Court Opinion

ID: 9674758
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 04:34:54.140017+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:29.623400
License: Public Domain

R. M. Maher, P.J.
(concurring). I concur in Judge Marutiak’s opinion. I write separately, *219however, because I was on the panel that decided People v Morris, 99 Mich App 98, 99-101; 297 NW2d 623 (1980), in which this Court made the following comments in the course of holding that the trial court’s failure to sua sponte instruct the jury on an accidental homicide theory was not reversible error:
"First, defendant contends that the trial court erred in failing to instruct the jury on a theory of accidental homicide without being requested to do so. The case cited in support of this proposition states that:
" 'However, when as here the defense theory is accidental homicide, the defense requests an instruction on the theory, and there is evidence to support the theory, the trial court must properly instruct the jury on the defense theory.’ People v Lester, 406 Mich 252, 254-255; 277 NW2d 633 (1979).
"The Lester case demonstrates a feature which the other leading cases in this area share, i.e., that the defense theory urged on appeal was, in fact, a central issue in the defendant’s trial. Even where defense counsel failed to request jury instructions pertaining to a particular theory of defense, the absence of such an instruction has been held to be reversible error because the jury’s attention was not clearly directed to a central issue in the case. People v Ora Jones, 395 Mich 379, 394; 236 NW2d 461 (1975). People v Stanley Jones, 69 Mich App 459, 461; 245 NW2d 91 (1976).
"In the above-cited cases and others, it is readily apparent that defense counsel emphasized the particular defense theory at trial. For instance, in Ora Jones, supra, 385, it is noted that defense counsel asserted accident as a defense in both opening and closing statements. The same was true in People v Lester, supra, 253-254, and in People v Hoskins, 403 Mich 95, 99; 267 NW2d 417 (1978), where the opinion recites that, '[d]efense counsel advanced his theory of self-defense from his initial voir dire of and opening remarks to the jury through his closing argument’.
"In contrast, the present defendant’s theory of de*220fense was clearly and repeatedly stated to be one of diminished capacity. Defense counsel in both opening and closing arguments, and during discussions while trial was in progress, explicitly asserted that he was pursuing a defense of diminished capacity to intend to commit murder. Nowhere in the transcript did defense counsel proffer a defense based on accident. * * * Rather, the entire record demonstrates a defense based upon the diminished capacity of the defendant. In conclusion then, we find that defendant did not present a defense theory of accidental homicide, that defendant did not request an instruction pertaining thereto, that, while there may have been evidence which was inferentially supportive of an accident theory, it was not the design of defendant or her counsel to emphasize it as such and that, therefore, there was no need for the trial court to instruct the jury on accidental homicide. People v Trammell, 70 Mich App 351; 247 NW2d 311 (1976).”
To the extent that the foregoing language suggests that the trial judge must sua sponte instruct the jury on the defendant’s theory of the case, I must disavow it. People v Ora Jones, 395 Mich 379; 236 NW2d 461 (1975), stands for the proposition that, where the defendant’s theory of the case is accident and where the trial judge takes it upon himself to give the jury an instruction on voluntary manslaughter, he must also instruct the jury on the elements of involuntary manslaughter. In the instant case, the defendant’s theory was mistaken identity. Hence, Ora Jones does not require reversal. Since I have concluded that the trial court’s instructions fairly apprised the jury that they were to acquit the defendant if they shared a reasonable doubt with respect to whether the complainant had correctly identified the defendant, I join in the affirmance of his conviction.