Court Opinion

ID: 9625878
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 07:53:38.810033+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:06:16.296860
License: Public Domain

WADE, Justice.
I concur in the result and generally with the reasons of the prevailing opinion.
I do not agree that the evidence would sustain a verdict of first-degree murder under the willful, deliberate, malicious and premeditated killing category but would not sustain a second degree murder verdict as an included offense thereto. The difference between these two degrees of murder under this category might be only that to find first degree murder the jury must be convinced that there was a cold deliberate planning to kill, whereas to find second degree murder they might feel that there was a reasonable doubt that the killing was planned in cold blood. The effect of the reasoning in the prevailing and concurring opinions is to require the defendant to produce evidence to establish that doubt, whereas the law requires the evidence to remove all such doubt before a first degree verdict is justified. Where, as in this case, second degree murder may be found on the same evidence as first degree murder except that the jury doubts the existence of the element which distinguishes the two degrees, then the court may not refuse to submit both degrees to the jury. To do so is to determine as a matter of law that the jury can have no reasonable doubt on that one element only. If this may be done why may we not hold that the jury can have no reasonable doubt on any of the elements of guilt and direct a verdict against the defendant if the evidence were strong enough ?
For another reason, however, I agree that this error was not prejudicial. Our statute makes murder committed in the perpetration or attempt to perpetrate a robbery first degree murder. Under this category there is no included *163second degree murder for if the jury doubts that the killing occurred in the perpetration or attempt to perpetrate a robbery, second degree murder does not necessarily follow. Here the evidence which tends to show an unjustified killing planned in cold blood shows it to have been part of a plan to obtain decedent’s property from his person or immediate presence by force and therefore that it was murder committed in. the perpetration of a robbery.