Court Opinion

ID: 9728900
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 14:18:48.925033+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:52.903023
License: Public Domain

MACK, Senior Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
While I concur in the affirmance of the conviction of Sandra Jackson for the reasons stated by the majority, I would reverse the conviction of Kerry Jackson on the grounds that he has been deprived of a Fifth Amendment right to be answerable only to a charge levied by a grand jury.
The issue posed by Mr. Jackson is not the simple one of instructional error or the implications flowing from defense counsel’s failure to object thereto. The issue rather is whether any defendant can be convicted of a felony distinct from that charged by the grand jury.
Once we admit (as did the government) that AWIKWA is not a lesser-included offense of second-degree murder while armed, we concede that there is error. With that concession, conceptually speaking, it is difficult to conceive how this specific error could. be anything other than plain error. The lack of plain error in the traditional instructional context, other factors being equal, is based upon the failure of defense counsel to meet the duty of objecting. Under the circumstances here, however, it was the duty not only of defense counsel, but also of the prose-, cutor, to bring the error to the trial court’s attention. Indeed, it could be argued , that the prosecutor bore an even greater , duty in this respect, since the government is closer to .the grand jury process which results in indictments. See United States v. Lawton, 301 U.S.App.D.C. 390, 394, 995 F.2d 290, 294 (1993) (quoting United States v. Atkinson, 297 U.S. 157, 160, 56 S.Ct. 391, 392, 80 L.Ed. 555 (1936)) (errors that “seriously affect the fairness, integrity, or public reputation of judicial proceedings” normally qualify as plain error).
I.
The grand jury indictment against appellant charged:
Kerry Jackson, also known as Pee Wee, ... while armed with a dangerous weapon, that is a knife, and with malice aforethought, killed Franklin Ball by stabbing him with a knife on or about August 12, 1989, thereby causing injuries from which Franklin Ball died on or about August 13, 1989. (Second Degree Murder While Armed, in violation of 22 D.C.Code, Section 2403, 3202).
At the close of appellant’s case at trial, appellant’s counsel requested the charge of simple assault on the theory that appellant had made a statement to the police upon his arrest admitting that he had previously been involved in a fist fight with the decedent. The trial court suggested:
Then for you I will go in one extreme or the other. Murder two, voluntary manslaughter, assault with a deadly weapon, simple assault, because the evidence would support each and every one in a chain of permutations.
The court then suggested that an instruction on the charge of assault with intent to kill may be appropriate:
In looking at it, should assault with intent to kill also be there as part of the rundown to simple assault? The problem is, you can’t get from X to Y without going all ..the way. through, or A to Z, without stepping on each stone in between.- •
Shortly thereafter,-the- court'charged the jury:
' The essential elements of the offense of assault with intent to kill while armed, each of'which the Government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt, are that the defendant.'made an assault on the com*665plainant, and that he did so with specific intent to kill the complainant.[1]
An assault is an intent or effort with force or violence to do injury to the person of another coupled with the apparent present ability to carry out such an attempt or effort.
* * * * * *
The intent which is essential — which is an essential element of the offense of assault with intent to kill or the intent not merely to do the acts which constitute the assault but also the specific intent to cause death.
II.
Super.Ct.Crim.R. 31(c) provides that “a defendant may be found guilty of an offense necessarily included in the offense charged.” To be deemed an included offense, “it [must be] impossible to commit the greater without first having committed the lesser.” Schmuck v. United States, 489 U.S. 705, 716, 109 S.Ct. 1443, 1450, 103 L.Ed.2d 734 (1989).2 See also Walker v. United States, 617 A.2d 525, 527 & n. 2 (D.C.1992) (“[a] defendant is not entitled to a lesser-included instruction unless all of the elements of the lesser offense are included within the offense charged”) (citing Rease v. United States, 403 A.2d 322, 328 (D.C.1979)); Byrd v. United States, 598 A.2d 386, 389 n. 5 (D.C.1991) (en banc); Norris, supra note 2, 585 A.2d at 1374 n. 3.
The crime of second-degree murder is codified at D.C.Code § 22-2403 (1989), which provides: “Whoever with malice aforethought ... kills another, is guilty of murder in the second degree.” This court has recognized that “malice aforethought” denotes several types of murder, each accompanied by distinct mental states. See Comber v. United States, 584 A.2d 26, 38 (D.C.1990) (en banc). Specifically, malice is disjunctively defined as (1) “the specific intent to kill,” or (2) “the specific intent to inflict serious bodily harm,” or (3) “wanton and willful disregard of an unreasonable human risk.” Id. at 38-39 (citations omitted). Unlike second-degree murder, assault with intent to kill requires that guilt be bottomed on a finding of only one mental state, i.e., a specific intent to kill. See Gray v. United States, 585 A.2d 164 (D.C.1991); United States v. Martin, 154 U.S.App.D.C. 359, 362, 475 F.2d 943, 946 (1973).3 Because a “specific intent to kill” fits the definition of only one of the three possible mental states underlying second-degree murder, AWIKWA cannot be deemed “necessarily included in Murder II.”4
