Court Opinion

ID: 9577390
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:34:27.244291+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:20:30.956344
License: Public Domain

Williams, J.
(concurring on one issue; dissenting on another; concurring in result). My Brother Swainson’s opinion accurately depicts the error in the trial court’s manslaughter instruction. On this ground, I join in his disposition of reversal of the Court of Appeals and remand for new trial.
However, his opinion continues, finding error in the trial court self-defense instruction as "premised on the incorrect assumption that there had been some evidence introduced at trial from which *595the jury could reasonably infer that appellant was the 'aggressor’ in the fatal confrontation with Burnett.” I cannot agree with this conclusion.
As my Brother Swainson notes:
"All of the prosecution’s witnesses generally testified that after appellant backed out of the store, Burnett placed the gun in a holster he was wearing, turned and started to walk to the inner part of the store. Appellant then suddenly reentered the store and began shooting at Burnett, fatally wounding him.”
The introduction of this testimony at trial did constitute evidence from which the jury might reasonably infer that appellant was the "aggressor” in his confrontation with Burnett. It has long been clear in Michigan that the right of self-defense commences and ceases when real or apparent necessity begins and ends. 3 Gillespie, Michigan Criminal Law & Procedure, § 1693, p 2045; People v Giacalone, 242 Mich 16, 21; 217 NW 758 (1928); People v Walters, 223 Mich 676, 682-683; 194 NW 538 (1923); 13 Michigan Law & Practice, Homicide, § 42, p 369. See also 1 Wharton’s Criminal Law & Procedure, § 214, p 470. If the jury believed the prosecution witnesses in this case, they could have reasonably found that appellant ceased to possess a right to self-defense when he "backed out of the store”; his sudden reappearance, gun ablaze, could certainly be reasonably construed by the jury as a subsequent and independent act of aggression.
Therefore, while the trial court instruction on self-defense was far from a model of clarity, it was based on a proper theory of law. However, it should have been only one of two instructions, the other based on my Brother Swainson’s interpretation of the facts, so that the jury would have had a *596proper instruction of law for the fact situation they deemed to be the true one.
Reversed and remanded for new trial.
M. S. Coleman, J., concurred with Williams, J.
J. W. Fitzgerald, J., did not sit in this case.