Court Opinion

ID: 9782434
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 18:32:22.937556+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:12:32.912701
License: Public Domain

Justice COATS,
dissenting:
The majority reverses the defendant's conviction of second degree murder both because the jury was not given a chanee to decide whether he was provoked beyond reason by the victim, and because the jury was not instructed that he was permitted to shoot the victim rather than retreat. Even the defendant conceded that after being confronted by the unarmed and extremely drunken victim, in whose apartment he was temporarily staying and who at worst reviled, threatened, and shoved him, he retrieved his loaded, Oram automatic handgun from the bedroom and shot the victim nine times. Because I do not believe there was any evidence whatsoever from which reasonable jurors could find the killing to be justifiable, or even to be explainable as the result of an irresistible passion provoked by the victim, I respectfully dissent.
Because the defendant called 911 almost immediately after emptying his Imm automatic into his apartment mate, the police were able to physically substantiate that he shot the victim nine times-five time in the back-in his living room; there was no evidence that the victim had been armed; and when the victim's body was tested, it still had a blood-alcohol content nearly five times the legal limit for driving. No one else was present at the time of the homicide and the victim was, of course, not available to testify. The majority's description of the confrontation between the victim and defendant, leading to the killing, comes solely therefore from the defendant's testimony, although it has never been found accurate or credible by any trier of fact. While I do not suggest that the defendant's testimony alone could never be sufficient to support instructions on self-defense and provocation, I find no support for either instruction in the defendant's account given under oath at trial.
With regard to self-defense, the defendant clearly used deadly force against the victim in shooting and killing him. By the defendant's own account, the victim was never armed with a gun, knife, bludgeon, or any other object that could be used as a weapon, and at no time did he either attempt to or threaten to arm himself. At most, the defendant's testimony indicated that he (rather than the victim) noticed (during the early part of their confrontation rather than after returning with the loaded gun) the presence, in the room, of an iron bar, which the defendant recalled the victim observing (at some unspecified time in the past) could be used as a weapon.
As conceivably applicable to the cireum-stances of this case, a person is entitled to defend himself with deadly physical force only when he has reasonable grounds to believe that he is in imminent danger of being killed or receiving great bodily injury. See § 18-1-704(2)(a), 6 C.R.S. (2008). Even according to his own account, the defendant did not retrieve his gun and shoot the victim because he believed himself to be in imminent danger of being killed or severely injured but rather because he wanted to frighten the victim into calming down and letting him leave the apartment. And even if the defendant subjectively believed himself to be in imminent danger of serious injury, in light of his own testimony, such a belief would not have been objectively reasonable. Without parsing the merits of a separate, "no retreat" instruction under these cireumstances, I would therefore find that the defendant was not entitled to an instruction on self-defense at all.
I would find that the jury was similarly prohibited, by the defendant's own testimony, from considering the question of irresistible passion, or legally cognizable provocation. In this jurisdiction, second degree murder is merely a class three (rather than a class two) felony if the defendant is actually moved by a serious and highly provoking act of the vie-tim and kills him too quickly for the voice of reason and humanity to be heard, and if the highly provoking act of the victim also would have excited an irresistible passion in a reasonable person. See § 18-3-103(b), 6 C.R.S. (2003). The defendant never testified that he was provoked beyond his capacity to resist, *960but rather that despite being angry, he retrieved his gun from the bedroom with the intent of frightening rather than shooting the victim. On the stand, he could not recall even killing the victim, much less the reasons why he did so. While the defendant's testimony may have supported a claim that he lacked the culpable mental state required for conviction of murder, or perhaps that his automaton-ike state prevented him from committing any voluntary act at all, it most certainly did not support a claim that he intentionally killed the victim upon a sudden and irresistible heat of passion.
Perhaps more importantly, however, there was absolutely no evidence at trial from which the jury could have found any conduct by the victim that the law is prepared to recognize as exciting an irresistible passion in an objectively reasonable person. It has long been accepted that mere words, at least words that revile, disparage, or insult, rather than words that communicate information, can never rise to the level of legal provocation. See United States v. Frady, 456 U.S. 152, 174, 102 S.Ct. 1584, 71 LEd.2d 816 (1982)("Mere words, however, no matter how insulting, offensive or abusive, are not adequate to induce a homicide although committed in passion, provoked, as I have explained, from murder to manslaughter.")(internal quotations omitted). 'Although threats, when combined with the present ability to carry them out, may permit certain responses in self-defense, they are not, in themselves, highly provoking. See id. ("In addition to the great provocation, there must be passion and hot blood caused by that provocation."); see also, State v. Bonano, 59 N.J. 515, 284 A.2d 345, 350 (1971)(verbal threat not sufficient to reduce homicide to manslaughter). Even when combined with conduct that may amount to a technical or minor assault or battery, insults or threats are generally held, for obvious reasons, not to be provocation sufficient to mitigate murder to what was formerly called manslaughter. See, e.9., People v. Chevalier, 131 Ill.2d 66, 136 Ill.Dec. 167, 544 N.E.2d 942, 944 (1989)("serious provocation includes substantial physical injury or assault, mutual quarrel or combat -.."); State v. Guebara, 286 Kan. 791, 696 P.2d 381, 386 (1985)(mere words or gestures are not enough, and if assault or battery is involved, the defendant must have a reasonable belief that he or she is in danger of suffering great bodily harm or at the risk of death); State v. Bealer, 2003 WL 1956089, *5 (Ohio Ct.App.2003)(court held that defendant's statement that victim hit him, shoved him and slapped him, was not serious provocation which would reasonably incite a person to use deadly force); State v. Salmon, 140 N.C.App. 567, 537 S.E.2d 829, 833-34 (2000)("victim's statement to the defendant that the victim would have sex with defendant's sister and the victim's shoving of the defendant were not an assault or threatened assault to amount to legal provocation").
Taken as completely true and accurate, the defendant's testimony was that the victim never struck him any blow or caused him any physical pain or injury from which he was still smarting at the time of the killing. As a matter of law, I would find that neither the words nor the shoving described by the defendant were sufficient to provoke the sudden and irresistible passion contemplated by the General Assembly. While a defendant may not be legally barred from submitting alternate and inconsistent theories to a jury, he is not entitled to have the jury instructed in a manner that is inconsistent with his own testimony. See People v. Garcia, 826 P.2d 1259, 1263 (Colo.1992).
Because I believe the majority rationale departs from long-established principles of self-defense and provocation, and because I do not believe the statutory scheme contemplates that courts allow juries the option of finding either under the cireumstances of this case, I respectfully dissent.
I am authorized to state that Justice KOURLIS joins in the dissent.