Opinion ID: 1309290
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Heading: Failure to Submit Willful Injury as a Lesser Included Offense.

Text: In answering defendant's contention that the district court erred in refusing to submit willful injury as a lesser included offense, the State concedes that willful injury was in fact a lesser included offense under the elements of willful premeditated murder contained in the court's marshaling instruction. The State urges, however, that reversal of defendant's conviction is not required because, as a result of the other lesser included offenses that were submitted and rejected by the jury, the failure to submit willful injury was harmless. The State's argument in this regard is posited on the principle, recognized in State v. Nowlin, 244 N.W.2d 591, 596 (Iowa 1976), and State v. Drosos, 253 Iowa 1152, 1164-65, 114 N.W.2d 526, 533 (1962), that, when one or more lesser included offenses are submitted to the jury and a conviction of the greater offense is returned, there is no prejudice in the failure to submit additional included offenses. Defendant urges that the harmless-error principle upon which the State relies is subject to exceptions. He contends that this principle does not apply when the omitted lesser included offense embraces the defendant's primary theory of defense. He argues that, although his primary theory was self-defense in the aid of Myre, his admission of having beaten Gilley rendered willful injury a likely verdict if he was only partially believed. The argument that defendant is making is based on his interpretation of State v. Mikesell, 479 N.W.2d 591 (Iowa 1991). We stated in that case that: The two lesser-included offenses actually submitted by the jury do not similarly coincide with Mikesell's defense theory, and the jury's rejection of those lesser offenses does not demonstrate to our satisfaction that the jury would have rejected Mikesell's defense theory if given complete instructions. Id. at 592. We believe the exception applied in Mikesell does not extend to all instances in which the rejected lesser included offense embraces a defendant's theory of the case. It only relates to situations in which the differences between the offenses that were submitted and the included offense that was not submitted are such that it may not be reasonably concluded that the rejection of the former is also a rejection of the latter. See State v. Donelson, 302 N.W.2d 125, 135 (Iowa 1981). In analyzing whether prejudice occurred in the present case, we are struck with the similarity of the elements between willful injury and involuntary manslaughter. The elements of willful injury, as illustrated in Iowa Uniform Criminal Jury Instruction 800.10 are: The State must prove all of the following elements of Willful Injury: 1. On or about the [date of the crime], the defendant ( set forth acts of assault ). 2. The defendant specifically intended to cause a serious injury to ( victim ). 3. ( Victim ) sustained a serious injury. The elements of involuntary manslaughter set forth in the district court's marshaling instruction in the present case were as follows: The State must prove all of the following elements of involuntary manslaughter: 1. On or about the 9th day of March, 1991, the defendant recklessly beat Daniel K. Gilley. 2. The defendant beat Daniel K. Gilley in a manner likely to cause death. 3. By doing the act of beating Daniel K. Gilley, the defendant unintentionally caused the death of Daniel K. Gilley. The primary distinction between the elements of the lesser included offense of involuntary manslaughter that was submitted and the elements of willful injury is that in the former a reckless assault must be proven and in the latter an assault intended to cause serious injury. The differences between a reckless assault and an intentional assault are not sufficient in our view to present the likelihood that a jury that rejected the involuntary manslaughter verdict as an alternative to murder would have returned a willful injury verdict as an alternative to a homicide conviction. We are also cognizant that, in comparing the elements of voluntary manslaughter and willful injury, the latter does not require proof of the ensuing death of the victim. This distinction does not weigh heavily, however, in the harmless-error analysis in the present case. Although factual basis has been largely abandoned as a predicate for instructing on lesser included offenses, it continues to play an essential role in a harmless-error analysis. The defendant is not controverting the State's claim that an underlying felonious assault caused Gilley's death. He only contends that he was not involved in that assault, but rather in an earlier assault that did not produce death. For purposes of determining lesser included offenses, a felonious assault outside the causal chain on which the theory of prosecution is based is not a lesser included offense of the homicide charged. It is a separate and distinct crime. For this reason, we conclude that the crime of willful injury that would have been a lesser included offense under the State's theory of prosecution was sufficiently similar to the involuntary manslaughter charge submitted to the jury as to render harmless the omission of willful injury as an included offense.