Court Opinion

ID: 9429086
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:25:37.480689+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:16.965779
License: Public Domain

Justice Powell,
with whom The Chief Justice, Justice Rehnquist, and Justice O’Connor join, dissenting.
Today a plurality of this Court finds that an instruction given in violation of Sandstrom v. Montana, 442 U. S. 510 (1979), cannot be considered harmless except in certain “rare situations.” The effect of the plurality’s opinion, if it became a binding holding of the Court, would be to create an automatic reversal rule whenever a Sandstrom-type instruction is given, regardless of the conclusiveness of the evidence of intent. In my view, this is serious error.
H-I
It is necessary to address the jurisdictional issue raised in Justice Stevens’ concurrence before considering the plurality’s disposition of the merits. Justice Stevens would not reach the merits because the Connecticut Supreme Court, when requested to determine whether the Sandstrom error was harmless, declined to do so. Accordingly he concludes that no federal question is presented. It is unclear whether he takes the view that a state court may apply the federal harmless-error rule to provide a defendant with greater protection than Chapman v. California, 386 U. S. 18 *91(1967), would require or whether he finds that the State Supreme Court’s refusal to consider this question rests on an independent and adequate state ground. In my opinion, each of these views is erroneous.
The harmless-error rule announced in Chapman was designed to establish the federal standard necessary “to protect people from infractions by the States of federally guaranteed rights.” Id., at 21. A State, of course, may apply a more stringent state harmless-error rule than Chapman would require. See PruneYard Shopping Center v. Robins, 447 U. S. 74, 81 (1980). “But... a State may not impose such greater restrictions as a matter of federal constitutional law when this Court specifically refrains from imposing them.” Oregon v. Hass, 420 U. S. 714, 719 (1975) (emphasis in original). Accordingly, if Connecticut wishes to impose a more stringent standard than the federal rule, it must do so as a matter of state law.
An examination of Connecticut cases establishes that the State has not taken this course. Connecticut has enacted a state harmless-error statute applicable only to errors of state law or procedure. See Conn. Gen. Stat. §52-265 (1960); State v. L’Heureux, 166 Conn. 312, 323-324, 348 A. 2d 578, 584 (1974). The state rule is strikingly less stringent than the federal since it places the burden of proving that the error was “materially injurious” on the party who claims the trial court erred. Connecticut does not apply its state standard to federal constitutional error. It applies instead a federal rule. As the Connecticut Supreme Court explained in State v. Coleman, 167 Conn. 260, 355 A. 2d 11 (1974):
“The usual rule is that the appellant bears the burden of establishing that an error was ‘materially injurious’ to him. General Statutes §52-265; State v. L’Heureux, 166 Conn. 312, 323, 348 A. 2d 578. When, however, a federal constitutional error has occurred, the burden shifts to the state, and before the error can be held harmless, this court ‘must be able to declare a belief that *92it was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.’ Chapman v. California, 386 U. S. 18, 24 [1967], see also State v. L’Heureux, supra.” Id., at 278-279, 355 A. 2d, at 20 (footnote omitted).
The state court has adhered consistently to this distinction. See, e. g., State v. Cooper, 182 Conn. 207, 212-213, 438 A. 2d 418, 421 (1980); State v. Ruth, 181 Conn. 187, 196-197, 435 A. 2d 3, 7-8 (1980); Aillon v. State, 168 Conn. 541, 547-548, 363 A. 2d 49, 53 (1975).
As both the plurality opinion and Justice Stevens note, the State Supreme Court did not address the State’s argument in this case that the Sandstrom error was harmless. Its silence was based apparently on its decision in State v. Truppi, 182 Conn. 449, 438 A. 2d 712 (1980), where it held that Sandstrom error may never be harmless. Truppi therefore must be examined to determine whether the State intended to depart from its longstanding rule that it will apply a federal test to federal error.
Truppi prefaced its discussion of harmless error with a reference to the less demanding state harmless-error rule. See 182 Conn., at 465, 438 A. 2d, at 721. It then articulated the two classes of error recognized by Chapman, those errors that can never be harmless and those that can. 182 Conn., at 465, 438 A. 2d, at 721 (citing Chapman, supra, at 23). In its subsequent discussion, Truppi contrasted federal errors that “d[o] not significantly impair the truth finding function of the trial” with Sandstrom error. See 182 Conn., at 466, 438 A. 2d, at 721. It determined that the instructional nature of a Sandstrom error poses a risk that the jury will fail to consider the evidence and deprives a defendant of the protection afforded by requiring proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. 182 Conn., at 466, 438 A. 2d, at 721. It is in this context that Truppi concludes “we decline to weigh the evidence of guilt.” Ibid. It reasoned that to do so would constitute an invasion of the jury’s function by an appellate *93court. Ibid, (citing Bollenbach v. United States, 326 U. S. 607, 614 (1946)).
Thus, the Connecticut court in Truppi appears to have adopted — as the federal rule — the view that today’s plurality seems to favor: Sandstrom error falls within that class of federal errors that can never be harmless.1 If one is to read Truppi otherwise, it is necessary to assume that Connecticut undertook an unannounced departure from its longstanding practice of applying the Chapman rule to federal constitutional error. It also would require this Court to assume that having prefaced its harmless-error discussion with a reference to the less demanding state standard, the Truppi court then applied a more stringent state harmless-error rule than that announced in Chapman. I decline to attribute such il-logic to the Connecticut Supreme Court and agree with the plurality that Connecticut was applying its perception of federal constitutional law. See ante, at 81, n. 9. Accordingly, it is appropriate to consider the question presented— whether Sandstrom error may be harmless.
