Opinion ID: 776528
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Was The Jury Instruction Erroneous?

Text: 69 Whitney was convicted of first degree murder pursuant to 18 Pa. C.S.A. § 2502. Section 2502 states in relevant part: [a] criminal homicide constitutes murder of the first degree when it is committed by an intentional killing. Under Pennsylvania law, the Commonwealth had to establish beyond a reasonable doubt that Whitney [had] the specific intent to kill ... and [was] conscious of his own intention. Commonwealth v. Hannibal, 562 Pa. 132, 140, 753 A.2d 1265 (Pa.2000). A killing in Pennsylvania is with the specific intent to kill if it is willful and deliberate. Id. However, Pennsylvania recognizes that someone can be intoxicated to such an extent that he/she is not capable of forming a specific intent to kill. Commonwealth v. Graves, 461 Pa. 118, 334 A.2d 661 (1975). 70 Given the aforementioned evidence of intoxication, the trial court charged the jury on the possible effect of voluntary intoxication upon Whitney's mens rea. Inasmuch as that charge is the sole basis for the disputed relief, we will quote the relevant portions at length. The trial court instructed the jury: 71 With one exception, which I will define later, voluntary intoxication is not a defense to a criminal charge. A person who uses intoxicants cannot become so drunk that he is, for that reason, legally incapable of committing a crime. 72 Among the elements of the crime of burglary, attempted rape, possession of an instrument of crime and terroristic threats is that the defendant had a certain criminal intent with respect to each of these crimes at the time they were committed.... 73 However, in terms of being found guilty, a defendant cannot ordinarily be found guilty of the crimes involved here unless he had the required state of mind — that is, the intent to commit the crime, the criminal intent — at the time of the alleged crime. 74 However, in the case of a voluntarily intoxicated defendant, it is not necessary that the defendant be conscious or aware of his own state of mind. It is enough if the required mental state is present somewhere in his drunken mind or expressed in his acts. 75 Thus, if you are satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant committed particular crimes as I have defined before in my instructions, you should find him guilty of those crimes, even though you believed he was intoxicated at the time. 76 However, as I indicated a few moments ago, the general rule is that voluntary intoxication is not a defense to a criminal charge. However, there is one modifying circumstance to that rule which says that the voluntary use of intoxicants does not preclude a person from being legally capable of committing a crime. The qualification is where the crime which is charged is first degree murder. 77 In connection with that crime, the defendant is permitted to claim, as a defense, that he was so drunk at the time of the killing that he did not possess the specific intent to kill required for first degree murder. The Commonwealth has the burden of disproving this defense. 78 Thus you cannot find the defendant guilty of first degree murder unless you are satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was not so intoxicated at the time that he was incapable of judging his acts and their consequences or being capable of forming a willful, deliberate and premeditated design to kill. Now, let me repeat that again for you. 79 The Commonwealth has the burden of disproving this defense. 80 Thus, you cannot find the defendant guilty of first degree murder unless you are satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was so intoxicated at the time that he was incapable of judging his acts and their consequences or incapable of forming a willful, deliberate and premeditated design to kill. 81 Voluntary intoxication may reduce a crime of murder from first degree, to third degree. Voluntary intoxication, however, is no defense to a charge of second or third degree murder or of voluntary manslaughter, nor, as I indicated earlier, is it a defense to any of the other crimes with which this defendant is charged.... 82 Appellants App. at pp. 786-89 (emphasis added). All agree that the italicized portion of the charge is incorrect and that was and so should have been separated by not. The Commonwealth has argued at several points during the proceedings that the error is probably only one of transcription. However, there is nothing in the record to support such a blase assertion, and we obviously can not decide this case on the basis of that unsupported argument. 83 Because the misstatement of law concerns the very defense which may negate the specific intent required for murder in the first degree, it is potentially a substantial error. The Commonwealth cites to Henderson v. Kibbe, 431 U.S. 145, 153, 97 S.Ct. 1730, 52 L.Ed.2d 203 (1977), in arguing that this single defect did not rise to the level of constitutional error when considered in context with the charge as a whole. Despite the slip of the tongue, argues the Commonwealth, the trial court properly instructed that voluntary intoxication can negate the necessary specific intent and reduce a homicide to third degree murder. The Commonwealth reminds us that the trial court twice instructed the jury that the prosecution shouldered the burden of disproving voluntary intoxication. In Henderson, supra, the Court found that the state court's omission of an instruction regarding causation in a murder instruction was not a constitutional error requiring habeas relief because, taken as a whole, the challenged instruction sufficiently informed the jury about the element of causation. Id. 84 However, that is quite different from what occurred in Whitney's case. Here, the law regarding specific intent was explained elsewhere in the jury instruction — in the description of different degrees of murder given approximately thirty pages before the voluntary intoxication instruction (Appellants App. at p. 747-51). That law was also correctly explained after the faulty instruction when the court answered a specific jury question about the degrees of murder, and the elements of burglary, and robbery. 808-21. 85 However, the law on voluntary intoxication insofar as it applies to the charge of first degree murder was explained only at the single instance quoted above. That instruction concluded with a misstatement of the law. There is no question that this instruction would have been critical to a juror's understanding of the law of voluntary intoxication. It was the only time that the legal consequences of intoxication with respect to specific intent to kill were explained. Cf. Humanik v. Beyer, 871 F.2d 432, 441 (3d Cir.1989) (finding that, where there was no other language in instruction to dilute express instruction that defendant had the burden of proving by a preponderance of the evidence that he had mental disease or defect that negated the intent to kill, burden of proof was impermissibly shifted to defendant). 