Court Opinion

ID: 9459916
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 21:35:21.041238+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:36:23.670157
License: Public Domain

BAZELON, Chief Judge,
dissenting:
On the afternoon of August 21, 1970, the appellant, Lloyd Grover, and Jessie Toliver, a longtime acquaintance, engaged in what started as a friendly dice game at the home of appellant’s mother. The game ended in a fight; Grover struck Toliver in the face. An hour and *1045a half later, the two met on a nearby street. The appellant admits that he shot and killed Jessie Toliver. He asserts that the killing was justified because Toliver was advancing on him with a knife, and that he acted in self-defense. At appellant’s trial for second degree murder, some evidence was presented that tended to support his version of the event. Other evidence tended to show that Toliver was retreating when the fatal shots were fired.
The critical question for the jury was whether appellant or Toliver was the aggressor when they met one another on the street. The question in this appeal is whether, in fact, the jury made this critical determination, or whether, because of an ambiguous instruction from the trial court, it focused instead on the earlier fight that concluded the dice game in deciding that Grover was criminally responsible for Toliver’s death.
The trial court instructed the jury that “the defense of self-defense is not available to one who provokes the difficulty.” The majority grants that, given the facts of this case, an ambiguity inheres in this instruction. The jury might well have assumed that “the difficulty” to which the trial judge referred encompassed the earlier fight following the dice game. They might well have taken the instruction to mean that, as a matter of law, appellant’s blow in the earlier encounter triggered a continuous series of events leading to Toliver’s death. They might well have supposed, erroneously, that the legal pendulum mechanics governing self-defense required them to find the appellant guilty if they found him the aggressor in the earlier encounter.
The majority admits this possibility, and then dismisses it as “gossamer.” It contends that the contested portion of the instruction, while ambiguous in the abstract, was clear in the context of the instruction as a whole. I cannot agree. On the contrary, I find nothing in the instruction that cures the ambiguity. Earlier in the instruction the trial court said:
If the defendant did not provoke the assault and at the time of the occurrence had reasonable grounds to believe . . . that the decedent was about to take his life . . . the defendant was not required to retreat
It need hardly be said that, according to standard rules of grammar and ordinary understanding, the phrase “at the time of the occurrence” modifies only the subsequent part of the sentence. Indeed, the placement of the phrase implies a distinction between the time of the provocation and the time of the shooting. The ambiguity remains. If anything, it is reinforced by the remainder of the instruction.
The majority further contends that the earlier altercation “did not loom large at trial.” This is true enough; but, of course, the defendant in no way disputed that it had taken place. There is no question that evidence of the earlier fight was presented to the jury. It figured prominently in the appellant’s own testimony. Moreover, the Government emphasized it in its closing remarks :
Who, ladies and gentlemen, actually struck the first blow? Who was it in the house, according to Grover’s own testimony, that struck out at a man sitting at a table, this man of peace who struck out at a man sitting at the table . . . ?
This remark emphasizing the earlier encounter — an emphasis entirely consistent with the erroneous rule of law that the charge suggests — dissolves any lingering doubt that the ambiguity in the charge had a prejudicial effect.
Nonetheless, the majority concludes “that the verdict reflects the jury’s crediting the prosecution witnesses who testified that the fatal shot came when the appellant’s gun was advancing and firing on the retreating knife of the deceased.” I confess that I do not have the powers of divination with which the majority is apparently blessed. I do not know what the crucial determinant of the jury’s verdict might have been. I do not know whether the jury was misled *1046by the charge. But I think there is a significant possibility that it was. It is one thing for judges, trained in the law, to read an instruction “in context,” and to derive from it an accurate, if not entirely clear, statement of the law applicable to the facts. It is quite another to assume that juries of laymen can do the same.
Our system of determining guilt operates on the assumption that juries will apply the law they are given — tempered, perhaps, by their own sense of justice— to the facts that they find. It is essential that the trial court clearly and accurately set forth the law governing the case: “. . . the responsibility for instructing as to the elements of the offense rests with the judge.” Green v. United States, 132 U.S.App.D.C. 98, 405 F.2d 1368, 1370 (1968). The trial court here failed in this vital task.*
In the interest of justice, Lloyd Grover’s conviction of second degree murder should be reversed. He should be afforded a new trial. His guilt should be determined by a jury fully informed of the facts, accurately and unambiguously informed of the law, not by a guessing game played under the rubric of harmless error. I dissent.

 Defense counsel pointed out the ambiguity to the trial court and requested clarification ; the trial court declined to supply it. This is not a case, therefore, in which counsel failed to call the court’s attention to the problem — even assuming that such failure would in any way affect the proper result. See Green v. United States, supra; Belton v. United States, 127 U.S.App.D.C. 201, 382 F.2d 150, 157 (1967) (Bazelon, C. J., dissenting) .