Court Opinion

ID: 9695472
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 18:20:27.683865+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:13.059756
License: Public Domain

FERREN, Senior Judge,
dissenting:
Commonly, a defendant charged with first-degree premeditated murder while armed will ask for a jury instruction on second-degree murder while armed as a lesser included offense in the obvious hope, *1082if convicted, of receiving a lighter sentence. The instruction will be given if there is any evidence, “however weak,” from which the lesser offense is “fairly inferable.”1 Occasionally, however, the government — particularly, as in this case, when misidentification is the principal defense-will seek the lesser — included instruction while the defendant, hopeful if not confident that his defense will prevail, resists the government’s fallback instruction out of concern that it will lead to a compromise verdict of guilty on the lesser charge, rather than acquittal on the indicted charge that demands a higher level of proof. We have this second situation here.
The criteria for granting or rejecting the lesser-included instruction are the same whether the government or the defense requests it, and thus the trial court — and eventually this court de novo2 — must make the same analysis of the record without regard to the parties’ respective positions on it. As far as I have been able to determine, this court has never reversed a conviction when the trial court granted a government-requested lesser-included offense instruction over the defendant’s objection. In my judgment, this should be the first such reversal.
The trial court perceived a reasonable possibility that the jury could find Ricardo Jennings guilty of second-degree murder on a “depraved heart” theory, meaning that the evidence supported a finding that Jennings was “subjectively aware” that his “conduct created an extreme risk of death or serious bodily injury, but engaged in that conduct nonetheless.”3 In applying this test, however, the trial court may not give the lesser-included offense instruction when, in order “to convict on the lesser offense, the jury would have to engage in an irrational or bizarre reconstruction of the facts of the case.”4 I do not believe that, on this record, the jury could have found a mere “depraved heart” murder without such irrational, if not bizarre, reconstruction.
In a colloquy with counsel, the trial court justified the second-degree murder instruction by reference to examples drawn from the LaFave & Scott treatise quoted in our en banc decision in Comber;5 and again en bloc in the majority opinion. In my judgment, however, the evidence in this case cannot be rationally interpreted in a way that fits any such example, for two reasons: (1) the jury could not rationally discern an un premeditated intent to kill Jamal Hull, and (2) the evidence does not support a finding that others, in addi*1083tion to Jamal Hull, were in the way of the killer’s bullet spray with an AK-47.
No one disputes that considerable evidence supports premeditated first-degree murder, the theory on which the prosecution was tried. What I cannot find on this record is any lesser state of mind in the killer. The government argues that the evidence would permit the jury to infer that Jennings was only trying to “scare” Hull, or to infer that Jennings “formed the intent to kill only at the last possible moment and thus the murder was not premeditated or deliberated.” From my reading of the record, both suggestions are pure speculation.
The government adds that the “jury reasonably could have inferred that appellant’s intended victim was Ms. [Monique] Hines, or any of the ‘other people’ with whom Ernest Jennings” — appellant’s uncle for whom appellant was the alleged avenger — had argued “earlier in the evening.” This last argument for a second-degree, “depraved heart” state of mind depends on the second category of evidence I find missing: that other persons were in range of the killer’s bullets. There is no evidence that Monique Hines was in the area, or that any “other people” were in range of the armed assault. Even the trial judge indicated that he was “not clear ... whether there were other people out in the immediate area where the decedent was when he was hit,” although he added that “a rational inference could be drawn that the defendant came around the corner and essentially shot into a crowd of people, not necessarily specifically intending to kill Jamal Hull and maybe not even anyone else in particular, but that he shot ... down the block of a street where there were a lot of people hanging out.” The problem is, however, that there is no record evidence that others besides Hull were “hanging out” where they could have been hit by the shooter.
Let’s look at the testimony in connection with government exhibit 122, an aerial diagram of the scene unchallenged by the defense and elucidated by detailed interchange at oral argument. In this aerial view, the right portion of the apartment complex looks like a rectangular horseshoe with one wide building across the top and two shorter, connected buildings down each side enclosing a large courtyard facing 2nd Street, S.W. The shooter came walking down a “cut” (a sidewalk) along the right side of the complex heading toward 2nd Street. As evidenced by shell casings that, according to expert testimony, fell within three feet of each firing, he took one shot before reaching the end of the front building, # 1520. He then began shooting rapid-fire toward the street, dropping nine more cartridges in a grassy area at the end of building 1520 in front of the sidewalk on 2nd Street. Hull lay dead in the street in front of his car at a slight angle from the end of the building toward the courtyard. From the diagram scrutinized at oral argument, it is clear that the trajectory of the bullets from the shooter to Jamal Hull could not have hit anyone in the courtyard around the corner from the shooter. So: was there probative evidence that anyone but Hull was out there in Hull’s vicinity? No.
The evidence on which the government primarily relies for purposes of the second-degree murder instruction is the testimony of Keisha Brighthaupt, who had been sitting inside the courtyard in front of building 1520 talking with Jamal Hull, while other people “were just standing around” there. Hull then went to find his sister, who had left to go to the bathroom in the cut. Soon thereafter, as Brighthaupt got up and began “walking out of the court,” she heard gunshots. At first she could not *1084tell where they were coming from but then discerned that they were coming from the direction of the cut. She ran to 2nd Street and hid behind a van parked there.
Brighthaupt further testified that “after the shots stopped,” she heard her sister say, “oh, my God, it’s Ish [Jamal Hull]. So, that’s when I came out [from behind the van] and we all — I just was standing right there just looking.” At first, she added, she could not see where Hull had fallen, “because it was too many people around.... But when the police got there, I seen it.” Officer Robert Baechtel, who had heard the gunfire from two or three blocks away, arrived at the murder scene within “45 seconds to a minute” and “saw a large crowd standing on the sidewalk with several individuals in the middle of the street.” Naturally, people would gather at a homicide scene after a shooting.. But before?
There was evidence that there had been a party in the courtyard earlier in the evening, and that a number of individuals were lingering there at around 2:00 a.m., sitting on lawn chairs in front of building 1520 when the shooting occurred.6 The courtyard is invisible from the cut on the side of the complex where the shooter walked; and, of determinative significance, the area of the courtyard where individuals reportedly had remained was not within eyesight of the shooter. Keisha Bri-ghthaupt’s testimony put the other people, who were “standing around” before Hull left to look for his sister, well outside the line of fire. They were inside the courtyard, in front of building 1520 — an area slightly behind the grassy area at the end of building 1520 where the nine shell casings were found. Even Brighthaupt herself, when beginning to leave the courtyard as she heard the shots, was not sure at first where they were coming from. As far as one can tell from the testimony and the diagram in government exhibit 122, the killer would have had to shoot around a corner to hit anyone other than Hull. It follows that none of the hypothetical situations involving more than one individual, as quoted by the trial judge from Comber7 to illustrate a “depraved heart,” are relevant here.
The two “depraved heart” hypothetical concerning an assailant with one victim— playing Russian roulette and selling undiluted heroin — also are inapplicable. The trial judge, preferring the Russian roulette analogy, opined that a second-degree murder instruction would be proper “even if there’s just one person in a street, and you start firing, firing an AK-47 down the street in that person’s direction.” That opinion presupposes an indifferent state of mind that, from my reading, nothing in the record supports.8
Language from one of our opinions ruling for the government in which we affirmed the denial of a defense request for a lesser-included second-degree murder instruction fits perfectly: “Here, the record reveals no dispute regarding [Jennings’] state of mind. His defense theory was misidentifiction, and thus the only issue *1085regarding the murder[ ] was the identity of the assailant.”9
Respectfully, therefore, I dissent. I cannot find the error harmless. I therefore would reverse the judgment of conviction for second-degree murder and remand for a new trial.

