Court Opinion

ID: 9471291
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:28:36.674022+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:20.439896
License: Public Domain

MURNAGHAN, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
Here a man was convicted of first degree murder in circumstances the majority *1279agrees are “troubling in two significant respects”. The crime is as serious and as detestable a one as the law undertakes to punish.
The reasonable doubt, the trial judge charged, which would preclude conviction was “a good and substantial doubt”. Furthermore, the doubt should be “one for which he who entertains such doubt should be able to give a good and substantial reason”.
As the majority has forthrightly pointed out, a “good and substantial doubt” instruction has evoked a “uniformly disapproving” response from appellate courts, a response to which the majority subscribes. Evidently the slight slaps on the wrist followed by affirmance of the convictions have not served the hoped for end of correction of the error in futuro. Trial judges as well as anyone else can appreciate that “while sticks and stones may break my bones, words will never hurt me”. The stick of reversal of a conviction, or grant of a habeas corpus writ, subject to reprosecution if the State is so minded, is called for.
The majority relies on the fact that “a ‘substantial doubt’ instruction standing alone has never to our knowledge provided the basis for federal habeas corpus relief.” To me that is not authority for continuing to follow a path proven inefficacious. Rather the experience, having established that a mere expression of disapproval, unaccompanied by sanction, does not suffice, mandates that action, not merely an insignificant tut-tut, is called for. The action for an improper trial is vacation of the result and I dissent from our failure to take the indicated action here.
With respect to the “articulation twist” to the reasonable doubt instruction also advanced as constitutional error, if it were the only fault infecting the trial, I should be prepared to accept the view of the majority. The possibility that a juror might feel called upon to form and to state valid reasons for his doubt as a consequence of the instruction seems unlikely enough to try with respect to it, once more at least, the “slap on the wrist” approach. However, coupled with the “good and ■ substantial doubt” instruction it makes what already is bad worse and reinforces me in the conclusion that unconstitutional means have effected the conviction of Smith.
Accordingly, I would grant the writ, conditional upon West Virginia’s failure, within a reasonable time, to reprosecute.