Court Opinion

ID: 9732171
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 16:10:34.874727+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:22:22.785674
License: Public Domain

GLICKMAN, Associate Judge,
concurring in part- and dissenting in part:
I agree that a defendant who unlawfully participated in a gun battle may be found guilty of murder if a stray bullet killed an innocent bystander, regardless of which combatant actually fired the fatal shot. So long as the defendant entered the fray before that shot was fired, the question of proximate causation — whether the harm *511was a reasonably foreseeable consequence of the defendant’s acts, see McKinnon v. United States, 550 A.2d 915, 918 (D.C. 1988) — poses no great conceptual difficulty. “By choosing to engage in a shootout, a defendant may be the cause of a shooting by either side because the death of a bystander is a natural result of a shootout, and the shootout could not occur without participation from both sides.” Commonwealth v. Santiago, 425 Mass. 491, 681 N.E.2d 1205, 1215 (1997). Where two or more persons “voluntarily and jointly created a zone of danger,” it is fair to hold each one “responsible for his own acts and the acts of the others” that ensued. People v. Russell, 91 N.Y.2d 280, 670 N.Y.S.2d 166, 693 N.E.2d 198, 195 (1998). As “[t]he deadly homicidal force ... was a collective hail of bullets, a collective fusillade,” Alston v. State, 101 Md.App. 47, 643 A.2d 468, 469 (1994), aff'd, 339 Md. 306, 662 A.2d 247 (1995), the responsibility may be collective as well.
It is a different matter if the defendant did not join the combat until after the bystander was killed. In that case, the victim’s death could not have been a consequence of the defendant’s subsequent actions even if the defendant wholeheartedly and unjustifiably perpetuated the gun battle. The defendant’s actions after the bystander was shot have no causal relationship to the previous stray bullets, and therefore such a defendant cannot be held criminally liable under the gun battle theory for the bystander’s injuries. This principle is analogous to the rules that an accessory after the fact is not guilty of the substantive crime previously committed by the principal, see, e.g., Williams v. United States, 478 A.2d 1101, 1106 (D.C.1984), and that a member of a criminal conspiracy is not liable for crimes committed in furtherance of the conspiracy before he joined it, see, e.g., United States v. Goldberg, 105 F.3d 770, 775-76 (1st Cir.1997).
In light of these considerations, the application of the gun battle theory of causation in the present case to appellant Roy was problematic. At trial, there was no dispute that it was appellant Settles, not Roy, who started the shooting on Tenth Place. Settles fired a volley of shots at Roy before Roy fired back. There also was no dispute that the errant bullet that struck and killed Grace Edwards may have come from Settles’ opening volley. Thus, Ms. Edwards may have been killed before Roy joined in the gun battle that resulted in her death. The critical causation question, therefore, was whether Roy intentionally provoked or was otherwise responsible for Settles’ opening volley — whether, in other words, the shootout was a jointly created affair from the outset.
The answer to this question was in doubt. On the one hand, as my colleagues correctly observe, the evidence was “susceptible of an inference that before the first shot was fired, Roy and Settles both had expected to engage in the street gun battle” and met on Tenth Place with that shared purpose in mind. Ante at 508. There even was testimony that Roy emerged from an apparent hiding place in a stairwell on Tenth Place and began the battle by pointing his gun at Settles.1 On the other hand, however, this evidence was contested, and the jury may have doubted it. The jury permissibly could have enter*512tained the possibility that Roy did not voluntarily meet Settles on Tenth Place for a battle and did nothing there to encourage Settles’s opening salvo.
The gun battle causation instruction was deficient, in my view, because it did not clearly require the jury to distinguish between these alternatives and find that Roy shared responsibility for the start of the shootout. The instruction .did require the jury to find that Roy’s “conduct on Tenth Place ... was a substantial factor in the death of Grace Edwards” and that it was reasonably foreseeable that her death would occur “as a result of the defendant’s conduct on Tenth Place,” but these were vague generalities. What gave specific content to them was the balance of the instruction, which required the jury to find only that Roy was “armed and prepared” to engage in a gun battle, that he did “engage” in such a battle, and that he did not act in self-defense. My colleagues conclude that this language was “the functional equivalent of asking the jury to decide whether there was a concurrent or mutual expectation that a street battle would ensue.” Ante at 508. With respect, I cannot agree. Findings that Roy was “armed and prepared” to do battle in the event that he was attacked and that he did not act in justified self-defense when he returned Settles’ fire as Settles drove away fall short of signifying that Roy purposely met Settles for a battle on Tenth Place or that he instigated the shooting that Settles began there.2
, Because I conclude that the causation instruction allowed the jury to find Roy guilty qf murder even if it was Settles who shot Ms. Edwards without finding that Roy had already joined in the combat or had provoked Settles to shoot — i.e., without finding that Roy did anything that proximately caused the fatal shot — I respectfully dissent from my colleagues’ decision to affirm Roy’s second degree murder conviction.

. It should be noted that, as the trial court instructed and the government agrees, Roy’s liability for the murder depended on whether Ms. Edwards’ death was the result of his conduct on Tenth Place. The homicide cannot be viewed as the proximate consequence of Roy’s earlier initiation of hostilities on Valley Avenue, because even though Settles was seeking revenge for Roy’s attack on him there, there was a hiatus between the two encounters.

. The trial court rejected a proffered causation instruction that would have required the jury to find that the defendants “agreed) either explicitly or tacitly," to engage in the gun battle. Such an instruction, which would have addressed the deficiency I perceive, has been given in other gun battle murder cases in Superior Court, and it finds support in cases from other jurisdictions. Compare, for example, the following instruction approved by the New York Court of Appeals:
If you find that the People have proven beyond a reasonable doubt that defendants took up each other's challenge, shared in the venture and unjustifiably, voluntarily and jointly created a zone of danger, then each is responsible for his own acts and the acts of the others ... and it makes no difference whether it was a bullet from Mr. Bekka's gun, Mr. Russell's gun or Mr. Burrough's gun that penetrated Mr. Daly and caused his death. '
Russell, 670 N.Y.S.2d 166, 693 N.E.2d at 195 (emphasis in the original). As the New York Court of Appeals further emphasized in upholding the convictions, "the gunfight in this case only began after defendants acknowledged and accepted each others' challenge to engage in a deadly battle on a public concourse.” Id. Similarly, the Court of Appeals of Maryland has upheld a defendant’s murder conviction based on his "tacit agreement” to participate in a gun battle even though he did not fire the fatal shot. Alston, 662 A.2d at 253. Nonetheless, I would not encourage adoption of “tacit agreement” language for jury instructions in this area. I agree with my colleagues’ assessment that, when it is employed in this context, the terminology "is too amorphous and bereft of clear meaning to be practical for a jury instruction.” Ante at 508. Better alternatives are available.