Opinion ID: 2032404
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Causation Issue is Irrelevant

Text: The analysis of the majority opinion began with the recitation of the Ora Jones rule and should have ended with the conclusion that evidence would have supported a guilty verdict for the assault offense. The causation issue presented by the facts in the instant case is irrelevant to the determination whether the requested assault instruction should have been given. [5] By launching into the causation issue and then using that analysis to conclude that the instruction was properly refused, the majority essentially held that it was permissible for the trial judge to usurp the jury's determination of all essential elements of the offense. However, as this Court has stated on numerous occasions, the jury could choose to believe or disbelieve any or all the evidence. [6] Thus, there is no support for the majority's statement that it is neither necessary nor sound policy to require the trial court to blind itself to uncontroverted proof of an element of the greater crime that would necessarily raise a defendant's culpability to that of the more serious crime, if all elements common to the two offenses were found to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Where a defendant admits activity that, as a matter of law, constitutes proof of the distinguishing element, [here, death] the basis for instruction on the lesser crime evaporates. [Part II(C), op., p. 331.] Further, a prior decision [7] of a similar issue by this Court does not support the majority's conclusions that if [death] has occurred, and the defendant's admitted act constitutes a legally cognizable cause of the death, instruction of the jury regarding crimes not intended to punish acts causing such an egregious result are logically precluded. At the point a court has before it uncontested evidence that a criminal homicide has been caused by a defendant's acts, there is no justification for instruction on merely assaultive offenses. If a lesser cognate instruction is to be justified in such an instance, there must be some evidentiary basis for the jury to conclude that the causation chain leading from the greater harm back to defendant's admitted acts has been broken by an independent, intervening cause. [Part II(C), op., p. 332 (emphasis added).] By focusing on whether the defendant presented evidence of an independent, intervening cause of the decedent's death, the majority does not remain faithful to the rule announced in Ora Jones. According to Ora Jones, the instruction should have been given because the jury could have found the defendant guilty of the assault offense on the basis of the evidence presented at trial. Evidence was presented that an assault occurred, as well as evidence from which the jury could have inferred that the defendant acted with the specific intent to do great bodily harm less than murder. Additionally, although the majority seems to acknowledge that this Court rejected a similar argument in People v. Chamblis, 395 Mich. 408, 236 N.W.2d 473 (1975), it does not analyze this case in conformity with that decision. As noted by the majority, in Chamblis, this Court rejected an inquiry into the evidence adduced at trial that would direct a trial court to determine if `there is evidence which would justify the jury in concluding that the greater offense was not committed and a lesser included offense was committed.' Part II (C), op., p. 331. However, this is exactly the force of the majority's analysis. In this case, the majority opines that assault instructions should not be given when the victim dies as a result of the assault, because there is no evidence that would justify the jury concluding that some homicide offense was not committed. Thus, I do not endorse the majority's analysis, and instead prefer to remain faithful to Chamblis, which favored allowing greater jury discretion to bring in any verdict it deemed just by inquiring simply whether the evidence adduced at trial would support a guilty verdict on the lesser charge, had defendant only been charged on the lesser offense. Part II(C), op., p. 331.