Court Opinion

ID: 9734597
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 17:38:49.110612+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:49.319449
License: Public Domain

Ryan, J.
I dissent.
While admitting that the trial court’s refusal to give an appropriate instruction may be harmless error, my colleague finds the refusal to give the lesser included instruction on the reckless use of firearms to be reversible error in this case not because, on the basis of the evidence, the jury might reasonably have returned that verdict, but because, if given the instruction, the jury "might have better understood Rochowiak’s theory and have returned a verdict of guilty of involuntary manslaughter”, and because the jurors "might have assessed [the defendant’s] argument in a different light and with a better understanding of the gradations of responsibility in the law of homicide”.
In holding that the reckless use of firearm in*250struction would have better explained the requisite elements required for second-degree murder and manslaughter, the Court implicitly determines that the proposed criminal jury instructions on second-degree murder and manslaughter which have been recommended for use by this Court, standing alone and without the further explanation provided by the reckless use instruction, are too confusing and unclear to sustain a conviction. Needless to say, I think that proposition is unsupportable.
Insofar as I can determine, it has never been the office of a lesser included offense instruction to enable the jury to assess the defendant’s argument "in a different light and with better understanding”, or to enable a jury to better understand the defendant’s theory. I have always thought that the office of the lesser included offense instruction is to provide the jury a verdict option which is reasonably raised by the evidence. People v Phillips, 385 Mich 30; 187 NW2d 211 (1971); People v DeMeaux, 194 Mich 18, 28; 160 NW 634 (1916); People v Beverly, 108 Mich 509, 510-511; 66 NW 379 (1896); see also Hopper v Evans, 456 US 605; 102 S Ct 2049; 72 L Ed 2d 367 (1982).
As the Court points out, it is because the defendant’s "state of mind” was primarily at issue in this case that the question arises whether a reckless use of firearm instruction should have been given.
When the jury rejected the theory that the defendant was guilty of involuntary manslaughter, but instead was guilty of murder in the second degree, it refused to find the defendant’s act grossly negligent and found it instead to be intentional, with an object to kill, or with an indifference to the result knowing that death was likely.
*251In my judgment, it defies logic and common sense to suggest that, in a case in which the jury rejected the theory that the defendant was merely grossly negligent, it is reversible error to fail to provide them the option of finding him merely reckless and negligent.
Assuming, without deciding, that the evidence in this case would have allowed a rational finder of fact to find the defendant not guilty of second-degree murder or involuntary manslaughter, but guilty of careless, reckless, or negligent use of a firearm, the refusal to give the requested instruction on reckless use was, at most, harmless error.
I would affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals.
Fitzgerald, C.J., concurred with Ryan, J.
Coleman and Riley, JJ., took no part in the decision of this case.