Opinion ID: 2315112
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Austin and Hemphill.

Text: Mills relies heavily on Austin v. United States, 127 U.S.App.D.C. 180, 382 F.2d 129 (1967), overruled in part on other grounds sub nom., United States v. Foster, 251 U.S.App.D.C. 267, 783 F.2d 1082 (1986) (en banc) and Hemphill v. United States, 131 U.S.App.D.C. 46, 402 F.2d 187 (1968). In each of these 2:1 decisions, the court held the evidence of premeditation and deliberation insufficient to support a conviction for first degree murder. Both Austin and Hemphill had killed their victims with great savagery (Austin had stabbed a woman twenty-six times; Hemphill, like Mills, had struck a child repeated blows to the head with a hammer), and the court held that the government had failed to prove that this was not murder committed in an orgy of frenzied activity, Austin, supra, 127 U.S.App.D.C. at 190, 382 F.2d at 139, or that there was an interruption to the impulse or frenzy sufficient to justify the inference of reflection and premeditation. Hemphill, supra, 131 U.S.App.D.C. at 50, 402 F.2d at 191. Judge Leventhal, the writer of both opinions, made it clear in Hemphill, that the result in each case turned on the absence of any showing of motive: In considering whether premeditation is permissibly inferred from this evidence we revert to the opinions in Austin v. United States , and Belton v. United States [127 U.S.App.D.C. 201, 382 F.2d 150 (1967)]. In Austin the evidence showed a killing caused by twenty-six major stab wounds from a pocket knife. There was no testimony indicating motive.[ [11] ] The court held the evidence was as consistent with an impulsive and senseless frenzy as with premeditation, and did not permit a reasonable juror to find beyond reasonable doubt that there was premeditation. In Belton, the court upheld a first degree murder conviction where the evidence showed that [the] defendant quarreled with his common law wife, brought a loaded gun with him to her apartment, and shot her soon after he entered. 131 U.S.App.D.C. at 48, 402 F.2d at 189 (footnotes omitted). The court pointed out that in Hemphill, too, [t]he attack was without warning or apparent reason. Id. at 50, 402 F.2d at 191 (emphasis added). The savagery in the instant case was undoubtedly comparable to that in Austin and Hemphill. If the record contained no more, then the arguments that prevailed in those cases could carry the day here. Given the dominance of the vengeance motif in the present record and the lack of anything comparable in Austin and Hemphill, however, those cases do not support Mills' contentions here. Indeed, we view the evidence of premeditation, taken as a whole, as stronger than that which was held to be sufficient in Belton. Accordingly, we hold that a reasonable jury could find Mills guilty of murder in the first degree.