Court Opinion

ID: 9469482
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 02:41:38.816422+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:41:24.572991
License: Public Domain

K. K. HALL, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
The trial judge in this case did not give the jury any instructions on the burden of proof of self-defense, yet the majority reads the instructions “as a whole” as casting that burden on Guthrie. I cannot agree that the instructions would in any way have led the jury to conclude that Guthrie had the burden of proof of self-defense, and therefore, I dissent.
The majority emphasizes that the trial judge “probably intended for the burden to be on Guthrie because that was the law of Maryland at the time Guthrie was tried.” At 825. I cannot fathom the majority’s reliance on the trial judge’s silent intentions. The jury certainly would not have known about the state of the law on self-defense until the judge gave his instructions. Unless the jurors in this case were telepathic, they would never have known that the judge may have meant to burden Guthrie with proof of self-defense.
As further support for its conclusion, the majority considers the judge’s instructions on the defenses of mitigation, and states,
In thus being instructed as to two affirmative defenses that the burden of proof was on Guthrie, we think that the jury, in the absence of a specific charge to the contrary, undoubtedly understood the same burden to be applicable to the defense of self-defense.
Slip Op. at 825.
This conclusion is flawed for two reasons: First, the self-defense instructions were given before the instructions on the other mitigating defenses, so, at the time the jurors heard the self-defense instruction, they could not possibly have been influenced by the instructions on mitigation. Secondly, immediately after reading the instruction on self-defense, the judge reminded the jury that the state must prove the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Considering this sequence of the instructions, there is no reason to conclude *827that the jury would have related the instruction on self-defense to anything other than the instruction on the state’s burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
In sum, the majority decision is concocted from strained facts and pure fiction. Accordingly, I would uphold the conviction.