III.
The Grand Jury Clause of the Fifth Amendment states: “No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury.” As a charging instrument, an indictment offers three fundamental protections to the accused: (1) it informs the accused of the charges to allow adequate preparation of a defense; (2) it describes the crime with sufficient specificity to enable a defendant to protect against future jeopardy for the same offense; and (3) it assures that neither the prosecutor nor the court alters the charge to fit the proof. See *666(Oliver) Johnson v. United States, 613 A.2d 1381, 1384 (D.C.1992); Ingram v. United States, 592 A.2d 992, 1005 (D.C.1991); Wright v. United States, 564 A.2d 734, 737 (D.C.1989); Scutchings v. United States, 509 A.2d 634, 636 (D.C.1986). “In short, ‘a conviction must be based on an offense proved at trial and fully alleged in the indictment.’ ” Ingram, supra, 592 A.2d at 1005 (quoting Scutchings, supra, 509 A.2d at 637).
Modifications of the charges contained in a grand jury indictment are manifested in two forms: amendments or variances.
An amendment of the indictment occurs when the charging terms of the indictment are altered, either literally or in effect, by prosecutor or court after the grand jury has last passed upon them. A variance occurs when the charging terms of an indictment are left unaltered, but the evidence at trial proves facts materially different from those alleged in the indictment.[5]
Scutchings, supra, 509 A.2d at 636 (quoting Gaither v. United States, 134 U.S.App.D.C. 154, 164, 413 F.2d 1061, 1071 (1969)). An amendment is considered per se prejudicial and warrants reversal of a conviction. Ex parte Bain, 121 U.S. 1, 7, 7 S.Ct. 781, 784, 30 L.Ed. 849 (1887). The Supreme Court, acknowledging the damaging effect of modifications to the charges issued by a grand jury, declared:
If it lies within the province of a court to change the charging part of an indictment to suit its own notions of what it ought to have been, or what the grand jury would probably have made it if their attention had been called to suggested changes, the great importance which the common law attaches to an indictment by a grand jury, as a prerequisite to a prisoner’s trial for a crime, and without which the Constitution says “no person shall be held to answer,” may be frittered away until its value is almost destroyed.
Id. at 10, 7 S.Ct. at 786. See also Russell v. United States, 369 U.S. 749, 770, 82 S.Ct. 1038, 1050, 8 L.Ed.2d 240 (1962) (“The underlying principle is reflected by the settled rule ... that an indictment may not be amended except by resubmission to the grand jury, unless the change is merely a matter of form.”); Stirone, supra note 5, 361 U.S. at 217, 80 S.Ct. at 273 (“a court cannot permit a defendant to be tried on charges that are not made in the indictment against him”); (Oliver) Johnson, supra, 613 A.2d at 1384; Ingram, supra, 592 A.2d at 1005. Alternatively, a variance “requires reversal only upon a showing of prejudice,” (Oliver) Johnson, supra, 613 A.2d at 1385 (citations omitted), while “[a] conviction [under a constructive amendment] will be reversed only if the evidence introduced at trial and the judge’s instructions to the jury ‘raise the “substantial likelihood” that appellant may have been convicted of a crime different from that charged by the grand jury.’ ” (Michael) Johnson v. United States, 616 A.2d 1216, 1232 (D.C.1992) (quoting Barker v. United States, 373 A.2d 1215, 1219 (D.C.1977)). An amendment to an indictment directly infringes on the Fifth Amendment right to be held answerable for a charge only when “levied through the protective device of a grand jury.” United States v. Ford, 872 F.2d 1231, 1235 (6th Cir.1989). Here, the jury instruction and verdict “literally altered the charging terms of the indictment” and thus constituted such an impermissible amendment.
The government’s fallback position is that, notwithstanding the discrepancy between the indictment and the verdict, appellant’s failure to object at trial to the trial court’s instruction renders him subject to our review under the “plain error” doctrine. Under that doctrine’s demanding stricture, this court is authorized to correct only “particularly egregious” errors, United States v. Frady, 456 U.S. 152, 163, 102 S.Ct. 1584, 1592, 71 L.Ed.2d 816 (1982); Doe v. United States, 583 A.2d 670, 676 (D.C.1990), which “jeopardize the very fairness and integrity of the trial,” Watts v. United States, 362 A.2d 706, 709 (D.C.1976) (en banc), and result in a *667“miscarriage of justice.” Harris v. United States, 602 A.2d 154, 159 (D.C.1992). Whether in any given instance the unpreserved error will be of sufficient dimension to result in a miscarriage of justice, and thus constitute plain error, is a question to be determined on a case-by-case basis. See Harris, supra, 602 A.2d at 159 n. 6 (citing United States v. Young, 470 U.S. 1, 16 n. 14, 105 S.Ct. 1038, 1047 n. 14, 84 L.Ed.2d 1 (1985)).
Here, the trial court’s instruction to the jury on AWIKWA falls within the plain error doctrine. See Gaither, supra, 134 U.S.App. D.C. at 165, 413 F.2d at 1072 (“Because the leading amendment case of Ex parte Bain rested explicitly upon the Constitution, and because it apparently excludes any notion of a non-prejudicial amendment to the indictment, the concept of harmless error has not been applied to amendments.”); United States v. Lawton, supra, 301 U.S.App.D.C. at 394, 995 F.2d at 294. The discrepancy between the indictment and the verdict, facilitated by the court’s instruction, “destroyed the defendant’s substantial right to be tried only on charges presented in an indictment returned by a grand jury,” Stirone, supra, 361 U.S. at 217, 80 S.Ct. at 273, and therefore, is cause for reversal.
I respectfully dissent.

