Court Opinion

ID: 9469378
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 02:39:02.327624+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:41:21.735113
License: Public Domain

GOODWIN, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
While the trial judge could well have omitted the redundant instruction defining the crime of murder, I do not believe that the instructions given in this case, when read together, were so erroneous as to require another trial.
It is true that the California state courts have moved away from the common law understanding that murderous intent in a nonfatal .assault can be proven either by evidence of verbal expressions or by evidence of conduct from which intent is so obvious as to require no verbal expression. I agree, however, as an abstract proposition, that the judge in this case should not have defined “malice” in the words that he used. They were neither necessary nor helpful.
Until today, this circuit has not had occasion to adopt the California view that only an expression of intent will permit a jury to find that there was a murderous intent when the victim did not die.
This does not strike me as a case in which we should reach out for a reversal in order to make the federal courts of this circuit adopt California’s approved jury instructions.
The trial court specifically and repeatedly told the jury that to convict, it must find that Jones assaulted Wingard with intent to murder. These instructions properly placed the burden on the government to prove murderous intent beyond a reasonable doubt. The government did not have a witness who heard Jones say to Wingard “I intend to kill you.” All the government could produce was the guard who pulled Jones off of Wingard while Jones was stabbing Wingard as fast as he could with a prison-made knife. Jones had completed five thrusts when he was pulled away. One would think that a jury reasonably could find from that evidence that Jones intended to murder Wingard.
On the whole record in this case, I would find the error, if any, in the instruction complained of to be harmless beyond a reasonable doubt, and affirm the conviction.