Court Opinion

ID: 9456957
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 20:07:46.285836+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:09.735569
License: Public Domain

BAZELON, Chief Judge
(dissenting) :
I concur in parts I, II, and III of the court’s opinion, but because I consider the trial judge’s instruction on manslaughter to be defective, I must dissent from the court’s affirmance of this conviction.
I agree with the court’s opinion that the first two sentences of the instruction stated the law correctly:
Manslaughter is the unlawful killing of a human being without malice aforethought.
It occurs when the homicide is committed at the time of mutual combat or when it is committed in passion or hot blood caused by adequate provocation. [Emphasis added.]
Unfortunately, the next two sentences, while purporting to restate the above definition and to specify the elements in greater detail, concentrated exclusively on the second alternative:
In other words, in order to reduce the offense from second degree murder to manslaughter there must be shown ample provocation and sudden passion and both of these things must exist at the time the fatal blow is struck.
The elements the Government must prove in order for you to find the defendant guilty of manslaughter are, *740one, that the defendant inflicted a wound or wounds from which the deceased died; two, that the defendant shot the deceased in sudden passion without malice; that the defendant’s sudden passion was aroused by adequate provocation. [Emphasis added.]
The remainder of this lengthy instruction elaborates upon the notions of “sudden passion” and “provocation.”1 Although appellant’s main defense was mutual combat, at no time did the judge even mention this again — much less elaborate upon it — as a separate ground for a conviction of manslaughter.
This was not a case of robbery or assault between two strangers. It involved two old friends who had spent the evening drinking together; upon their return to the apartment where they both lived with their families, this tragic fight ensued. No one denied that the deceased willingly continued the fight— at least for a time — after it began. In such circumstances, the crucial issue of mutual combat must necessarily be very close, and the adequacy of the instruction on mutual combat becomes of critical importance.
We must remember that jurors do not take the instructions with them into the jury room; therefore we cannot rely heavily upon nice calculations as to what is strictly implied by the grammar of sentences which stand alone. Instructions must be judged as a whole. Given the general tenor of this one, it is too much to expect that the jury caught the significance of the word “or” in the second sentence and correctly understood the relation of mutual combat to manslaughter.
A nontrivial error in an instruction defining the elements of one of the offenses of which a defendant might be found guilty is certainly plain error requiring reversal of the conviction.2

. The rest of the instruction reads :
When I say sudden passion, I mean to include rage, resentment, anger, terror, and fear. So when I used the expression sudden passion I include all of these.
Provocation in order to be sufficient to reduce the defense of murder to manslaughter must be adequate, must be such as might naturally induce a reasonable man in the anger of the moment to commit the deed.
It must be such provocation as would have like effect upon the mind of a reasonable or average man causing him to lose self-control.
In addition to the great provocation there must be passion and hot blood caused by that provocation.
Mere words, however, no matter how insulting, offensive or abusive, are not adequate to reduce a homicide, although committed in passion, provoked as I have explained, from murder to manslaughter.
If you find the Government has proved all of these elements beyond a reasonable doubt, then you may find the defendant guilty of manslaughter.
If, however, you find the Government has failed to prove any one or more of these elements, then you cannot find the defendant guilty of manslaughter and you must find him not guilty.

. Fed.R.Crim.P. 52(b). See Byrd v. United States, 119 U.S.App.D.C. 360, 342 F.2d 939 (1965).