86 The Commonwealth notes that the trial court gave the correct instruction for voluntary intoxication immediately before repeating the instruction in which it omitted not. It also argues the court instructed the jury that [v]oluntary intoxication may reduce the crime of murder from first degree, to third degree, immediately after the incorrect instruction. App. Appendix Vol. III, at 789. However, while a single defect does not necessarily make an instruction erroneous, see Henderson, a defect in a charge may result in legal error if the rest of the instruction contains language that merely contradicts and does not explain the defective language in the instruction. See Francis, 471 U.S. at 322, 105 S.Ct. 1965; see also United States v. Hernandez, 176 F.3d 719, 733 (finding an instruction on reasonable doubt to be unconstitutional, where a later clarification of the term did not serve to unring the bell). As the Supreme Court explained in Francis, 471 U.S. at 322, 105 S.Ct. 1965, other language in the instruction does not always serve to cure the error. This is so even when other language correctly explains the law. In Francis, the Court found that an erroneous jury instruction on intent created a mandatory presumption that the jury must infer a presumed fact if the state proved predicate facts. The Court concluded that this constitutional flaw had not been cured by subsequent language correctly explaining the operation of presumptions that immediately followed the challenged portion of the instruction. id. at 319-20, 105 S.Ct. 1965. The Court reasoned that the additional language would not have clarified the issue, and may have permitted another, impermissible interpretation by a reasonable juror. Id. at 325, 105 S.Ct. 1965. 87 Here, the location of the error in context with the rest of the charge, considered along with the correct, but confusing language in the instruction, causes us to view this single deficiency as quite problematic. Neither the correct statements of law within the instruction, nor the statement immediately after the instruction, completely negated or explained the absolutely incorrect statement of law in the context of the rest of the instructions. Moreover, the first correct statement of the law is itself somewhat confusing, because of the use of double negatives: you cannot find the defendant guilty of first degree murder unless you are satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was not so intoxicated at the time that he was incapable of judging his acts and consequences... Appellants App. at 788-89 (emphasis added). The trial judge stated that he would repeat the instruction. However, it is likely that, upon hearing that, any juror who was even slightly confused by the previous instruction would have paid particular attention to the reiteration. That reiteration was, of course, incorrect. See Francis, 471 U.S. at 321 n. 7, 105 S.Ct. 1965 (noting that, after hearing conflicting intent instructions, it is reasonable to expect a juror to attempt to make sense of a confusing earlier portion of the instruction by reference to a later portion of the instruction). 88 Immediately before repeating the instruction, the judge correctly stated that the Commonwealth had the burden of disproving the defense, but then misstated the law. Thus, it is reasonably likely, when considered in the context of the instructions on voluntary intoxication, that a juror believed that the defendant had to prove intoxication beyond a reasonable doubt and that the Commonwealth had the burden of disproving the defense by a lesser standard. Compare Humanik, 871 F.2d at 442-43 (instructions unconstitutionally placed the burden of proof on the defendant), and Johnson v. Rosemeyer, 117 F.3d 104, 111 (3d Cir.1997) (no due process problem where defendant not entitled under federal law to have instruction contain certain elements of justification defense, contrasting cases where instruction unconstitutionally shifts burden of proof of an element onto defendant, in violation of due process). 89 Because it is reasonably likely that a juror interpreted the instruction as allowing a finding of specific intent to kill based on something less than proof beyond a reasonable doubt, the instruction arguably denied Whitney the due process of law. See Francis, 471 U.S. at 321 n. 7, 105 S.Ct. 1965. 90 The sentence immediately subsequent to the disputed phrase, stating that voluntary intoxication may reduce a murder from first degree to third degree, conceivably cured part of the problem. However, that explanation said nothing about the standard of proof required for intoxication. It did not explain that the Commonwealth was required to disprove intoxication beyond a reasonable doubt, or that Whitney did not have to prove intoxication beyond a reasonable doubt. See Humanik, 871 F.2d at 442-43. 91 Thus, the Commonwealth's claim that given the court's charge as a whole, no reasonable juror could possibly have concluded that Whitney could be found guilty of first degree murder only if he was intoxicated, Appellants Br. at 69, misses the point. The problem is not only that a reasonable juror might have actually believed that to be the case. The greater problem is that it was reasonably likely that a juror believed that intoxication had to be established beyond a reasonable doubt and/or that the prosecution then had to disprove the defense by a lower standard of proof. It is unreasonable and improper to assume that lay persons can recognize that an incorrect standard of proof has been described in a jury instruction. 92 Jurors do not sit in solitary isolation booths parsing instructions for subtle shades of meaning in the same way that lawyers might. Differences among them in interpretation of instructions may be thrashed out in the deliberative process, with commonsense understanding of the instructions in the light of all that has taken place at the trial likely to prevail over technical hairsplitting. 93 Boyde v. California, 494 U.S. 370, 380-81, 110 S.Ct. 1190, 108 L.Ed.2d 316 (1990). However, expecting jurors' common sense judgment to prevail over the court's instructions would conflict with the presumption that juries follow their instructions. See Zafiro v. United States, 506 U.S. 534, 541, 113 S.Ct. 933, 122 L.Ed.2d 317 (1993). We presume that jurors, conscious of the gravity of their task, attend closely the particular language of the trial court's instruction in a criminal case and strive to understand, make sense of, and follow the instructions given them. Francis, 471 U.S. at 324 n. 9, 105 S.Ct. 1965. Accordingly, we agree with the district court's conclusion that the trial court's charge on voluntary intoxication was erroneous.