Court Opinion

ID: 9700645
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 21:39:31.145014+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:12.605140
License: Public Domain

FARRELL, Associate Judge,
concurring:
I am constrained to agree with reversal on the basis of Chambers v. United States, 564 A.2d 26, 27 n. 1 (D.C.1989). With all due respect, however, I think Chambers was wrongly decided. It relied strictly on Simmons v. United States, 554 A.2d 1167 (D.C.1989), which had held — correctly— that when a greater charge is submitted to the jury, Rule 31(c) “requir[es] the jury ... to determine the defendant’s guilt of all lesser included offenses ... even though some or all of the lesser included offenses may not be jury-triable if separately charged.” Id. at 1171.1 In those circumstances, the unavailability otherwise of a jury trial for the lesser offense yields to the concern embodied in the rule that “failure to give the jury the ‘third option’ [besides conviction on the greater offense or acquittal] of convicting on a lesser included offense would ... enhance the risk of an unwarranted conviction.” Beck v. Alabama, 447 U.S. 625, 637, 100 S.Ct. 2382, 65 L.Ed.2d 392 (1980).2
That rationale has no bearing on the situation presented in Chambers and here. In both cases the trial court removed the greater offense from the jury’s consideration as a matter of law, leaving as the only relevant offense a lesser included crime that was not jury triable. The danger of the jury’s being pressured to convict of the greater offense through inability to consider a lesser included one was therefore nonexistent. Even if it could be argued (implausibly) in another case that failure to instruct on simple possession of cocaine pressured the jury to convict unfairly on different but joined offenses (here gun and ammunition possession), that did not happen: the jury acquitted appellant of those offenses. Indeed, at oral argument appellant could cite no reason why the right to a jury trial on a petty offense had to be afforded him in this case — other than that Chambers says so.
The holding in Chambers was almost an after-thought, rendered in a footnote; the court sustained the defendant’s convictions on unrelated greater charges. Some day its application of Simmons should be reconsidered.

. This presupposes, of course, that "there is a basis in the evidence for such an instruction.” Simmons, 554 A.2d at 1171.

. "[UJnwarranted" because the jury might convict for the "impermissible reason” that the defendant "is guilty of some serious crime and should be punished.” Beck, 447 U.S. at 642, 100 S.Ct. 2382 (emphasis added).