Court Opinion

ID: 9850226
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 04:53:46.114922+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:20:33.399691
License: Public Domain

BROWN, Justice,
specially concurring.
I totally agree with the majority’s excellent opinion. I only wish to emphasize that at trial appellant received every consideration he was entitled to, and more.
At the outset I confess to a philosophical bias against people who take the law into their own hands and execute their supposed tormentors. I am particularly opposed to patricide. After considering the news, particularly letters to the editor, I conclude that I must represent a view contrary to that of the public.
Appellant is handsome, personable, intelligent and ready of tongue. He is an all American boy, except that he has a predilection toward patricide. Appellant and his incredible story caught the imagination of the media and public.
Richard thought about killing his father many times before November 16. On the 16th he made elaborate plans for the execution. He lay in wait for an hour and one half, then blew his ROTC whistle to freeze *1010his victim. He fired repeatedly, propelling lead into his father’s body. His first comment after the slaying was that he did it for revenge. This is a textbook case of first-degree murder.
The jury convicted appellant of killing his father voluntarily upon a sudden heat of passion. If lying in wait for one and one-half hours is a “sudden heat of passion,” then appellant must have been frozen in time. This must have been the longest “sudden” in history.
In his defense appellant employed the oldest, most common and most successful tactic in homicide cases. He put the deceased on trial. His strategy was largely successful as he was convicted of a lesser offense when the uncontradicted evidence and appellant’s admission pointed only to murder.
Evidence produced by appellant characterized the deceased father as a cruel, sadistic and abusive man. Experience, common sense and the conduct of Mrs. Jahnke indicated to me that the testimony in support of this characterization was greatly exaggerated. There was no one at trial to speak for the deceased. All defense witnesses were at liberty to say anything they wanted about the deceased, knowing that they could not be contradicted. Defense witnesses had a motive to make the deceased look like a bad man; they wanted to make the jury believe that appellant’s father deserved to be executed. By no stretch of the imagination was this a case of self-defense. Arming and barricading himself and lying in wait for one and one-half hours for his father’s return is not self-defense under the law.
The trial judge was eminently fair with appellant and resolved ahy doubt in his favor. Appellant was not entitled to an instruction on self-defense, nor was he entitled to an instruction on the lesser included offense of manslaughter because there was no evidence justifying either instruction. However, the judge being abundantly cautious gave these instructions.
Mrs. Jahnke’s testimony at trial is suspect. On the one hand she describes fourteen years of ruthless beatings. She was afraid that the deceased was going to kill her son. On the other hand, a few hours before the slaying, she had a minor dispute with Richard and told her husband that her son had sassed her, knowing that her son would be punished. After informing on Richard, she went out for the evening with her husband to celebrate the tender moment they first met. Before going out Mrs. Jahnke threw her arms around her husband, kissed and hugged him, told him she loved him and that he was good to her. Yet, this was the man she feared would kill her child.
Richard’s avowed motives for gunning down his father have changed during this ordeal depending upon his forum. While he was in an excited state he told his girlfriend’s father that he did it for revenge. While still exhilarated he told Officer Hildago that he killed for past things. Then his expressed reason briefly changed and he claimed self-defense at the trial. Richard now says he did it for his mother and sister. He said at a later trial he killed his father to “stop him from further abuse of his family.”
Many in our society are fascinated by violence. We make folk heroes out of our criminals. Ballads and odes are written about murders. The more bizarre or unusual the murder, the greater the proliferation of songs, poems and books. The public’s thirst for this sort of literature will not be stilled. If a person wants to become famous and even wealthy, he just needs to commit a grotesque crime.
John Herbert Dillinger and Alphonse Capone will live in our history for more than one hundred years. Good men, contemporaries of Dillinger and Capone are already forgotten. “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.” Wm. Shakespeare, Julius Caesar (The Tragedy of), Act 3, Scene 2.
Perhaps Richard Jahnke was entitled to compassion because of his age. The jury meted out that compassion when they found him guilty of manslaughter, despite *1011the fact that the evidence pointed to murder. The judge’s sentence evidences further compassion. He could have sentenced Richard to not less than nineteen years, eleven months and twenty-nine days. The judge and jury deserve to be commended, rather than harangued by the public. They demonstrated intelligence, good judgment and compassion.