Opinion ID: 1782064
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Law of Responsive Verdicts

Text: Since before the turn of the century, this court has recognized that a defendant, when charged with a crime for which the Legislature has provided a responsive verdict, has the statutory right to have the jury characterize his conduct as the lesser crime. [4] See State v. Brown, 40 La.Ann. 725, 4 So. 897 (1888), citing Patton's case, 12 La.Ann. 288 (1857). Treating the jury's prerogative to return a responsive verdict similar to the jury's power of nullification, [5] this court has consistently held that the jury must be given the option to convict the defendant of the lesser offense, even though the evidence clearly and overwhelmingly supported a conviction of the charged offense. This jurisprudence was called into question by State v. Love, 210 La. 11, 26 So.2d 156 (1946), in which this court held that attempted murder was not a proper responsive verdict when the uncontested evidence showed the victim was killed and the defendant's act contributed to the victim's death. Two years later, however, in State v. Brown, 214 La. 18, 36 So.2d 624 (1948), this court overruled Love and held that attempted murder was responsive, despite uncontested evidence that the victim was killed by the defendant. The Legislature responded by amending the responsive verdict statute to eliminate attempted murder as a responsive verdict to murder. La. Acts 1948, No. 161. The legislative rationale probably was that inclusion of a responsive verdict which does not generally conform to the evidence presented at the trial only serves to encourage compromise verdicts. Thereafter, the Legislature undertook to provide the exclusive list of responsive verdicts that the jury is authorized to consider. Through a series of amendments to the statute enumerating the authorized responsive verdicts (now La.Code Crim.Proc. art. 814), the Legislature eliminated certain verdicts, even though the offenses were lesser and included offenses, [6] and added other verdicts which were not truly lesser and included offenses. [7] Under the present statutory scheme, La.Code Crim.Proc. art. 814 provides a list of the only responsive verdicts which may be rendered for offenses enumerated in the article. Paragraph C of Article 814, the statute at issue in the present case, was a legislative response to two decisions of this court which involved questions of sufficiency of the evidence when the jury returns a responsive verdict which is legislatively authorized, but is not a truly lesser and included offense. As long as an authorized responsive verdict is a lesser and included grade of the charged offense and the evidence is sufficient to support a verdict of guilty of the charged offense, there is no problem with sufficiency of the evidence for the responsive verdict. [8] However, because Article 814 contains authorized responsive verdicts which are not truly lesser and included offenses, evidence which is sufficient to support a conviction of the charged offense may not support all of the elements of the responsive offense. Further, statutory amendments to the definitions of crimes (especially first and second degree murder) have created situations in which responsive verdicts that had previously been truly lesser and included offenses became merely statutorily authorized responsive offenses whose essential elements were not entirely included in the definition of the greater offense. The problem of the sufficiency of the evidence supporting a conviction of a statutorily authorized responsive offense which is not a lesser and included grade of the charged offense was first presented in State v. Dauzat, 392 So.2d 393 (La.1980). The defendant, charged with attempted second degree murder, was convicted of the legislatively authorized responsive offense of aggravated battery, which is not a lesser and included grade of attempted murder. The evidence showed that the defendant fired a shot at the victim which missed him, but struck the vehicle in which he was riding. Thus, the record did not establish the essential elements of the offense of aggravated battery, although the evidence might have been sufficient to convict for attempted murder. This court reversed the aggravated battery conviction because no battery upon the person of the victim had been proved. See Cheney C. Joseph, Jr., Developments in the LawPost Conviction Procedure, 44 La.L.Rev. 477, 483 (1983). In State ex rel. Elaire v. Blackburn, 424 So.2d 246 (La.1982), cert. denied, 461 U.S. 959, 103 S.Ct. 2432, 77 L.Ed.2d 1318 (1983), there was an attempted first degree murder prosecution that arose during the period when second degree murder by definition included only felony murders (unintended killings during enumerated felonies) and first degree murder included only specifically intended killings. In a post-conviction application, the defendant attempted to avail himself of the Dauzat rationale, contending that the evidence was insufficient to support the responsive verdict of attempted second degree murder because there was no proof of an enumerated felony which was an essential element of the crime. This court in a plurality opinion refused to allow the defendant to have the jury consider a responsive verdict which was not supported by the evidence and then raise the issue of sufficiency of the evidence on appeal from a conviction of that lesser offense. The plurality held that the defendant must object at trial to the inclusion of a legislatively authorized responsive verdict which is not supported by the evidence in order to object on appeal to the sufficiency of the evidence supporting the conviction of the lesser offense, as long as the evidence, under the test of Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979), would have permitted a reasonable juror to convict the defendant of the offense charged. [9] The Elaire decision simply prevented the defendant from deriving the benefit of the long-standing statutory rule that the jury must be instructed on all statutorily provided responsive offenses and then having the conviction of the responsive offense set aside because the jury reached a compromise verdict which did not fit the evidence presented. [10] The decision sought to reconcile the defendant's statutory right to have a jury consider a legislatively authorized responsive verdict with the state's interest in preventing the defendant from withholding objection to the inclusion of an unsupported responsive verdict and then challenging on appeal the sufficiency of the evidence supporting that compromise verdict. Prompted by these decisions, [11] the Legislature clarified the trial court's authority to exclude legislatively authorized responsive verdicts which are not supported by the evidence by rewording Article 814C to provide as follows: C. Upon motion of the state or the defendant, or on its own motion, the court shall exclude a responsive verdict listed in Paragraph A if, after all the evidence has been submitted, the evidence, viewed in a light most favorable to the state, is not sufficient reasonably to permit a finding of guilty of the responsive offense. [12] The 1982 addition and 1985 revision of Paragraph C were efforts to permit the trial court and the prosecutor to avoid the situation presented in Elaire and Dauzat, for the same reasons and concerns expressed in the plurality and dissenting opinions. The amendments were not designed to give trial courts and prosecutors the option to strike a lesser offense as a responsive verdict in order to prevent the jury from returning a compromise verdict. Article 814C only authorizes the trial court to delete a lesser offense if a verdict of guilty of the lesser offense would have to be reversed under the Jackson standard; [13] the jury may still return a compromise verdict of a lesser offense which is supported by the evidence, even if the evidence also supports a verdict of the charged offense.