Court Opinion

ID: 9456903
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 20:05:18.509334+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:08.201285
License: Public Domain

MacKINNON, Circuit Judge
(dissenting in part) :
I respectfully dissent from the reversal of the judgment on count 2 and the remand for further proceedings. The majority opinion bases such action upon the claim that the trial court erroneously denied appellant’s request to instruct the jury on the lesser included offense of simple assault. In deciding whether to instruct on a lesser included offense we have said that:
[T]he trial court must appraise the evidence bearing on the element required for the charged offense, but not required for the lesser included offense, and make two determinations. The court must first decide whether *893there is any conflict in the evidence that has been introduced insofar as it bears on that element.
United States v. Comer, 137 U.S.App.D.C. 214, 219, 421 F.2d 1149, 1154 (1970) (emphasis added). Here there is no “conflict” in the evidence as to the assault or as to the sexual acts. Appellant took the stand and denied any involvement whatsoever with the complainant on the night in question and further introduced evidence of an alibi. A finding that appellant was guilty only of simple assault would require a jury to disbelieve a substantial part of the complainant’s uncontradicted testimony, rather than to resolve conflicting evidence.
However, in Comer we went on to say:
Even if the trial court finds that the facts bearing upon the element required for the greater offense but not for the lesser are not in dispute and that no evidence introduced explicitly tends to negative a finding of the element in question, the inquiry is not at an end. Rather the court must appraise all the testimony and evidence to determine whether it is capable of more than one reasonable inference. Thus in a manslaughter case such as the present one, the inquiry is whether the evidence bearing on malice was so compelling and unequivocal on the issue that a jury finding of no malice would be irrational.
137 U.S.App.D.C. at 219, 421 F.2d at 1154 (emphasis added). Thus, the appropriate inquiry under Comer is to determine whether the evidence bearing on the additional elements of rape or attempted rape was so compelling and unequivocal on the issue that a jury finding of assault without a consummated rape or an attempted rape would be irrational.
In my view such conclusion would be irrational because to disbelieve the complainant’s testimony on the sexual acts and believe her on the assault would be purely speculative. There is no rational basis in the evidence to find that appellant committed the assaultive acts but did not attempt or commit the sexual acts. The evidence of both acts are indelibly interwoven together. Thus, since I conclude that there was no rational basis in the evidence to support a conviction for simple assault I respectfully dissent from that portion of the majority opinion and from the reversal and the remand that it entails.