Court Opinion

ID: 9439882
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 06:48:07.724879+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:26:38.363204
License: Public Domain

STAHL, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I agree with the majority that the bulk of the trial court’s charge was unreproachable, and that the crime for which petitioner stands convicted is heinous. Nonetheless, I am of the opinion that the erroneous instruction on provocation had the effect of (1) lowering the Commonwealth’s burden of proof on the element of malice; and (2) effectively precluding petitioner’s jury from making a finding of malice. And, because I believe that both the due process right to have the prosecution bear the burden of proving all elements of the offense charged, see Sullivan v. Louisiana, — U.S. -, -, 113 S.Ct. 2078, 2080, 124 L.Ed.2d 182 (1993) (citing Patterson v. New York, 432 U.S. 197, 210, 97 S.Ct. 2319, 2327, 53 L.Ed.2d 281 (1977) and Leland v. Oregon, 343 U.S. 790, 795, 72 S.Ct. 1002, 1005, 96 L.Ed. 1302 (1952)), and the Sixth Amendment right to have a jury make all elemental determinations, see Sandstrom v. Montana, 442 U.S. 510, 523, 99 S.Ct. 2450, 2458, 61 L.Ed.2d 39 (1979) (quoting United States v. United States Gypsum Co., 438 U.S. 422, 435, 98 S.Ct. 2864, 2872, 57 L.Ed.2d 854 (1978)), must always be honored, I reluctantly and respectfully dissent.
I.
Before explaining the reasons for my dissent, I wish to make two initial points. First, I would not examine the challenged instruction in terms of whether it set up a mandatory presumption (as the majority does); instead, I would view it simply as an instruction misdescribing an element of the offense. Although they possess many of the same characteristics5 and are analyzed similarly, Carella, 491 U.S. at 270, 109 S.Ct. at 2423 (Scalia, J., concurring in the judgment), mandatory presumptions and elemental misde-scriptions are not the same thing. For clarity’s sake, I think it important to emphasize this distinction.
Second, although it does not affect my analysis, I note that the language cited by the majority as being the correct statement of Massachusetts law on “adequate provocation” (i.e., “something ‘that would be likely to produce in an ordinary man such a state of passion, anger, fear, fright or nervous excitement as might lead to an intentional homicide ...’”) (quoting Rooney, 313 N.E.2d at 112) (emphasis supplied), itself may be problematic. See infra at 599 (explaining that ordinary men are led to commit intentional homicides only in circumstances which completely exonerate them). Instead, the more *599proper statement of Massachusetts law on adequate provocation is found in the Walden opinion:
There must be evidence that would warrant a reasonable doubt that something happened which would have been likely to produce in an ordinary person such a state of passion, anger, fear fright, or nervous excitement as would eclipse his capacity for reflection or restraint and that what happened actually did produce such a state of mind in the defendant.
Walden, 405 N.E.2d at 944 (emphasis supplied). Accordingly, I will make reference to the Walden language in discussing the law of adequate provocation in this dissent.6

II.

I turn now to my analysis. In my view, the Commonwealth does not and cannot define “adequate provocation” as provocation that would cause an “ordinary man” to go into such “a state of passion, anger, fear, fright, or nervous excitement as would lead him to an intentional homicide.” (Emphasis supplied). As petitioner points out in his brief, circumstances that would lead ordinary people to commit intentional homicides (e.g., circumstances giving rise to claims of self-defense) completely exonerate the killers; circumstances that lead to manslaughter, however, are only viewed as mitigating felonious conduct. Therefore, the instruction challenged here clearly and unambiguously was erroneous. More importantly, its effect was both to lower the Commonwealth’s burden of proof on the element of malice, see Commonwealth v. Todd, 408 Mass. 724, 563 N.E.2d 211, 213-14 (1990) (where adequate provocation is properly at issue, the Commonwealth bears the burden of proving its absence in order to prove malice),7 and to preclude the jury from making a meaningful malice finding, see Carella v. California, 491 U.S. 263, 270-71, 109 S.Ct. 2419, 2423-24, 105 L.Ed.2d 218 (1989) (Scalia, J., concurring). This constitutes a federal due process violation. See Sullivan, — U.S. at-, 113 S.Ct. at 2080-81 (collecting cases). So too does it constitute a violation of the Sixth Amendment’s jury-trial guarantee. See id. at-, 113 S.Ct. at 2081.

III.

