Court Opinion

ID: 9539669
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:08:19.606293+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:59:12.603310
License: Public Domain

Mallery, J.
(dissenting) — I agree that RCW 9.41.030 is valid, but I think the majority opinion misconstrues the legislative intent thereof. RCW 9.41.030 provides:
“In the trial of a person for committing or attempting to commit a crime of violence, the fact that he was armed with a pistol and had no license to carry the same shall be prima facie evidence of his intention to commit said crime of violence.”
This rule of evidence is directed to the existence of a criminal intent. The legislative logic is simple and sound. It recognizes the fact that the risks of committing the crime *751of carrying a pistol without a license are not ordinarily incurred without a motive, and that the person who commits a crime of violence by the use of a pistol anticipated the crime when he armed himself with it. Such an intention at the time of arming oneself can be properly designated as premeditation, notwithstanding it continues up to and through the commission of the crime. It can be contrasted with the intention that exists only at the time of committing a crime, both as to acts from which the different intents are inferred and as the time when they came into existence. One is presumed to intend the natural consequences of one’s act. This is the intention which flows from the commission of a crime at the time thereof and with which courts are concerned in the case of crimes not requiring premeditation.
The court in instruction No. 18 correctly defined this kind of intention in these words:
“The court instructs the jury that the law presumes that every man intends the natural and probable consequences of his own acts. . . . ”
In the case of premeditated crime, intent is entertained prior to the crime and is inferred from some act or circumstance preceding its commission. The carrying of an unlicensed pistol was the act from which intent is inferred in the instant case.
Homicide has degrees based upon these differences of time and source of homicidal intent. Thus, the intentional but unpremeditated killing of a human being, unless it is justified or excusable, is murder in the second degree. The state can raise a homicide to first degree murder by proving that the intentional unjustifiable killing of a human being was premeditated. On the other hand, the burden of reducing a homicide to manslaughter is upon a defendant.
The charge in the instant case was murder in the second degree. Consequently, the court properly instructed the jury in instruction No. 8, which reads:
“The court instructs you that where a homicide is proved beyond a reasonable; doubt, the presumption is that it is murder in the second degree, and if the defendant desires to reduce the degree to manslaughter, the burden is on him *752to produce evidence of those facts or circumstances which call for such reduction.” (Italics mine.)
The majority opinion does not discuss or overrule this instruction, but, nevertheless, sets aside the verdict of second degree murder precisely upon the ground that another instruction, No. 28, placed the same burden upon the defendant as did instruction No. 8, viz., of offering evidence to reduce the homicide to manslaughter.
The particular part of instruction No. 28, which is the basis for the majority opinion, reads:
“ ‘Prima facie evidence’ means evidence which suffices for the proof of a particular fact until contradicted and overcome by other evidence.”
The majority opinion says this “places a burden on the defendant to ‘contradict and overcome the evidence,’ which has been labelled ‘prima facie.’ ”
The evidence referred to was that the defendant was carrying a pistol, and the element of the crime which it proved by “prima facie” evidence was the intention to commit a homicide.
Instruction No. 28 was properly given, and the definition therein of prima facie evidence is in accord with instruction Ño. 8, and is precisely correct.
The majority opinion sets the verdict aside in the instant case upon the theory that State v. Person, 56 Wn. (2d) 283, 352 P. (2d) 189, is controlling, and, hence, it was reversible error to apply the time-honored rule, as stated in both instructions Nos. 8 and 28, which puts the burden upon a defendant to reduce second degree murder to manslaughter.
The state had the right to introduce evidence that the defendant was carrying a pistol, because the true intention, whether premeditated or not, is pertinent to the crime. That it'was not indispensable to a conviction for second degree murder does not make it irrelevant or inadmissible.
As to the Person case, which the majority opinion follows instead of the established law of homicide, I think it is not remotely in point because the facts are dissimilar to the instant case.
*753The Person case tested the constitutionality of a statute which made possession after dark in game territory of a gun and flashlight prima facie evidence of unlawful hunting. These circumstances do not satisfy the requirements of the circumstantial evidence rule in order to sustain a conviction, because they are consistent with many theories of innocence. Neither do they suffice to constitute the crime of attempted hunting because there is no overt act tending to accomplish such an unlawful purpose. It was because of this that the legislature made it an arbitrary rule of evidence that a prima facie case of unlawful hunting was established by proof of the circumstances specified. More particularly, the circumstances specified are made sufficient by the statute to establish a criminal intention. These circumstances thus being coupled with a criminal intent to hunt are then made a crime without any overt act.
Obviously, this situation does not fall within the classical rule of criminal intent that one is presumed to intend the natural consequences of one’s acts. There are no acts and no consequences in the ordinary sense in the Person case. The act of firing a pistol resulted in death in the instant case.
The legislature in no way evinced an intention to make the game code arbitrary rule of evidence applicable to any other crime. The Person case, which interpreted only that particular statute, supplies no reason for overruling sub silentio all the law relating to homicides.
I dissent.
Ott and Hunter, JJ., concur with Mallery, J.