. See Criminal Jury Instructions for the District of Columbia, No. 4.14 (3d ed. 1978).

. "In Schmuck ... the United States Supreme Court rejected a fact based, inherent relationship analysis and specifically adopted the traditional elements approach.” Norris v. United States, 585 A.2d 1372, 1374 n. 3 (D.C.1991). The “inherent relationship” test for identifying lesser-included offenses focuses on the evidence adduced at trial in addition to the abstract elements of the offenses in determining whether one offense is a lesser-included offense of another. Under this scheme, one offense is to be included in another where the two offenses (1) relate to the protection of the same interests; and (2) are so related that in the general nature of these crimes, though not necessarily invariably, proof of the lesser offense is necessarily presented as part of the showing of the commission of the greater offense. See Government of the Virgin Islands v. Joseph, 765 F.2d 394, 397 n. 4 (3d Cir.1985); United States v. Johnson, 637 F.2d 1224, 1236 (9th Cir.1980); United States v. Pino, 606 F.2d 908, 916 (10th Cir.1979); United States v. Whitaker, 144 U.S.App.D.C. 344, 348-49, 447 F.2d 314, 318-19 (1977).

. D.C.Code § 22-501 (1989) provides, in part, that "[e]very person convicted of any assault with intent to kill ... shall be sentenced to imprisonment for not less than 2 years or more than 15 years.” (Emphasis added.)

. See Logan v. United States, 483 A.2d 664, 671 (D.C.1984) (“[m]alice ... need not entail a specific intent to cause death”).

. A hybrid of the two is the “constructive amendment.” See Stirone v. United States, 361 U.S. 212, 80 S.Ct. 270, 4 L.Ed.2d 252 (1960). Under this doctrine, "[a] variance becomes a constructive amendment ... when 'facts introduced-at trial go to an essential element of the offense charged, and the facts are different from the facts that would support the offense charged in' the indictment.’ ” Scutchings, supra, 509 A.2d at 637 (quoting Giles v. United States, 472 A.2d 881, 883 (D.C.1984)).