Court Opinion

ID: 9675079
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 04:41:34.571126+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:31.315703
License: Public Domain

Markey, J.
(dissenting). After carefully reviewing the jury instructions in context and in their entirety, I disagree with the majority’s conclusion that manifest injustice resulted from the trial court’s ostensibly giving one correct and one purportedly incorrect jury instruction.
The defense in this case argued in the alternative that the shooting death was either an accident or self-defense. The instructions given to the jury reflected those two defenses. The specific language relied on by the majority to find manifest injustice (despite the defense’s approval of the instructions as given) clearly constitutes an explanation of and expansion upon the intent element required for a conviction of murder or voluntary manslaughter. Indeed, despite the trial court’s incorrect instruction that accident could not be a defense to voluntary manslaughter, the court appeared to have *41stated that if the jury were to find that defendant intentionally killed the decedent "obviously, that couldn’t be an accident.” In other words, no jury could have concluded beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant intentionally killed the decedent if the act were an accident. Certainly, the jury could have so concluded and acquitted defendant of voluntary manslaughter just as it did of murder.
The majority’s rationale that in order to "acquit a defendant in a circumstance where the jury is instructed concerning both murder and manslaughter and the defendant’s theory is accident, the jury would have to conclude that the killing was accidental and that the defendant did not act in a criminally negligent manner” ante, p 39, is precisely the point. Had the jury believed the shooting to be accidental, it could not have found the requisite intent for voluntary manslaughter. Thus, despite a possible misinterpretation of the trial court’s instruction and in view of the correct instructions it did give, the trial court’s instructions were far more likely than not to have been harmless error in view of the jury’s finding of intent, and in any event, did not result in manifest injustice. That is, inherent in the jury’s decision is the fact that it believed beyond a reasonable doubt, that the killing was not accidental, i.e., that it was done intentionally. Consequently, I would affirm.