Court Opinion

ID: 9484023
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 09:38:31.081317+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:49:58.489562
License: Public Domain

CUDAHY, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I agree, although not without some doubts, that these verdicts should stand. I write separately because there are some aspects of the voluntary manslaughter instruction that merit additional comment.
How the jury should have been instructed presents a vexing problem since the defendants merely asked for an instruction using the statutory language, ordinarily an unexceptionable request. Specifically, the request was for an instruction containing the statutory phrase “[u]pon a sudden quarrel or heat of passion.” 18 U.S.C. § 1112(a) (1992) (emphasis added). The majority, pursuing an enlightening historical analysis, entertains the possibility that “upon a sudden quarrel” may have no meaning in the modern context apart from being another way of saying “heat of passion.” Ante at 696.
“Heat of passion” summons up images of the cuckolded husband arriving in the bedroom to find wife and lover in fla-grante delicto. “Upon a sudden quarrel” has no such well-known referent, but the majority suggests a case, from a much earlier age, of armed disputants whose tempers flair. But I think it is unnecessary to hold that the phrase is without any meaning of its own in a more recent context. Perhaps, consistent with the stereotype of heat of passion killing, we should imagine gunslingers confronting each other in the middle of Main Street over the virtue of a local lady. Such an encounter has *706some overtones of self-defense, and the accompanying fear, as well as of rapidly surging anger and enmity, that could provoke a reasonable person to kill. The prevailing emotion in a sudden quarrel might be fear in contrast to a heat of passion situation where envy and jealousy are frequently the key.
But, if a gunslinging encounter is an accurate guess at what a sudden quarrel might look like in “modern” dress, the present facts do not seem to fit the mold. Here we have a fist fight with a deadly weapon introduced into the fray later. This is no doubt a quarrel, but is it sudden? It seems to me that the suddenness with which a fight flairs into potential homicide is critical and must be narrowly construed if “sudden quarrel” is not to become a very broadly applicable defense in homicide cases.1 Nevertheless, I would be cautious about the majority’s speculation that in modern garb “upon a sudden quarrel” may have the same meaning as “in the heat of passion.” I do not believe that the two phrases have the same meaning nor would this be a good reason for deleting “upon a sudden quarrel” from jury instructions generally in manslaughter cases.
A “sudden quarrel” and “heat of passion” are two categories of provocation that the present federal statute recognizes as mitigating what would otherwise be murder. As noted, the majority suggests that these two categories may really be the same: “Other states agree that the ‘sudden quarrel’ is a type of provocation causing one to act out in the heat of passion.” Ante at 695. To me, however, it is not so much that a sudden quarrel may arouse a kind of heat of passion in the combatants, but that certain, admittedly infrequent, quarrels2 are themselves sufficient provocation to reduce murder to manslaughter. There are circumstances where the flair-up of a sudden quarrel is so rapid and overwhelming as to provide a defense and require an instruction in a homicide prosecution. This does not, however, seem to be such a case. In fact, giving the “sudden quarrel” instruction here could mislead the jury. Therefore, I believe that the district court was justified in declining to give such an instruction.

. Whether the defendant is one of the original combatants or an intervenor should not be per se determinative. The suddenness with which one becomes involved in an armed skirmish is the key.

. The cases cited by the majority use the appellation “mutual combat.” Ante at 695.