In Sandstrom the trial court instructed the jury that “[t]he law presumes that a person intends the ordinary consequences of his voluntary acts.” 442 U. S., at 513. The Court held that, where intent is an essential element of the crime, the giving of such an instruction is constitutional error. As we noted, on finding only that Sandstrom had caused the victim’s death and had acted voluntarily, the ju*94rors “could reasonably have concluded that they were directed to find against [the] defendant on the element of intent.” Id., at 523. Alternatively, an instruction that was viewed as shifting the burden of persuasion to the defendant could lead to a similar error. The jury “could have concluded that upon proof by the State of the slaying, and of additional facts not themselves establishing the element of intent, the burden was shifted to the defendant to prove that he lacked the requisite mental state.”2 Id., at 524.
The plurality today goes much further. It interprets Sandstrom as establishing that a conclusive presumption instruction on the issue of intent is the “functional equivalent” of a directed verdict on that issue. See ante, at 84. The plurality qualifies this categorical statement where “a defendant himself has taken the issue away from the jury”— i. e., it would view the error as harmless only where “the defendant concede[s] the issue of intent.” Ante, at 87. This is hardly an exception. Indeed, where intent to kill is conceded — as where self-defense is pleaded — there would be no occasion to give a Sandstrom instruction. The effect of the plurality’s holding is that this type of instruction can never be harmless.
Ill
In Chapman v. California, 386 U. S. 18 (1967), the Court rejected the argument that “all federal constitutional errors, regardless of the facts and circumstances, must always be deemed harmful.” Id., at 21. It recognized that in the context of a particular case, some errors have little, if any, likelihood of affecting the jury’s verdict. Accordingly, the proper inquiry is whether a court may say “beyond a reasonable *95doubt that the error complained of did not contribute to the verdict obtained.” Id., at 24. In applying Chapman’s test, a court must assess the effect of the error in light of the facts of each case. See Harrington v. California, 395 U. S. 250, 254 (1969). For it is only by assessing the weight of the evidence against the defendant that the effect of the error on the jury’s verdict can be judged. Ibid.
Today the plurality substantially limits Chapman’s harmless-error doctrine. It establishes a rule of automatic reversal because of the difficulty in determining the effect of a Sandstrom error on a jury’s verdict. This difficulty, it reasons, derives from the error’s instructional nature, particularly a perceived resemblance to a directed verdict. See ante, at 83-88. The analogy the plurality draws, however, between a conclusive Sandstrom instruction and a directed verdict is inapt. A directed verdict removes an issue completely from the jury’s consideration. Such a presumption, by contrast, leaves the issue ultimately to the jury. A trial court’s instructions are not limited to the presumption. A court also, as was done in this case, will charge that the defendant is presumed innocent and that the State must prove beyond a reasonable doubt each element of the crime— including the element of intent. See infra, at 101. In the context of these instructions, the presumption provides the jury only with one means by which the State’s burden of persuasion may be satisfied.3 See Sandstrom, 442 U. S., at *96518, n. 7. While a jury may rely on the presumption instruction as a means of finding intent, there may be many cases in which the facts and circumstances so conclusively establish this element that the instruction is wholly superfluous.
The plurality seeks to justify its automatic reversal rule by the view that a conclusive presumption permits a jury to convict a defendant “without ever examining the evidence concerning an element of the crimes charged.” Ante, at 88. While this accurately describes the effect of a directed verdict, it misperceives the way a presumption instruction, conclusive or otherwise, functions. A presumption instruction informs the jury that once a party has proved A, the basic fact, the jury can or must presume B, the presumed fact.4 Contrary to the plurality’s assumption, a Sandstrom-type presumption does not operate independently of the evidence. The jury must look to the evidence initially to see if the basic facts have been proved before it can consider whether it is appropriate to apply the presumption. In this case, for example, the Sandstrom instruction was that “a person’s intention may be inferred from his conduct and every person is conclusively presumed to intend the natural and necessary consequences of his act.” App. 23A. Thus, it was necessary for the jury *97to look to the facts and circumstances to determine what respondent did — i. e., to consider the character and quality of his acts — before it could define the natural and necessary consequences of those acts. If, however, these basic facts are themselves dispositive of intent, the presumption becomes unnecessary to the jury’s task of finding intent. Because the presumption does not remove the issue of intent from the jury’s consideration, it does not preclude a reviewing court from determining whether the error was “harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.”5 See Chapman, 386 U. S., at 24. See also Lamb v. Jernigan, 683 F. 2d 1332, 1342 (CA11 1982), cert. pending, No. 82-5768; Jacks v. Duckworth, 651 F. 2d 480, 487 (CA7 1981).
As indicated above, the effect of the plurality opinion is to create an automatic reversal rule whenever a Sandstrom instruction is given, regardless of the conclusiveness of the evidence of intent.6 In so doing, the plurality disregards the *98reasoning underlying Chapman’s rejection of such a rule. While agreeing that in some circumstances an error may be so fundamental that reversal is mandatory, Justice Black, writing for the Court, said:
