Court Opinion

ID: 9484119
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 09:41:12.91394+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:50:01.908114
License: Public Domain

BUCKLEY, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
I concur in each of the court’s conclusions save one: I cannot find in the record sufficient evidence to support Jose Sala-manca’s conviction for “destroying] an eye” with “intent to maim.” 18 U.S.C. § 114 (1988).
Maiming is incompatible with killing. To entertain the intent to maim, a criminal ordinarily must intend to injure his victim in one of several highly specific ways with the expectation that the victim will survive. Salamanca was convicted under a law punishing
[wjhoever ... with intent to maim or disfigure, cuts, bites, or slits the nose, ear, or lip, or cuts out or disables the tongue, or puts out or destroys an eye, or cuts off or disables a limb or any member of another person; or [w]hoever ... with like intent, throws or pours upon another person, any scalding water, corrosive acid, or caustic substance....
18 U.S.C. § 114. This law obviously was not aimed at those who set out to kill, but meet with only partial success. Rather, it was aimed at criminals who intend to disfigure, dismember, or disable, while leaving life intact. Despite the spontaneous vi*641ciousness of his attack, Salamanca was convicted under a law directed at violence that is more calculated than random.
The court suggests two means by which the jury could have reconciled the incompatibility between killing and maiming and concluded that Jose Salamanca intended both:
First, the jury might have concluded that Jose began the attack with the specific intent to maim, and at some point during the attack altered his intent, seeking to finish the job by killing Officer Culver. Second, the jury might have Concluded that Jose held alternative intents, thinking: “Either I’ll kill him, or at least put his eye out.”
Court’s opinion at 635. The court tries to deal with the inherent incompatibility between the intents to kill and maim by speculating on what might have passed through the jurors’ minds. But to support a conviction, speculation must have some relationship to the facts placed in evidence. Here the obvious obstacle to be overcome is that evidence demonstrating the intent to kill will usually negate an inference of the intent to maim.
The court is correct, of course, in pointing out that certain courses of action could conceivably evince both intents. The trouble with its analysis is that there is not a whit of evidence to support an inference that Salamanca acted with an intent to maim. Had “he beg[un] the attack with the specific intent to maim,” Salamanca would have aimed something less blunt than a two-by-four at Officer Culver’s eyes, not bashed the side of his head with sufficient force to crack his skull open. If it were his purpose either to “kill [the officer], or at least put his eye out,” he would have done precisely that — put his eye out as he lay helpless and bleeding. This case is indistinguishable from one in which a bullet aimed at a person’s head severs an optic nerve and destroys the sight of one eye while leaving its victim alive. In such a case, as in this, the evidence would support the inference of an intent to kill; but, without more, it would not support the inference of an intent to maim. What is missing here is the “more”: the evidence that could support an alternative intent to blind.
Because I can find nothing to support an inference that Jose Salamanca acted with the specific intent to maim Officer Culver, I would overturn his conviction under 18 U.S.C. § 114.