Court Opinion

ID: 9798010
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 04:34:30.281287+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:00:08.351983
License: Public Domain

CHAPEL, J.,
Dissenting.
¶ 1 McHam was charged with first degree murder. He claimed self-defense — that is, he admitted killing the victim but claimed that the killing was justified and therefore not a crime. The trial court determined that evidence supported an instruction on the lesser included offense of heat of passion manslaughter. The State did not request any lesser included offense instructions. McHam objected to the instruction. Under his theory of defense he had committed no crime at all, and he did not want jurors to have the option of convicting him for anything other than the crime of murder. The trial court gave the instruction anyway. Not surprisingly, jurors faced with the options of acquittal or punishment for a lesser homicide preferred to convict McHam of manslaughter. I agree with McHam’s claim that, under these circumstances, jurors should not have had that option.
¶ 2 In Shrum v. State,1 we unambiguously held that a defendant may waive instruction on lesser included offenses. As the majority states, “we held that if the trial court sua sponte ‘proposes’ lesser-offense instructions and the defendant objects to them, the defendant may affirmatively waive his right to such instructions and proceed on an ‘all or nothing approach.’ ”2 In upholding McHam’s conviction the majority “clarifies” this holding. I see no need to clarify a perfectly clear statement of law. Either a defendant has a right to waive lesser included instructions or he does not. The majority explains that, under its “clarification” of Shrum, a defendant may adopt an “all or nothing” strategy but “the trial court is not bound by that strategy.”3 This defies logic. If the trial court is not required to honor the defendant’s *674strategic decision to waive lesser included offenses, then the defendant has lost the ability to make that waiver.
¶ 3 I agree that trial courts have a responsibility to instruct the jury on all offenses supported by the evidence. However, I see no conflict between that responsibility and a defendant’s right to choose a defense strategy rejecting lesser included offenses.4 Our law clearly gave McHam the option to waive instruction on any lesser included offense without objection by the State, and he did so. The Court now refuses to recognize MeHam’s settled right to choose to defend only against the charged crime. It is true that Shrum limited the “all-or-nothing” defense to cases in which , the State did not request lesser included offense instructions. A limitation is not the same as a negation. With this “clarification”, the majority negates the possibility of an “all-or-nothing” strategy. Because I would preserve that strategic choice, I dissent.

. 1999 OK CR 41, 991 P.2d 1032.

. Majority opinion at 669; Shrum, 991 P.2d at 1036. The majority notes that McHam should not have been surprised by the instruction since the State set up a theory that McHam killed the victim in anger. Shrum held that, if the State requests instructions and the defendant objects, the trial court should give the instructions if (a) the defendant is not surprised and (b) the instructions are supported by the evidence. This holding has nothing to do with McHam’s claim that he wanted to waive instruction on lesser included offenses. The State never requested instructions on any lesser included offense, and surprise is not the issue.

.Majority opinion at 670.

. Well before Shrum was decided, I suggested that a trial court was obligated to instruct on every lesser included offense supported by the evidence, unless the defendant waived that instruction and the State did not object to the waiver. O’Bryan v. State, 1994 OK CR 28, 876 P.2d 688, 690 (Chapel, J., specially concurring). That is exactly the situation here.