Opinion ID: 453286
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Sandstrom Claim

Text: 13 The petitioner also takes issue with the jury charge given at the liability stage of the trial regarding malice and intent. 5 He claims that it impermissibly shifted the burden of proof to him in contravention of Sandstrom v. Montana, 442 U.S. 510, 99 S.Ct. 2450, 61 L.Ed.2d 39 (1979). The familiar instructions used by the trial court in this case have been considered in previous cases of this court and violate the proscriptions of Sandstrom in a number of ways. 14 These instructions establish a mandatory presumption: they go beyond simply authorizing a jury to draw inferences and state that the law presumes. 6 They ask the jury to presume criminal intent from the use of a deadly weapon, as in Mason v. Balkcom, 669 F.2d 222 (5th Cir. Unit B 1982), cert. denied, 460 U.S. 1016, 103 S.Ct. 1260, 75 L.Ed.2d 487 (1983), and to presume that an intentional killing is malicious unless evidence of justification or mitigation shows otherwise, as in Lamb v. Jernigan, 683 F.2d 1332, 1341 (11th Cir.1982), cert. denied, 460 U.S. 1024, 103 S.Ct. 1276, 75 L.Ed.2d 496 (1983). As in Francis v. Franklin, --- U.S. ----, 105 S.Ct. 1965, 85 L.Ed.2d 344 (1985), the instruction states that the acts of a person of sound mind and discretion are presumed to be the product of the person's will. The jury was not told that they had a choice or that they might infer the conclusion. Id. at ----, 105 S.Ct. at 1971 (quoting Sandstrom v. Montana, 442 U.S. 510, 515, 99 S.Ct. 2450, 2454, 61 L.Ed.2d 39 (1979)). 15 While the instructions duly note that the defendant may rebut any presumptions against him, they do not describe how he could go about making such a rebuttal. There is no mention of the quantum of evidence necessary to rebut the presumption. Because of this omission, the jury could have concluded that Dix had to produce more than some evidence to rebut the presumption. 7 Davis v. Kemp, 752 F.2d 1515 (11th Cir.1985) (en banc). As the Supreme Court recently held in Francis v. Franklin, --- U.S. ----, 105 S.Ct. 1965, 85 L.Ed.2d 344 (1985), the statement that a presumption may be rebutted, when combined with mandatory language such as the law presumes, could indicate to a reasonable juror that the defendant bears an affirmative burden of persuasion once the State proves the underlying act giving rise to the presumption. This ambiguity, together with the other misleading aspects of the instruction, created a real risk that the jury would shift the burden of proof to the defendant. The instruction at Dix's trial violated constitutional standards even more clearly than the instructions in Davis. 16 Since the charge to the jury in this case violated the presumption of innocence, the conviction cannot stand unless the State can demonstrate that the error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18, 87 S.Ct. 824, 17 L.Ed.2d 705 (1967); Brooks v. Kemp, 762 F.2d 1383 (11th Cir., 1985) (en banc). Harmless error can be shown in one of two ways: either the charge could relate to an element not at issue in the trial, or the evidence of guilt could be so overwhelming that the error could not contribute to the jury's decision to convict. Drake v. Kemp, No. 83-8047, 762 F.2d 1449 (11th Cir. 1985) (en banc); Davis v. Kemp, supra; Mason v. Balkcom, supra. Both malice and intent were at issue in the trial because the defendant presented evidence to support an insanity defense. Insanity, of course, negates criminal intent and malice. 17 McCleskey v. Kemp, 753 F.2d 877, 901 (11th Cir.1985) (en banc), does not compel another conclusion because in that case the defendant made absolutely no effort to deny that an intentional killing had taken place. His choice of defenses, coupled with overwhelming evidence that an intentional killing had taken place, led the court to conclude that the Sandstrom error was harmless. Similar reasoning led the court in Davis v. Kemp, to reach the same result. In each of those cases, the court stressed the distinction between non-participation defenses such as the ones presented there, and a mens rea defense such as the one presented by Dix. Unlike the petitioners in Davis and McCleskey, it cannot be said that Dix has taken malice or intent out of issue. The insanity defense placed criminal intent at issue here; indeed, it was the primary issue at trial. 18 Harmless error in this case could therefore only be based on overwhelming evidence. As for the strength of the evidence here, the district court based its finding of harmless error on an evaluation of all the evidence showing that Dix was the person who killed his wife. That evidence was indeed overwhelming. But that does not mean that the error must be found harmless, because the State presented much weaker evidence related specifically to the issues of intent and malice. The evidence specifically related to intent must be overwhelming before a Sandstrom error becomes harmless. Brooks v. Kemp, supra at 1390; Davis v. Kemp, supra, at 1521. If the overwhelming evidence relates only to the identity of the killer, the jury still has to consider intent as a separate element of the offense and could rely on the faulty presumption in reaching its verdict. 19 The defendant and the state each produced expert witnesses to evaluate Dix's sanity. The experts made similar observations and diagnoses but reached differing conclusions regarding his criminal responsibility for the killing. Furthermore, the defendant introduced evidence of a history of possible mental illness and unstable (perhaps psychotic) behavior. The evidence establishing intent was far from overwhelming in this case, and weaker than the evidence of intent in Brooks v. Francis, supra, where a defendant's bare claim that a shooting was accidental undermined powerful evidence to the contrary. Since the evidence of sanity in this case was not overwhelming, the jury could have reached its verdict by relying on the illegal presumption. The Sandstrom error was not harmless. 20 The district court ruled correctly that the charge to the sentencing jury was not adequate but mistakenly found that any erroneous charge to the jury at the liability trial was harmless error. The judgment is AFFIRMED in part and REVERSED in part.