. Coleman v. United States, 948 A.2d 534, 551 (D.C.2008) (citations and internal quotation marks omitted).

. See Leak v. United States, 757 A.2d 739, 740-741 (D.C.2000).

. Comber v. United States, 584 A.2d 26, 39 (D.C.1990) (en banc). The trial court instructed on second-degree murder while armed as follows. The parties do not question the language.
The essential elements of the lesser included offense of second-degree murder while armed, each of which the government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt, are, first, that the defendant caused the death of the decedent, Jamal Hull; second, that at the time the defendant did so, he had the specific intent to kill or seriously injure the decedent or acted in conscious disregard of an extreme risk of death or serious bodily injury to the decedent; and, third, that at the time of the offense the defendant was armed with a firearm. Second-degree murder while armed differs from first-degree premeditated murder while armed in that it does not require premeditation, deliberation, or a specific intent to kill.

. Anderson v. United States, 490 A.2d 1127, 1130 (D.C.1985).

. Supra note 3, 584 A.2d at 39 n. 13.

. Government exhibit 122 showed the location of one arm chair at the edge of the sidewalk directly in front of the courtyard, far away from the front of building 1520. There was no evidence that anyone was in that chair near, or at, the time of the shooting.

. Supra note 5.

.The trial judge rejected the government’s argument that "people could have been sitting [or] sleeping in their cars” on the street where Hull was killed. The judge noted that for conviction of second-degree murder "the defendant has to know that there are people in the line of fire,” and added that “there's no testimony that there was anyone in any of those cars."

. Bright v. United States, 698 A.2d 450, 457-458 (D.C.1997).