Court Opinion

ID: 9454336
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 18:43:29.166837+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:03.959842
License: Public Domain

BAZELON, Chief Judge
(dissenting):
Appellant was convicted of robbery and assault with a dangerous weapon. He allegedly held up a cab driver at the point of a knife. The cabbie offered his money, but appellant took only some false teeth wrapped in a handkerchief. A passerby came to the rescue and was injured, as was the cabbie. Appellant then left the cab, walked across the street, fell, got up, and continued to walk for three or four blocks. The cab followed him at a safe distance. When the police arrested appellant a few minutes later he was drinking from a whiskey bottle.
Appellant’s major defense at trial was that he was too intoxicated to have had the specific intent required for robbery. He now argues that the evidence was such that the jury had to have a reasonable doubt on this score. I agree that the evidence concerning appellant’s intoxication was not sufficient to compel a jury to find that he lacked the requisite specific intent.
Appellant argues further, however, that the trial court’s instructions with regard to specific intent and possession of stolen goods were so confusing as to deny him a fair trial. Even a cursory examination of the instruction, which is set out in pertinent part in the margin,1 demonstrates that appellant’s objection is sound.
The trial court first instructed the jury that to convict the defendant of robbery the government was required to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that, inter alia, the defendant had a specific intent to rob. But intoxication, he stated, could negate the presence of a specific intent. Then, in the next breath he told the jury there was a “further principle” that would permit them to infer the defendant’s guilt if he “knowingly had in his possession any of the property recently taken from the complainant * * and failed to explain such possession. * * * ” This last statement, standing alone, is clearly erroneous. The jury could not infer defendant’s guilt from unexplained possession unless they first found that he was not too drunk to form the requisite specific intent.2
The Government, however, asserts that the instructions “coming together, must be read together.” I agree. But as the jury heard them the instructions seem to say that unexplained possession obviates the need to find a specific intent to rob. *1278The incorrect statement concerning unexplained possession was the last thing the jury heard in connection with the robbery charge, and they were told that it represented a “further principle” to the rule that intoxication is a defense. There was no other explanation whatever of the relationship between these two principles. A layman would reasonably infer that the unexplained possession instruction supersedes the instruction on intoxication.
Inclusion of the phrase “knowingly had in his possession” in the unexplained possession instruction does not remove the error. Whatever other crime it may constitute, knowledge of illegal possession acquired after a wrongful taking cannot supply the requisite specific intent for a conviction for robbery. It might be thought, however, that the error is harmless because a jury finding of knowing possession after the offense is the substantial equivalent of a finding that appellant was capable of forming a specific intent to rob shortly before. But the jury were not told they still had to find a specific intent. Instead they were led to believe that knowing unexplained possession was a “further principle” to the previous instructions, permitting conviction for robbery in the absence of specific intent. The court made no point of emphasizing that knowledge was an essential precondition to an inference of guilt. And even if the jury happened to seize upon the word “knowingly,” only an alert legal mind would have been confident that, in law, a man could be too drunk to “knowingly” possess. Thus, on the assumptions most favorable to the instructions, there remains a real danger that the jury thought unexplained possession negated a defense of drunkenness.
Defense counsel did not object to the instructions below. Therefore we may entertain an objection to them now only if they contain “plain errors or defects affecting substantial rights.”3 I am satisfied that they do. In reviewing an error for the first time on appeal, the crucial consideration must be the overall impact of the error on the fairness of the trial, not trial counsel’s failure to object.4 Here, as a result of the defective instructions, it is highly probable that the jury never even considered appellant’s principal, and apparently substantial,® defense. Accordingly, I would reverse the conviction for robbery.5
6

. “Now, as to intoxication: The Court instructs you as a matter of law that voluntary intoxication neither excuses nor mitigates a crime. However, in the case of robbery, it embraces a specific intent, namely, an intent to steal.
The question of intoxication of the accused at the time of the offense of robbery, therefore, becomes an important matter of consideration in ascertaining whether it was done with a criminal intent. That the accused may have been drunk in the ordinary sense of that word is not sufficient. He must have been so drunk as to be incapable of forming an intent to rob or to steal. That is to say, incapable of consciousness that he is committing a crime.
There is still a further principle which you have for your consideration in connection with Count 1, and that is the principle of law known as possession of recently stolen goods. And in that regard, you are instructed that if you should find that this defendant knowingly had in his possession any of the property recently taken from the complainant in this case, and that the defendant has failed to explain such possession to your satisfaction, then you may — but you are not required to — infer therefrom the guilt of such defendant on the charge.”

. Cf. Vaughn and Worrell v. United States, Nos. 21067-68 (CADC Feb. 9, 1968).

. F.R.Crim.P. 52(b).

. Harris v. United States, 131 U.S.App.D.C. 105, 402 F.2d 656 (decided Sept. 17, 1968).

. In the context of the other evidence of intoxication, the fact that appellant took the cabbie’s false teeth and left his real money suggests that appellant’s defense presented at least a substantial issue of fact. One may, of course, speculate that appellant mistook the lower denture wrapped in a handkerchief for a roll of bills (or even a billfold) wrapped in a handkerchief; or that he suspected there was a hidden compartment containing drugs in what he knew to be a denture; or perhaps even that he had always wanted a lower denture — any denture. On the strength of such hypotheses, a properly instructed jury could have concluded that appellant was sober. But these speculations were for such a jury, not for an appellate court, to resolve. Borum v. United States, 127 U.S.App.D.C. 48, 52-54, 380 F.2d 595, 599-601 (1967) (dissenting opinion of Burger, J.).

. Of course, as the court’s opinion indicates, appellate arguments ought not to rest on matter outside the record. However, I do not regard reference to such matter in brief or argument as necessarily offensive — so long as its source is clearly identified, as it was here. See the quoted passage from the brief of court-appointed counsel in note 4 of the court’s opinion. We could not be and were not misled or contaminated. That off-the-record information may sometimes be useful is illustrated by the frequency with which appellate judges themselves seek such information at oral argument.