Court Opinion

ID: 9754339
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 19:55:46.961866+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:27:52.363485
License: Public Domain

FARRELL, Associate Judge,
concurring:
This is not at all an easy case to decide. Had appellant gone to trial on the charge of second-degree murder, the government would have had ample proof that she possessed the mens rea for that offense from the massive extent of the child’s injuries alone. For this reason, one can hardly question the wisdom of appellant’s attorney’s advice to her to accept a plea of guilty to voluntary manslaughter — when, as I see it, there would have been no basis for a lesser included offense instruction on that charge had she stood trial. But notwithstanding the sufficiency of the government’s proffered evidence and the wisdom of appellant’s plea of guilty, “the plea *878could not be voluntary in the sense that it constituted an intelligent admission that [s]he committed the offense unless the defendant received ‘real notice of the true nature of the charge against [her], the first and most universally recognized requirement of due process.’ ” Henderson v. Morgan, 426 U.S. 637, 645, 96 S.Ct. 2253, 2257, 2258, 49 L.Ed.2d 108 (1976) (citation omitted). And that is the rub in this case: A fair reading of the record reveals that at the plea proceeding everyone — the trial judge, appellant’s counsel, and the prosecutor — believed, in mistaken reliance on language in United States v. Bradford, 344 A.2d 208 (D.C.1989), that a conviction for voluntary manslaughter could be had even if at the time of the offense appellant lacked both an intent to kill or seriously wound the victim and (equivalently) a subjective awareness that her conduct created an extreme risk of death or serious bodily injury — in a word, lacked malice. To the contrary, as we made clear in Comber v. United States, 584 A.2d 26 (D.C.1990) (en banc), “Bradford ... limit[ed] the scope of voluntary manslaughter to killings where the perpetrator acts with a state of mind which, but for the presence of recognized mitigating factors, would render the killing malicious, and hence murder.” Id. at 45.
Because neither the trial judge nor appellant’s counsel explained to her that a plea of guilty to voluntary manslaughter would entail admitting that she acted, at the least, with “conscious disregard of an extreme risk of death or serious bodily injury,” Comber, 584 A.2d at 47, the government must rely upon the asserted presence in the plea record of “a substitute ... [for] an explanation to [the] defendant of the nature of the offense [that] was omitted, i.e., an admission by defendant to the trial judge necessarily implying guilt of the offense to which [s]he pleaded guilty.” McClurkin v. United States, 472 A.2d 1348, 1358 (D.C.1984), citing Henderson, 426 U.S. at 646, 96 S.Ct. at 2258 (“[defendant] made no factual statement or admission necessarily implying that he had [the requisite] intent”).1
If “necessarily” in this context meant that the record must permit but the single conclusion that appellant admitted to the required mens rea for voluntary manslaughter, then I could not join in affirming the denial of her motion to withdraw. The plea record contains enough ambiguity as to what precisely she was admitting that one cannot say the record compels the trial judge’s finding that appellant admitted knowledge amounting to malice. In my view, however, this court does not review such a finding de novo. Ultimately, of course, the question whether a defendant’s guilty plea was voluntary is a legal one, as is the question whether facts the defendant admitted constituted an admission of the elements of a given offense, including the state of mind. Thus the trial judge’s conclusion that appellant’s “conduct in shaking a nine-month old infant while aware that the child’s head was repeatedly hitting a wall involved such a wanton and willful disregard of an unreasonable human risk as to constitute malice” is one we review for its legal- correctness — though, assuming this “aware[ness],” it is an undeniably correct conclusion. But the decisive question in this case is the factual one of whether appellant actually admitted she knew the child’s head was striking the wall when she shook it,2 for only then would she be admitting to the required “subjective[ ] aware[ness]” of extreme risk of death or serious bodily injury. Comber, 584 A.2d at 39. And because that inquiry was made in the first instance by the trial judge, who heard appellant’s plea statements, repeatedly questioned her about them, and observed her demeanor as she spoke, I believe we must defer to the judge’s an*879swer for the reason that this court cannot replicate the inquiry or the trial judge’s vantage point. See Davis v. United States, 564 A.2d 31, 34 (D.C.1989) (en bane). Consequently, when the trial judge is aware of the correct legal standard, as here, and finds as a fact that the defendant admitted conduct and awareness that — in our legal judgment — constitutes voluntary manslaughter, we may reverse that finding only if it is clearly erroneous. D.C.Code § 17-305(a) (1989).
Applying this standard of review, I agree that we must sustain the finding which Judge Greene made as follows:
Critical to the court’s conclusion [that the defendant’s conduct revealed malice] ... is the defendant’s admission that as she was shaking the decedent, she knew the child’s head hit the wall “about four times.” No one else was present during the killing of the decedent other than the defendant; consequently, the defendant’s consciousness of the number of times the child’s head hit the wall could have resulted only from the defendant’s knowledge of what she was doing at the time she was doing it. Her contention at an earlier point in the plea proceeding that she did not know the decedent’s head was hitting the wall strains both reason and credulity and need not be accepted by the court in view of her later admission to the contrary. [Emphasis by trial judge; record citations omitted.]
Appellant repeatedly told the judge that she did not know the child’s head was hitting the wall, and argues from this that at most she was admitting to an accidental homicide (i.e., gross negligence), not voluntary manslaughter. But, taken as a whole, her statements allowed the trial judge reasonably to find that her denials — contradicted by other statements she made — were really in the nature of an excuse for behavior (a sort of diminished capacity defense) rather than a denial of awareness that she was allowing the child’s head to strike the wall. One of appellant’s most telling exchanges with the court was as follows:
THE DEFENDANT: I’m pleading guilty because I feel that I’m guilty, Your Honor, to a certain extent. This is why I am pleading guilty.
THE COURT: What do you mean to a certain extent?
THE DEFENDANT: I feel that what happened, the shaking, the baby’s head hitting resulted in her dying, which I am so sorry for her.
But, I still say I wasn’t aware of the extent of what was going on. It was like I lost control, you know.
Had I been able to control myself, I would have and it never would have happened.
THE COURT: Why did you lose control, ma’am? Why weren’t you able to control yourself?
THE DEFENDANT: Well, I didn’t realize what was building up inside of me. I wasn’t angry with the baby. I had been through a lot all week with the baby, the crying and still trying to work and keep her and develop a relationship with us and still trying to do some of my housework at the same time.
I wasn’t aware of what the crying was doing to me.
THE COURT: Of the crying?
THE DEFENDANT: The crying, yes.
I guess what I am trying to say is I guess it was building up. Something was building up inside of me and I wasn’t aware of it to make me lose control. This is what I’m saying.
Appellant’s asserted “loss of control” was not inconsistent with the subjective awareness the judge found she was admitting.3 I therefore am satisfied that her plea was voluntary and intelligent within the framework of Henderson and McClurkin, and *880that the motion to withdraw her plea was properly denied.

. Appellant concedes in her brief that, under Henderson and McClurkin, "[a]n implied admission by Ms. Johnson that she acted ... with conscious disregard for life[] could serve as a substitute for a correct explanation to her of the elements of voluntary manslaughter."

. The government does not, on this record, seek to analyze the case as one involving the "shaking [of] an infant so long and so vigorously that it cannot breathe." 2 W. LaFave & A. Scott, Substantive Criminal Law § 7.4, at 202-03 (1986). The cause of death was blunt force injury to the head.

. The trial judge agreed with appellant’s counsel’s analysis at sentencing that appellant’s "admissions at the time of her plea included an understandable propensity towards ‘avoidance’ of acknowledging the full import of what she had done.”