“We are urged by petitioners to hold that all federal constitutional errors, regardless of the facts and circumstances, must always be deemed harmful. Such a holding, as petitioners correctly point out, would require an automatic reversal of their convictions and make further discussion unnecessary. We decline to adopt any such rule.” 386 U. S., at 21-22 (emphasis added).
Chapman recognized that jury trials involve an infinite variety of “facts and circumstances.” It therefore is hardly in the interest of a rational criminal justice system to adopt automatic and absolute rules that deprive courts of perhaps the single most important element of judging: the exercise of judicial discretion. Yet this is precisely what the plurality’s opinion does. Its holding would require reversals of convic*99tions in many situations in which the defendant’s actions establish intent as conclusively as if it were unequivocally conceded. If, for example, an execution-style slaying occurred, in which the defendant tied up his victim and shot him repeatedly in the head, it would be clear beyond a reasonable doubt that the presence of a conclusive-presumption instruction would not have affected a jury’s finding of intent.7 The point is not that an execution-style slaying equals a concession of intent. It is instead that the plurality’s limitation on the harmless-error doctrine fails to recognize that the impact of the presumption on the jury’s verdict will vary with the facts and circumstances of each case.
HH <1
Neither the respondent nor any of the four other participants in these crimes testified at the trial. The State’s evidence — from the victim, the people who sheltered her after she escaped, the police, and the State’s expert witnesses— was uncontradicted.8 Reviewing this testimony, the Su*100preme Court of Connecticut found that the jury “could reasonably have found the following facts”:
“On December 20, 1975, at approximately 10:30 p. m., the female victim dropped her boyfriend off at the Nor-walk railroad station and started to return to her home in West Redding. Unfamiliar with Norwalk, and in cold and snowy weather, the victim lost her way. While still in Norwalk, she stopped her car and asked the occupants of another automobile for directions. The defendant, one of the four men in this automobile, offered to ride in her car to show her the way to route 7. When her car arrived at route 7, the defendant pulled the victim to the passenger side of the car and another man from the second automobile entered the victim’s car and drove it away. The victim was told that the men needed a car.[9] She was threatened, at various times, with bodily harm, was shown a knife and was told that there was a gun. Sometime later, while still in Norwalk, the second car was abandoned and its other two occupants entered the victim’s car. At another stop, a fifth man was picked up. Eventually, the car was driven on the Connecticut Turnpike toward New Haven. Sometime in the early morning hours of December 21, 1975, the vehicle was stopped near an apartment building in the New Haven area. The victim was forced into the building where she was sexually assaulted by all five men. When the victim was returned to the car her hands were bound with wire. The car was driven to a bridge on the New Haven-West Haven line where the defendant forced the victim to run across the bridge. At about the midway point, she and the defendant struggled and he threw her over the railing. Initially she landed on a pipe outside of the railing, but jumped into the river and *101went under the water when the defendant pursued her. She managed to elude him by hiding under the bridge. Sometime later she made her way to a nearby residence from which the police were called. The defendant and others were arrested in Norwalk between 5 and 6 a. m. the same morning in or near the victim’s car.” 185 Conn. 163, 165-166, 440 A. 2d 858, 860 (1981) (footnote added).
On these facts, a reviewing court might well say beyond a reasonable doubt that the jury found the presumption unnecessary to its task of determining intent. With respect to the charge of robbery, the uncontradicted evidence was that respondent stated: “We need a car, we are going to take your car ... .” His actions confirmed his unequivocal statements: he overpowered the woman, took her car and never returned it. One would think that intent to rob could not have been clearer. The evidence of respondent’s intent on the attempted murder charge could be viewed as only marginally less compelling. Having participated in a gang-type rape of this woman, respondent bound her hands with wire and threw her into an icy river in the middle of December.
The jury, consistent with its instructions, could have regarded these facts as dispositive of intent and not relied on the presumption. As indicated above, the court instructed the jury that the State had the burden of proving intent beyond a reasonable doubt. It stressed that “[t]he State, in other words, can sustain the burden resting on it only if the evidence before you establishes the existence of every element constituting the crime charged beyond a reasonable doubt.” App. 17A. Indeed, it prefaced the conclusive-presumption instruction by stating that intent is a question of fact solely within the province of the jury.10 See id., at *10222A-23A. Although the instructions left the issue of intent to the jury, the plurality finds that neither we nor the state courts may assess the effect of the presumption on the jury’s verdict. It imposes instead an automatic reversal rule that would be applicable even when proof of intent to murder is established beyond any doubt. See n. 6, supra. Such a rule is precisely what Chapman rejected.
V
For the reasons stated, I think this Court properly could decide the question of harmless error. Normally, however, this is a question more appropriately left to the courts below. The Connecticut Supreme Court did not address the question, nor has it been briefed extensively here. There may be facts and circumstances not apparent from the record before us. I therefore would reverse the judgment and remand the case for consideration of whether the error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.

