Court Opinion

ID: 9797991
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 04:33:45.076207+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:00:03.819028
License: Public Domain

Johnson, J.,
concurring: I concur with the majority’s result but write separately to confess that I am confused about how this court distinguishes between premeditated first-degree murder and intentional second-degree murder. Further, I am concerned about how we allow prosecutors to explain the difference to the jury.
In rejecting the defendant’s creative argument that premeditated first-degree murder and intentional second-degree murder *956have the same elements, the majority correctly points out that, on paper at least, the first-degree crime has the added element of premeditation. See K.S.A. 21-3401(a); K.S.A. 21-3402(a). Both are intentional murders, requiring the killer to form the intent to kill, prior to committing the act which causes death. Additionally, to be a premeditated murder, the killer must have “thought the matter over beforehand” so that the act is “more than the instantaneous, intentional act of taking another’s life.” See PIK Crim. 3d 56.04(b).
What I cannot grasp is the concept that one can have thought the matter over beforehand, when the intent to kill is formed during the course of committing the murderous act, e.g. while strangling or stomping the victim. In other words, in my mind, “beforehand” means prior to commencing the death-causing act, rather than during said act but sometime prior to its effecting the death. If we merge the concept that the killer must have thought over the matter beforehand, as in premeditated first-degree murder, with the concept that a killer must have formed the intent to kill prior to the victim’s death, as in intentional second-degree murder, we have rendered the premeditation element redundant and opened the door to defendant’s same elements argument.
Accordingly, I view portions of the closing argument to have been an incorrect statement of the law, especially where the prosecutor argued that premeditation could be formed “between the first and second stomps, between the second and third stomps, at any point during the stomping.” Nevertheless, the facts of this case presented something more than a continuous attack culminating in death. The 911 tapes suggest that Warledo’s initial attack, presumably prompted by his mother’s verbal and physical confrontation, ceased for a time and that the victim was still alive. I would find it temporally permissible for the jury to find that, during the respite, Warledo thought over the matter of killing his mother and formed that intent prior to recommencing the attack. Moreover, I am convinced that, even without the offending closing argument, the jury would have reached the same result.