Court Opinion

ID: 9493188
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:00:50.853367+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:55:42.271019
License: Public Domain

HEANEY, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I believe the jury’s guilt-phase and penalty-phase findings are insufficient to overcome the district court’s plainly erroneous instruction and satisfy the requirements of the federal death penalty statute. Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.
The district court’s guilt-phase instructions included the following instruction on aiding and abetting:
A person may be found guilty of any crime even if he only aided and abetted the commission of that crime. In order to have aided and abetted the commission of a crime, a person must before or at the time the crime was committed,
One: Have known the crime was being committed or was going to be committed, and
Two: Have knowingly acted in some ioay for the purpose of causing, encouraging, or aiding in the commission of the crime.
For you to find the defendant guilty of any crime by reason of aiding and abetting, the Government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that all of the essential elements of the crime were committed by some person or persons and that the defendant aided and abetted the commission of the crime.
You should understand that merely being present at the scene of the event or merely acting in the same way as others or merely associating with others does not prove that a person has become an aider or abetter. A person who has no knowledge that a crime is being committed or about to be committed, but who happens to act in a way which advances some offense, does not merely become and aider and abetter.
(Tr. Vol. IV at 848-49 (emphasis added).)
The majority holds that the above definition of aiding and abetting, coupled with the jury’s penalty-phase finding that Paul “intentionally aided and abetted in the killing of Sherman Williams,” is sufficient to meet the standard set forth in § 3591(a)(2)(C). According to the majority, “the jury found that Paul intentionally committed an act (aided and abetted), which he knew would kill Sherman Williams.” Ante, at 996. The majority’s rendition of the jury’s findings, however, is nowhere to be found in the instructions the jury received.
Stated precisely, using the language of the jury instruction itself, the jury found that Paul “knowingly acted in some way for the purpose of causing, encouraging, or aiding in the commission of the crime.” It *1006is this finding that must be squared against § 3591 if Paul’s death sentence is to be upheld.
As the majority notes, § 3591(a)(2)(C) requires in part that the jury find Paul “intentionally participated in an act, contemplating that the life of a person would be taken.” In addition to this mens rea standard, however, the statute requires a finding that “the victim died as a direct result of the [defendant’s] act.” The additional language is critical, because it requires a close causal nexus between the defendant’s act and the victim’s death. The majority apparently considers this portion of § 3591(a)(2)(C) to be superfluous. This nexus requirement was not addressed — explicitly or implicitly — by the court’s jury instructions.
In particular, the nexus requirement is not satisfied by the guilt-phase instruction that the jury consider whether Paul “knowingly acted in some way for the purpose of causing, encouraging, or aiding” in Williams’ murder. This is because aiding and abetting, as defined in the guilt-phase instruction encompasses several different degrees of connection between the defendant’s acts and the victim’s death. One who has caused, encouraged, or aided in a murder is not necessarily a direct cause of the victim’s death.
Where a life hangs in the balance, this court should not permit a district court to improvise its own standard for imposing the death penalty. The ultimate punishment requires more than an instruction that “closely tracks” the standard set forth by Congress. Rather, that the jury must grapple with the propriety of the death penalty for Paul according to the precise criteria set forth in § 3591. Because that has not yet happened in this case, Paul is entitled to be resentenced. I respectfully dissent.