Court Opinion

ID: 9469177
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 02:34:17.433459+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:41:16.047384
License: Public Domain

JAMES DICKSON PHILLIPS, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
The majority holds, and I agree, that there was insufficient evidence to convict defendant of manslaughter on the basis that his violation of the misdemeanor offense involving marijuana use was the cause of the fatal accident. Because I think that on the particular factual circumstances and procedural posture of this case it is possible to say with adequate assurance that this was not the sole basis for the verdict, and because the verdict was both factually and legally supportable on each of the other discrete alternative means of commission submitted to the jury, I concur in the judgment of affirmance.
To the extent the majority opinion suggests that in any and all circumstances a general verdict of guilty returned on a disjunctive submission of alternative factual means of commission is saved if any one of the means is adequately supported by evidence, see at p. 1023, I disassociate myself from the opinion. I think whether it does or does not depends upon the circumstances and that in some circumstances a factually unsupported alternative theory of means must vitiate a general verdict just as a legally erroneous alternative theory of means assuredly does. See Yates v. United States, 354 U.S. 298, 311-332, 77 S.Ct. 1064, 1072-1084, 1 L.Ed.2d 1356 (1957); Stromberg v. California, 283 U.S. 359, 367-68, 51 S.Ct. 532, 535, 75 L.Ed. 1117 (1930); United States v. Head, 641 F.2d 174, 178-79 (4th Cir. 1981). I see no universally applicable distinction for this purpose between a general verdict possibly based upon a “legally” erroneous means of commission and one possibly based upon a means not supported, “as a matter of law,” by sufficient evidence. Although this circuit has apparently not had occasion to address the issue directly, other circuits have drawn no such distinction in cases similar to this one. See, e.g., United States v. Tarnapol, 561 F.2d 466, 475 (3d Cir. 1977); United States v. Natelli, 527 F.2d 311, 325 (2d Cir. 1975); cf. United States v. Stirling, 571 F.2d 708, 725-26 (2d Cir. 1978); but see United States v. Halbert, 640 F.2d 1000, 1008 (9th Cir. 1981) (contra: making the general distinction). The Supreme Court may be thought not to have ruled definitively on the point, but the best indication to me from its decisions is that it considers that in some circumstances a general verdict of guilty may be vitiated by the ambiguity resulting from the disjunctive submission to the jury of a number of discrete alternative factual means of *1024committing an offense at least one of which is insufficiently supported by evidence to justify its submission. See Boilermakers v. Hardeman, 401 U.S. 233, 247 & 252, 91 S.Ct. 609, 617 & 620, 28 L.Ed.2d 10 (1970) (White, J., concurring, and Douglas, J., dissenting); Haupt v. United States, 330 U.S. 631, 641 n.1, 67 S.Ct. 874, 878 n.1, 91 L.Ed. 1145 (1946); Cramer v. United States, 325 U.S. 1, 36 n.45, 65 S.Ct. 918, 935 n.45, 89 L.Ed. 1441 (1944). I read Turner v. United States, 396 U.S. 398,90 S.Ct. 642, 24 L.Ed.2d 610 (1970), cited by the majority without elaboration, as an example of the sort of special circumstance also present in the instant case where the possible ambiguity of the general verdict is fairly dispelled by a practical assessment of the record. I do not read it to stand for any general proposition that an unsupported factual means of commission, unlike an erroneous legal one, is always cured by an adequately supported alternative theory upon which a general verdict of guilty may have been based.
Only because I am convinced, after review of the record, that the jury here could not conceivably have based its general verdict solely on the grounds of the insufficiently proved marijuana offense do I concur.