The fact that federal constitutional error was committed at petitioner’s trial does not, of course, mean that he is automatically entitled to a new trial. Rather, as the majority notes, settled Supreme Court and circuit precedent make clear that we next look to whether the instructions as a whole “explain[ed] the infirm language sufficiently so that there is no reasonable likelihood that the jury believed it must [apply the instruction in a manner not in accordance with applicable law].” Hill, 927 F.2d at 651 (relying upon Franklin, 471 U.S. at 315, 105 S.Ct. at 1971). However, because a reviewing court must presume that the jury followed the judge’s instructions, see Yates v. Evatt, 500 U.S. 391, 403-04, 111 S.Ct. 1884, 1893, 114 L.Ed.2d 432 (1991), and “ ‘has no way of knowing which of ... two irreconcilable instructions the jurors applied in reaching their verdict,’ ” Hill, 927 F.2d at 651 (quoting Franklin, 471 U.S. at 322, 105 S.Ct. at 1975) (alteration in original), even instructions directly contrary to the erroneous one which themselves correctly state the law are insufficient to fulfill this explanatory function, id.
Here, despite the majority’s contrary conclusion, I do not think that the charge as a whole can be considered sufficiently explanatory. Although there were correct charac*600terizations of the concept of adequate provocation, nothing even went so far as to contradict, let alone explain, the court’s incorrect statement that, in order to be considered a manslayer rather than a murderer, petitioner must have been confronted with circumstances that would have led an “ordinary man” to Mil intentionally. Moreover, the circumstances attendant to the giving of the challenged instruction were much more likely to have imparted to the jurors the impression that the instruction was a correct statement of the law than that it was a mere slip of the tongue. First, defense counsel, in his closing argument, took pains to raise the issue by correctly arguing that adequate provocation does not mean that an ordinary person, in the same circumstances as petitioner, would have acted as petitioner acted; instead, adequate provocation only means that an ordinary person, in the same circumstances as petitioner, would have had his/her capacity for reflection or reason eclipsed. Second, it is beyond question that defense counsel interposed pointed objections at sidebar both times the ailing instruction was delivered to the jury. In light of these undisputed facts, I simply do not see how we can say that the overall charge explained away the error.

TV.

Even where the charge as a whole does not explain away the erroneous instruction, an instruction misdescribing an element of an offense can be harmless. In my dissenting opinions in Libby v. Duval, 19 F.3d 733, 740-745 (1st Cir.1994) and Ortiz v. Dubois, 19 F.3d 708, 717-718 (1st Cir.1994), I explain in detail my view that the whole-record harmless-error review prescribed by Brecht v. Abrahamson, — U.S.-,-, 113 S.Ct. 1710, 1722, 123 L.Ed.2d 353 (1993), cannot and should not be utilized by courts reviewing instructional errors which have the effect of precluding juries from maMng requisite factual findings in criminal trials. Rather, as I argue in those opinions, habeas courts reviewing such errors for harmlessness should employ the test set forth in Justice Scalia’s concurring opinion in Carella. Because the error here — misdescription of an element of the offense — had exactly such an effect, see Carella, 491 U.S. at 268-71, 109 S.Ct. at 2422-24 (Scalia, J., concurring), I would review it according to the dictates of the Carel-la concurrence. That is to say, I would ask (1) whether the erroneous instruction was relevant only to an element of a crime of wMch petitioner was acquitted; (2) whether the erroneous instruction was relevant only to an element of the offense which petitioner admitted; or (3) whether no rational jury could have found what it actually did find and not also find the misdescribed element. See id. at 271, 109 S.Ct. at 2423.
Here, none of the three prongs of the Carella test is satisfied. Certainly, petitioner neither was acquitted of murder in the first degree nor admitted that he had acted maliciously. Moreover, the record is devoid of factual findings which are the “functional equivalent” (i.e., which are “so closely related to the ultimate fact to be found that no jury could find those facts without also finding th[e] ultimate fact,” see id.) of the missing finding: an absence of adequate provocation. The most we can say on this record is that the jury found that an ordinary person, faced with the same circumstances as petitioner, would not have been led to commit an intentional homicide. To me, it is manifest that such a finding is not the functional equivalent of a finding that an ordinary person, faced with the same circumstances as petitioner, would not have had his/her capacity for reflection or restraint eclipsed. Accordingly, the error was not harmless.
I therefore would grant the writ.

. Like mandatory presumptions, elemental mis-descriptions can often lower the prosecution's burden of proof. This happens whenever the instructing judge too lightly describes what the government must prove in order to establish the element at issue. And obviously, like mandatory presumptions, elemental misdescriptions tend to invade the jury’s fact-finding role. See Carella v. California, 491 U.S. 263, 270-71, 109 S.Ct. 2419, 2423-24, 105 L.Ed.2d 218 (1989) (Scalia, J., concurring in the judgment) (citing Pope v. Illinois, 481 U.S. 497, 107 S.Ct. 1918, 95 L.Ed.2d 439 (1987) and Carpenters v. United States, 330 U.S. 395, 67 S.Ct. 775, 91 L.Ed. 973 (1947)).

. Of course, in the decision challenged by the instant petition, the Supreme Judicial Court, without analysis, stated that both the language from Rooney relied upon by the majority and the instruction at issue here were consistent with the Walden standard and therefore not erroneous. See Anderson, 563 N.E.2d at 1356. While the SJC is the final authority on what constitutes adequate provocation under state law, it is not, where due process and Sixth Amendment concerns are implicated, the final authority on whether the jury likely misconstrued the applicable principle or whether two divergent definitions are, in fact, consistent. See Sandstrom, 442 U.S. at 516-17, 99 S.Ct. at 2455-56.

. Under the instruction given here, the Commonwealth only was required to prove an absence of circumstances that likely "would lead" an ordinary person to commit an intentional homicide. This, of course, is much easier than proving an absence of circumstances that likely “would eclipse” such a person's "capacity for reflection or restraint." Walden, 405 N.E.2d at 944.