 In determining whether the Connecticut Supreme Court was applying federal or state law, it should be remembered that this Court has never held that a Sandstrom error inevitably requires reversal. See ante, p. 88 (Stevens, J., concurring in judgment). Indeed, rather than foreclosing consideration of this federal issue, the Sandstrom Court remanded to allow the state court to make this determination initially. See 442 U. S., at 526-527. It would be consistent with our opinion in Sandstrom for the Connecticut Supreme Court to have undertaken this same federal inquiry.

 Having found that the instruction violated due process, Sandstrom noted but left open the question of whether the error was harmless. It remanded for a determination of this issue by the Montana Supreme Court. See ibid. On remand, the court determined that the error was not harmless. See State v. Sandstrom, 184 Mont. 391, 392-393, 603 P. 2d 244, 245 (1979).

 Because a presumption does not remove the issue of intent from the jury’s consideration, it is distinguishable from other instructional errors that prevent a jury from considering an issue.' See Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U. S. 307, 320, n. 14 (1979) (“failure to instruct a jury on the necessity of proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt can never be harmless error”); Carpenters v. United States, 330 U. S. 395, 408-409 (1947) (failure to instruct jury on proper level of review not harmless); Weiler v. United States, 323 U. S. 606, 610-611 (1945) (erroneous instruction that perjury could be proved by uncorroborated oath of one witness not harmless). In Bollenbach v. United States, 326 U. S. 607 (1946), the Court found that the use of an erroneous presumption was not harmless. In that case, how*96ever, the jury had deliberated for seven hours. In response to a question from the jury, the trial court delivered the erroneous presumption instruction, and the jury returned a verdict in five minutes. This Court rejected the argument that the error was harmless, not because a presumption may never be harmless but because the course of events revealed graphically that the error had affected the jury’s verdict. See id., at 614.

