Court Opinion

ID: 9473010
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:17:09.283336+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:43:16.551668
License: Public Domain

JON O. NEWMAN, Circuit Judge,
dissenting in part and concurring in part:
This habeas corpus petition challenging a state court conviction and sentence for first-degree manslaughter poses two close questions concerning ascertainment of a person’s state of mind. One issue concerns the state of mind of the defendant; the other concerns the state of mind of the sentencing judge. I respectfully disagree with the majority in its view that the evidence permitted the jury reasonably to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that there existed in the mind of the defendant, prior to the crime, an intent to cause the serious physical injury that resulted when his automobile passenger shot the victim. I agree that the sentencing judge permissibly declined to reduce the sentence because of the defendant’s unwillingness to name his companion.
1. State of mind of the defendant. The prosecution’s evidence established that petitioner Mallette drove his passenger, a corrections officer, away from a bar in the early morning hours. It was inferable that they both intended to purchase cocaine. The passenger had a pistol on his lap, where it was observable by Mallette. The car stopped at a street corner, and the passenger inquired of a youth on a park bench whether he had cocaine or knew where it could be obtained. When the youth said no, the passenger asked him to come to the car and continued the conversation. The passenger became abusive in his language, and two of the youth’s friends approached the car. At that point the passenger fired shots out the open car window, hitting one of the youth’s friends, who subsequently died from the wound. Thereafter, the car engaged in a series of. maneuvers that kept it near the group, and the passenger fired additional shots. This subsequent conduct was the basis for the jury’s conviction of Mallette on a charge of attempted murder in the second degree, which is not challenged. The issue is whether the evidence permitted the jury to convict for the manslaughter offense.
There is no doubt that evidence of subsequent conduct is admissible to prove prior state of mind. Mallette’s subsequent conduct in driving the car to positions from which his passenger, whom he then knew had fired one shot at the youths, could and did fire subsequent shots creates, I acknowledge, a possibility that throughout the evening he had an intent to inflict serious physical injury on anyone whom his passenger might encounter in the course of *34seeking cocaine. But that possibility is so remote and so unsupported by the evidence in the record that it cannot reasonably be found by jurors beyond a reasonable doubt to have been an accurate description of Mallette’s state of mind prior to the first shooting. Mallette was not charged with nor convicted of felony murder. The crime of purchasing cocaine, unlike robbery or other crimes against the person, is not one that inherently creates a risk that a participant will shoot someone to accomplish the criminal objective. Even if it is assumed that Mallette saw the pistol on the lap of his passenger, he was chargeable at most with knowledge that his passenger might use the weapon for defense, for example, if a potential drug seller tried to steal the passenger’s money. Nothing in this record could have alerted Mallette to the risk that his passenger might become so hostile in the course of a conversation with a stranger that he would start indiscriminately shooting through the open car window.
The majority cites cases ruling subsequent conduct admissible on the element of intent. The issue, however, is whether the admissible evidence suffices to permit a verdict according to the requisite burden of proof. A more pertinent precedent from the New York courts is People v. La Belle, 18 N.Y.2d 405, 276 N.Y.S.2d 105, 222 N.E.2d 727 (1966), in which the evidence was held insufficient to support a conviction for premeditated murder, even though the evidence showed that the defendant, who had been present at the scene of the crime, had helped the perpetrator dispose of the body and had attempted to remove evidence of the crime.
The jury was entitled to disbelieve Mallette when he testified that he drove the ear, after the first shooting, under duress, responding to the commands of his gun-wielding passenger. But I cannot agree that the jury could reasonably find beyond a reasonable doubt that Mallette intended the first shooting to occur.
2. State of mind of the sentencing judge. This Circuit has recognized the distinction between taking into account as a mitigating factor at sentencing a defendant’s cooperation with the authorities and administering additional punishment because of a refusal to cooperate. United States v. Bradford, 645 F.2d 115 (2d Cir.1981). I do not share the majority’s view that this distinction is “somewhat illusory,” though I acknowledge that doubts about the matter have been significantly expressed. Roberts v. United States, 445 U.S. 552, 557 n. 4, 100 S.Ct. 1358, 1362 n. 4, 63 L.Ed.2d 622 (1980). I acknowledge the basis for such doubts, since it is obvious that the defendant who refuses to cooperate often receives a greater sentence than the defendant, under otherwise similar circumstances, who cooperates. Of course, that is true of every defendant whose sentence is greater than that of a defendant with mitigating circumstances. But the issue in such cases is not whether one defendant’s sentence is higher than another’s; it is whether he has been impermissibly punished. That would occur if the sentencing judge started out with a tentative sentence in mind as appropriate for the offense and the offender and then decided to adjust the tentative sentence upward because of some impermissible factor. But the defendant who does not cooperate has no cause for complaint if he receives the judge’s tentative sentence, even though the tentative sentence would have been adjusted downward if he had cooperated. Viewing the issue in this way manifestly puts a premium on what was in the judge’s mind in formulating the sentence. However, unlike the state of mind of a defendant in a criminal case, it is not necessary that the state of mind of a sentencing judge be ascertained beyond a reasonable doubt. It is sufficient if a reviewing court can have reasonable confidence, giving considerable deference to the articulated explanation of the sentence by the sentencing judge, that the sentence was not adjusted upward because of an impermissible factor. I agree with the majority that we are entitled to conclude that this did not occur in this case.