Opinion ID: 1279175
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: An Introduction To Dissent

Text: This case concerns itself with what happens  or can happen  and did happen when a cruel, ill-tempered, insensitive man roams, gun in hand, through his years of family life as a battering bully  a bully who, since his two children were babies, beat both of them and his wife regularly and unmercifully. Particularly, this appeal has to do with a 16-year-old boy who could stand his father's abuse no longer  who could not find solace or friendship in the public services which had been established for the purpose of providing aid, comfort and advice to abused family members  and who had no place to go or friends to help either him or his sister for whose protection he felt responsible and so  in fear and fright, and with fragmented emotion, Richard Jahnke shot and killed his father one night in November of 1982. In these courts, Richard pleads self-defense and, since the jury was given a self-defense instruction, it must be conceded that the trial judge recognized this as a viable defense theory under the evidence adduced at trial. In this dissenting opinion, besides agreeing with Justice Cardine that voir dire was erroneously limited, I find error in the majority opinion's conclusion that the trial court properly excluded the proffered expert psychiatric witness' testimony from the jury's consideration. Appellant's offer of proof indicated Dr. McDonald, a forensic psychiatrist, would testify that: 1. The doctor had diagnosed Richard Jahnke as a battered child, based on interviews with Jahnke and other information. 2. Battered children behave differently from other children, and perceive things differently from other children. 3. Because he was a battered child, Richard Jahnke reasonably believed himself to be in immediate danger on the night he shot his father, and perceived himself as acting in self-defense. When the evidence was in, the court gave the jury the following self-defense instruction  an instruction with respect to which I take no exception: INSTRUCTION NO. 8 If the defendant had reasonable grounds to believe and actually did believe that he was in imminent danger of death or serious bodily harm from which he could save himself only by using deadly force against his assailant, he had the right to use deadly force in order to defend himself. `Deadly force' means force which is likely to cause death or serious bodily harm.  The circumstances under which he acted must have been such as to produce in the mind of a reasonably prudent person, similarly situated, the reasonable belief that the other person was about to kill him or do him serious bodily harm. The danger must have been apparent, present and imminent or must have appeared to be so under the circumstances.  If the defendant believed that he was in imminent danger of death or serious bodily harm, and that deadly force was necessary to repel such danger, and if a reasonable person in a similar situation seeing and knowing the same facts would be justified in believing himself in similar danger, he would be justified in using deadly force in self-defense. He would be justified even though the appearance of danger later proved to be false and there was actually neither purpose on the part of the other person to kill him or do him serious bodily harm nor imminent danger that it would be done, nor actual necessity that deadly force be used in self-defense. If the person so confronted acts in self-defense upon such appearances of danger from honest belief, his right of self-defense is the same whether the danger is real or merely apparent. On the other hand, a bare fear of death or serious bodily harm is not sufficient to justify the killing of another person. [1] (Emphasis added.) It is my position that, since the issue of self-defense in the unusual behavioral circumstances of this case is a subject which is cloaked in the abstract mysteries of professional knowledge, the jury, deprived of an expert's explanation of how battered people perceive and respond to the imminence of danger, could not be expected to and did not understand and quantify the impact and residuals of the years and years of battering which had been the lifelong fate of Richard Jahnke. The jury could, therefore, not know  or be expected to know  whether his acts, at the time and place in question here, were those of the reasonable person similarly situated for whom the law of self-defense provides comfort. [2] Denied the explanatory assistance of a qualified expert witness, it is as though Richard Jahnke had not been permitted to defend himself at all. Since the necessity to defend oneself or others from perceived imminent danger is a subjective consideration for the defendant [3] but one which is an objective concern of the jury, [4] how could this young boy structure an understandable defense when  even though the record discloses that since age two he had been bullied, battered, frightened and emotionally traumatized  he was, nevertheless, denied the opportunity to have explained to his jury how abused people reasonably handle their fears and anxieties  what their apprehensions are  how, in the dark moments of their aloneness, they perceive the imminence of danger  and how, in response, they undertake to assert their right of self-defense? It is my conception that Richard Jahnke properly came to the courts of Wyoming asking  not that he be judged as one who, at the time and place in question, was insanely unreasonable [5]  but that his 14 years of beatings and uncivilized emotional abuse be explained by a qualified expert in order that judgment be passed on the question which asks whether or not his behavior was sanely reasonable. One might wonder why  since our courts admit expert testimony with commendable regularity upon the issue of sanity when that is the ultimate fact  and the plea is insanity  it is not acceptable that a psychiatrist testify about whether behavior such as that with which this case is concerned and which is unlike that which lay jurors would understand to be the expected, is, nevertheless, sanely typical of the behavior of a reasonable person acting in the same or similar circumstances. Richard was not, however, permitted to have the impact of 14 years of abuse upon his alleged self-defensive behavior explained to the jury through the testimony of a psychiatrist even though this is the only way the fallout from brutality can be communicated. Denied this opportunity, the appellant was forced to submit his case to the jury with what consequently presents itself as a ridiculous, unbelievable, outrageous defense. Without medical input, what possible sense could it make to a lay juror or any other nonprofessional person for the citizen accused to urge self-defense where the evidence is that, even though the recipient of untold battering and brutalizing by the victim, the defendant nevertheless contemplated the possibility of the use of deadly force as he lay in wait, gun in hand, for his father's return? How could any jury be receptive to such a defense on an informed basis if its members are not to be permitted to hear from those who understand how brutalized people  otherwise reasonable in all respects  entertain what, for them, is a belief that they are in imminent danger from which there is no escape and how they, with their embattled psyche, responsively behave?