 Although the term “presumption” often is used to describe a wide range of procedural effects, a presumption typically refers to an evidentiary device that allows “the existence of one fact [to be] presumed from another.” See Jeffries & Stephan, Defenses, Presumptions, and Burden of Proof in the Criminal Law, 88 Yale L. J. 1325, 1335 (1979). Sandstrom makes clear that the instruction in that case functioned in this fashion. There we observed that the presumption instruction allowed the jury to conclude that the defendant possessed the requisite intent on the basis of facts that would establish only criminal negligence. See 442 U. S., at 523-524.

 In determining whether a Sandstrom error was harmless, the inquiry is not, as the plurality intimates, whether the presumption was unnecessary to the jury’s verdict “in the sense that the evidence was sufficient for a properly instructed jury to find that respondent acted with the requisite intent.” Ante, at 86, n. 15. Instead, the inquiry is whether the evidence was so dispositive of intent that a reviewing court can say beyond a reasonable doubt that the jury would have found it unnecessary to rely on the presumption. See infra, at 101.
Despite this standard, the plurality reasons that the error always is harmful because it remains possible that a juror might have relied on the unconstitutional presumption rather than the evidence. This argument begs the question. In every harmless-error case, there is always a possibility that the error affected the jury’s verdict. As has been noted: “Obviously, there will be trials in which the evidence supporting the inference to be drawn will be so persuasive that any additional prompting procured by the [unconstitutional presumption] must be regarded as inconsequential. In such cases, the validity of the presumption will be regarded as irrelevant because whatever error it might embody can be regarded as harmless.” Jeffries & Stephan, supra, at 1388, n. 192.

 There is some facial ambivalence in the plurality opinion in this respect, as it expresses the view that a Sandstrom error may be harmless where “the defendant concede[s] the issue of intent.” Ante, at 87. But the opin*98ion leaves no doubt that it has established an automatic rule of reversal. It concludes that Sandstrom error deprives a defendant of “ ‘constitutional rights so basic to a fair trial that their infraction can never be treated as harmless error.’” Ante, at 88 (quoting Chapman v. California, 386 U. S., at 23).
Chapman, however, makes clear that although some constitutional errors can never be treated as harmless, not “all trial errors which violate the Constitution automatically call for reversal.” Ibid. The question — the one critical to the decision of this case — is in which category of error a Sandstrom instruction falls. In my view, it is not the type of error that invariably and “automatically” compels reversal. This is what the plurality today finds, subject to the rare situation in which the defendant “concedes” intent. The result of its opinion is to create a class of cases in which courts are deprived of their traditional discretion to see that both society and the defendant are treated justly. A Sandstrom error, however, is not comparable to an instruction that can never be harmless — for example, an instruction that fails to inform the jury that it must find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. See n. 3, supra. The question of intent is one of fact and, as discussed in the above text, before a jury even reaches the presumption instruction it must find facts that are a predicate for the presumption.

 This hypothetical is not the unusual case. Numerous cases coming to this Court illustrate the frequency with which eases arise in which no rational person could doubt intent to murder. Although the recent cases cited below did not involve a Sandstrom error, they illustrate factual situations in which the Court’s opinion would preclude the application of the harmless-error doctrine. See, e. g., White v. State, 415 So. 2d 719, 720 (Fla.) (members of motorcycle gang stabbed woman 14 times and slit her throat twice), cert. denied, 459 U. S. 1055 (1982); Arango v. State, 411 So. 2d 172 (Fla.) (defendant beat victim with a blunt instrument, wrapped a wire around his neck, stuffed a towel into his mouth, and shot him twice in head), cert. denied, 457 U. S. 1140 (1982); State v. Mercer, 618 S. W. 2d 1 (Mo.) (defendant strangled rape victim until his companion, who was monitoring her pulse, told him it had ceased), cert. denied, 454 U. S. 933 (1981).
There was no “concession” of intent to kill in any of these cases. Yet intent in each is clear beyond a reasonable doubt. If a Sandstrom instruction had been given in any of these cases, the plurality opinion today would preclude consideration of the harmless-error doctrine.

 The testimony of the only witness for respondent is irrelevant to the issue of intent.

 When respondent took the victim’s automobile, he said: “We need a car, we are going to take your car and you are going to come with us.” Tr. 37. He kept the car until he was arrested by the police.

 The Connecticut Supreme Court held that the Sandstrom error was not cured by the remainder of the instructions. See 185 Conn. 163, 172-176, 440 A. 2d 858, 863-865 (1981). The correctness of that decision is not before us.