Court Opinion

ID: 9733393
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 17:05:55.017825+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:40.952361
License: Public Domain

HENDERSON, Justice
(concurring).
Two giant forces collide in law when stare decisis is eroded, ruptured, modified, overruled, or becomes obsolete.* A banner *27of continuity with the past is unfurled. Against it, rises the demands of adaptability. It is Continuity versus Adaptability. Adaptability to the present and to the future. Can law, at the same time, in the same case, involving the same principle(s), have Continuity with the past and beget Adaptability to the present and the future — but still renounce past precedent? It is a legal tightwire to trod upon. It is good to keep in mind the old, but it is good to adapt to the new.
The law must be adaptable to the facts at hand so that the decision makes sense. A decision must reach out and fairly touch the parties involved in the litigation, not just history. Precedent addresses the past; often, it is full of wisdom and cannot be fully, nor partially, disregarded. Existing precedent is often the relevant rule of law. When it is defensible, and applicable, it should live on.
Those of us who are weighted with the decision-making process must realize, however, that the law must address the needs of the present. In South Dakota, I have lived in an age where the farmers drove the team to town to get groceries and a load of coal, to watching, through television, America placing a man on the moon via a rocket and spaceship. Now, the advent of a new defense stratagem for our country called “Star Wars” mystifies us. Law must change with the times. It cannot be 100% Continuitous. It must be Adaptable. It must serve the needs of society. We cannot always cherish a doctrine or principle hoary with age. Innovations in society, technological advances beyond our wildest imagination, and revolutionary economic change and expansion require adaptability in the ever-development and growth of the law.
We should not treasure stare decisis more than we seek justice in any given case; and we should not marry ourselves to historical doctrine, out of a sense of judicial obligation. Rather, we should hitch our wagon to that which appeals to reason. If it means to chart a new course on the compass for a court, so let it be. The United States Supreme Court reversed itself 133 times as of June 26, 1969. Friedman & Israel, The Justices of the United States Supreme Court, 1789—1969, Volume 4, 3258-3265 (1969). Mr. Justice Field, in Barden v. N. Pac. R.R. Co., 154 U.S. 288, 322, 14 S.Ct. 1030, 1036, 38 L.Ed. 992, 1000 (1894), expressed: “It is more important that the court should be right upon later and more elaborate consideration of the cases than consistent with previous declarations.”
In departing from past precedent, the strong facts of a case can change, if not command, an individual judge’s reaction to stare decisis. This legal phrase has been bantered about by various textbook writers and legal authors. Sometimes it is referred to as a custom. Sometimes a doctrine. It has often been referred to as a maxim, principle, or rule. Others have described it as a technique, theory, or policy. It all boils down to a belief that decided cases in the past should be followed, which have pronounced a definable rule(s) of law, in deciding identical or similar cases involving a similar or identical question of law. Perhaps I am influenced by the strong facts in this scenario. As I perceive it, the pressure of the facts simply militate against a jury instruction on manslaughter and a jury verdict of manslaughter. In the companion case of State v. Wiegers, 373 N.W.2d 1, 17 (S.D.1985), I took the position that a conviction of second-degree manslaughter should be reversed as there was nothing reckless at all in the killing. It was a cold-blooded killing for hire. I take the same position on second-degree manslaughter in this case; again, we are confronted with the same set of facts and there could not be, on the part of Waff, a reckless killing. Examining the first-degree manslaughter statute in this state, SDCL 22-16-15, Waff:
*28(1) Did not effect the death of Keller while engaged in the commission of a misdemeanor involving moral turpitude;
(2) Did not kill in the heat of passion;
(3) Did not effect death, without a design to effect death, but by means of a dangerous weapon (the murder was plotted over a period of months and designed to effect death by a bullet behind the ear);
(4) Did not kill unnecessarily, while resisting an attempt by the person killed to commit a crime or after such attempt shall have failed.
Therefore, a first-degree manslaughter instruction does not square with the facts. It does not appeal to reason. This decision must serve the needs of society and it must serve the present and not the past. Our decision must fairly touch the interests of the parties, not just a history of old cases in this Court.
State v. Vierck, 23 S.D. 166, 120 N.W. 1098 (1909), State v. Horn, 21 S.D. 237, 111 N.W. 552 (1907), State v. Kapelino, 20 S.D. 591, 108 N.W. 335 (1906), and State v. Hubbard, 20 S.D. 148, 104 N.W. 1120 (1905), were decided shortly after the turn of the century. At that time, South Dakota had no degrees of murder. The precedent of those decisions were observed through 1979 in State v. Vassar, 279 N.W.2d 678 (S.D.1979). This is rather remarkable for the life of a rule of law is ordinarily quite short, particularly when measured against the entire corpus and life of the law. In 1980, however, our statutes were amended to provide degrees of murder. Needless to say, this was a significant change in the homicide statutes of this state. Instructions in the degrees of murder are therefore viable, sound, and in keeping with the state statutes. Instructions in the degrees of manslaughter are likewise appropriate. As to both of these separate crimes, divided into degrees, the trial court can and should only instruct the jury on matters supported by the evidence. See State v. Fender, 358 N.W.2d 248 (S.D.1984); Miller v. State, 338 N.W.2d 673 (S.D.1983); State v. Chamley, 310 N.W.2d 153 (S.D.1981); State v. Oien, 302 N.W.2d 807 (S.D.1981); State v. Curtis, 298 N.W.2d 807 (S.D.1980); State v. Wilson, 297 N.W.2d 477 (S.D.1980); State v. Bean, 265 N.W.2d 886 (S.D.1978); and State v. Kafka, 264 N.W.2d 702 (S.D.1978). These cases are an erosion to the Hubbard decision and its progeny.
As Justice Wollman has pointed out, the two-part test is now the settled law of this state. This constitutes erosion of stare decisis. Surely, the 1980 statute has been a force in the obsolescence of the stare decisis of the Hubbard homicide rule. Continuity must yield to Adaptability due to these factors. Accordingly, I do not specially concur nor concur in the result, but, rather, fully concur in the majority opinion.

 Stare decisis, contrary to some beliefs, is not always overcome in one prodigious swoop. Iri some instances, it is a gradual wearing away which is unperceptible to those who live and *27work with the original principle. Note comment on erosion of Houghton rule in State v. Willis, 370 N.W.2d 193, 198 (S.D.1985).