Opinion ID: 403552
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Alleged Sandstrom Violation

Text: 18 In Sandstrom v. Montana, 442 U.S. 510, 99 S.Ct. 2450, 61 L.Ed.2d 39 (1979), the Supreme Court held that a charge to a jury that (t)he law presumes that a person intends the ordinary consequences of his voluntary acts, relieved the State of the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt on the critical question of the defendant's state of mind. The charge was therefore found to be constitutionally defective. In Sandstrom the trial judge had given this instruction to the jury without explanation or qualification. The jury was not told that, rather than simply presuming intent from the doing of a particular act, they should consider the other evidence in the case and the circumstances surrounding the incident in their effort to determine whether the intent necessary to convict for the crime charged was present. The instruction given in Sandstrom was particularly egregious since the defendant had admitted to killing the victim but contended that due to a personality disorder aggravated by alcohol consumption he did not have the intent required to support a finding of  'deliberate homicide.'  442 U.S. at 512, 99 S.Ct. at 2453. 19 The charge given in this case was not nearly so peremptory as that delivered in Sandstrom. Here the language, (e)veryone is presumed to intend the natural consequences of his act ..., was both preceded and followed by language that served to qualify it appropriately. The broader text read: 20 Under the definition of felony murder, intent to kill need not be established. But, the intent to commit the underlying felony must be established. 21 A word about intent. Intent is a secret and silent mental operation not visible to the human eye. The way intent is determined is from the actions and the conduct of the individual whose intent is the subject of your inquiry. Everyone is presumed to intend the natural consequences of his act and unless the act is done under circumstances or conditions that might preclude the existence of such an intent, you, the jury, have to find, have the right to find the requisite intent from the proven actions of an individual. If you find from the actions of one of several participants an intent to commit a certain crime, then anyone who was a co-principal or active participant in the crime also had such intent. 22 The qualifying unless clause used here is virtually identical to that which this Court found to be both ameliorative and free of any improper burden-shifting effect in Washington v. Harris, 650 F.2d 447, 453 (2d Cir. 1981). 23 Further, the crime charged against Mancuso in this case was felony murder. Thus, the prosecution was not required to prove intent to kill. Rather, it satisfied its burden if it proved beyond a reasonable doubt all of the essential elements of the underlying burglary. Thus, when in the context of his extensive instructions to the jury as to the elements of a burglary, the trial judge herein stated that (a)ccording to the law, a person intends to commit a crime when his conscious aim or objective is to commit the crime, he instructed the jury as to intent, without charging a presumption, in the particular context in which the issue was presented. 24 In Cupp v. Naughten, 414 U.S. 141, 94 S.Ct. 396, 38 L.Ed.2d 368 (1973), the Supreme Court stated that a single jury instruction may not be judged in artificial isolation, but must be viewed in the context of the overall charge, 414 U.S. at 146, 94 S.Ct. at 400, and that (t)he question is not whether the trial court failed to isolate and cure a particular ailing instruction, but rather whether the ailing instruction by itself so infected the entire trial that the resulting conviction violates due process. Id. As in our recent decision in Nelson v. Scully, 672 F.2d 266 (2d Cir. 1982), we find that in this case the impact of the presumption language, in the context of the entire charge, was merely to instruct the jury as to a permissible method for reaching a conclusion as to whether Mancuso had the intent required to commit the burglary upon which the felony murder charge was predicated. When viewed in this light, it is apparent that there was (no) significant possibility that harm was done. Id. at 272. In reaching this conclusion we also have taken into account the circumstances and extent to which Mancuso's intent was an issue at his trial for felony murder. See Washington v. Harris, supra, 650 F.2d at 453. In Sandstrom and Nelson, the existence of the specific intent to kill was the principal issue before the jury. Here Mancuso denied any involvement in either the burglary or the murder. His defense focused on an attempt to discredit the witnesses who testified to his involvement in the burglary. Therefore, once the jury decided, as it clearly did, to accept the testimony of those witnesses with regard to Mancuso's involvement, and found that he was present at the scene of the crime, as charged in the indictment herein, the one challenged instruction as to intent, in the context of a lengthy, and otherwise unassailable charge, created no significant possibility that harm was done. Nelson, supra, at 272. 25 We find that the charge, when viewed as a whole, made it quite clear to the jury that it was to consider all of the evidence in the case in deciding whether the defendant possessed the intent necessary to commit the crime of burglary. The judgment of the District Court is reversed and the petition is dismissed.