Court Opinion

ID: 9751594
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 16:38:42.774821+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:26:52.582243
License: Public Domain

NEBEKER, Associate Judge
(concurring) :
I concur in the opinion and judgment of the court. In the hope of prompting further improvement in the so-called standard jury instructions,1 the following observations are made.
In defining malice, as an element of second degree murder, the trial judge followed the substance of Instruction 4.21 of the standard jury instructions. The jury was told that, among its many affirmative characteristics, malice is a state of mind producing a wrongful act which is “without adequate provocation, justification or excuse”, and that “[ejxpress malice exists where one unlawfully kills another in pursuant [sic, pursuance] of a wrongful act or wrongful purpose without legal excuse.”
In defining manslaughter, the trial judge followed the substance of Instruction 4.25. The jury was told that the “Government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt . that the homicide was committed without legal justification or excuse.”2
Appellant correctly contends that the difference between “adequate provocation, justification or excuse” and “legal justification or excuse” was not explained to the jury. He observes also that the two phrases are, as is usually the case in second degree murder cases, in juxtaposition — i. e., a definition of the elements of the lesser offense follows after a definition of the elements of the greater. He concludes that “on the one hand the court said that malice was an element of second degree murder and not of manslaughter, but on the other hand defined [manslaughter] in such a way that malice seemed to be an element *271of both offenses.” [Brief for Appellant at 20.]
While it is true that jury instructions should be read in a realistic light without selecting and comparing separate phrases for literal content apart from context, it would seem that these phrases warrant reexamination as possible sources of confusion. For second degree murder, the necessary malice is in part defined as “a condition of mind which prompts a person to do wilfully, that is, on purpose, without adequate provocation, justification or excuse, a wrongful act whose foreseeable consequence is death or serious bodily injury to another.” Express malice is then said to exist, ipso facto, when “one unlawfully kills another in pursuance of a wrongful act of unlawful purpose without legal excuse.” On the other hand, manslaughter is defined, inter alia, as a homicide “committed without legal justification or excuse.” The former, definition in second degree murder describes the proof necessary to establish the so-called second element of manslaughter, and, as such, creates a definitional dilemma. It is possible that these definitions prompted the note from one of the jurors, which read:
Can I ask for a portion of the Judge’s instructions
Re: 2d degree murder
Manslaughter
Self Defense
My purpose is not to supply an answer to this instructional' difficulty but rather to prompt consideration and possible improvements. Perhaps it would be advisable to deemphasize the references to legal justification or excuse in both instructions. In second degree murder, the state of mind is the critical determination to be made respecting existence of malice. In manslaughter, the absence of legal justification or excuse, not being a question of malice, in reality goes to absolute legal defenses to this least of all general homicide offense. Thus it may be better simply to define manslaughter as the unlawful killing of a human being without malice and then define unlawful killing as one to which the law recognizes no legal defense. The “justifiable” and “excusable” homicide defenses could then be described as “legal defenses” when it is appropriate to instruct on those defenses in the detail required.

. Criminal Jury Instructions for the District of Columbia (2d ed. 1972).

. Indeed, Jury Instruction 4.25 refers twice to the necessary finding of no legal justification or excuse.