convict, murder in the first degree must be found. But this court has not held, under a charge like here laid, the court must instruct the jury to find murder in the first degree or acquit. Whether such an instruction may be given or not depends upon the evidence. [Emphasis in original.] [In this case, the] information charged murder in the first and second degrees, and this was inclusive of manslaughter. The evidence left it open for the jury to find defendants guilty of manslaughter. See also People v. Droste, 160 Mich. 66, 78-79, 125 N.W. 87 (1910)(concluding that the trial court was clearly warranted in instructing the jury on manslaughter in a murder case because a jury could have concluded there was sufficient intoxication or passion to rob [defendant's] act of the necessary elements of murder); People v. Andrus, 331 Mich. 535, 546-547, 50 N.W.2d 310 (1951)(remarking that it was proper for the court to submit the lesser included offenses of second-degree murder and manslaughter because the evidence was sufficient to support the offense). It was not until this Court overlooked M.C.L. § 768.32, and introduced cognate lesser included offenses, that the relationship between manslaughter and murder became muddled. In People v. Jones, 395 Mich. 379, 236 N.W.2d 461 (1975), this Court, without consideration of M.C.L. § 768.32, recognized a new category of lesser included offenses called cognate offenses. Cognate offenses differed from necessarily included lesser offenses in that cognate offenses share with the higher offense several elements and are of the same class or category, but they contain elements not found in the higher offense. See Cornell, supra at 344-346, 646 N.W.2d 127. Faced with a category of lesser included offenses not previously recognized in Michigan, this Court, in Van Wyck, supra, concluded that manslaughter was a cognate lesser included offense of murder: We hold that manslaughter is not a necessarily included offense within the crime of murder but that it may nonetheless be an included offense if the evidence adduced at trial would support a verdict of guilty for that crime. As we noted in People v. Ora Jones, supra [395 Mich. 379, 236 N.W.2d 461 (1975)]: The common-law definition of lesser included offenses is that the lesser must be such that it is impossible to commit the greater without first having committed the lesser. [Citation omitted.]