Court Opinion

ID: 9716870
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 06:52:57.8816+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:49.580990
License: Public Domain

Justice COOPER.
I concur fully in Justice Graves’s well-reasoned majority opinion. I write separately only to address Appellant’s unpreserved claim that the self-protection instruction erroneously included the statutory language that he was privileged to use physical force against Byron Pruitt “if ... he believed that Byron Pruitt was there about to use unlawful physical force against him.” Appellant complains that this instruction, while conforming to the language of KRS 503.050(1), does not conform to the language of the specimen self-protection instruction recommended in 1 William S. Cooper, Kentucky Instructions to Juries (Criminal) § 11.07 (4th ed.1993), and Commonwealth v. Hager, 41 S.W.3d 828, 846 (Ky.2001). KRS 503.050(1) provides:
*433The use of physical force by a defendant upon another person is justifiable when the defendant believes that such force is necessary to protect himself against the use or imminent use of unlawful physical force by the other person.
(Emphasis added.) Generally, an instruction that follows the language of the statute is not deemed erroneous. McGuire v. Commonwealth, 885 S.W.2d 931, 936 (Ky.1994) (“instructions should be stated within the context of the statutory framework”). Nevertheless, in their 1975 treatise on criminal instructions, Justice Pal-more and Professor Lawson explained the reason for omitting the word “unlawful” from the specimen instruction as follows:
The requirement of unlawfulness is omitted because in the usual case there will be no issue as to whether the victim of the defendant’s assault was acting pursuant to some legal privilege to inflict force upon his person. The typical exception would occur in an arrest situation.
John S. Palmore & Robert G. Lawson, 1 Kentucky Instructions to Juries (Criminal) § 10.01 cmt., at 341 (3rd ed.1975).
Palmore & Lawson cited Owens v. Commonwealth, 430 S.W.2d 325, 326-27 (Ky.1968), as illustrative of “the pitfalls of using the word ‘unlawful’ in instructions.” Id. In Owens, the defendant shot Marcum while allegedly defending himself against an unprovoked assault by McGlammer. The defendant did not claim that he intended to shoot McGlammer but mistakenly shot Marcum. See KRS 503.120(2). Instead, he claimed that the gun accidentally discharged during his scuffle with McGlammer. The trial court instructed the jury that it should find the defendant not guilty if it believed that the killing “was not the unintentional and careless discharge of a pistol by him in doing an unlawful act[ such as scuffling with Carroll McGlammer] ....” Id. at 326-27 (emphasis partially added). Our predecessor court reversed the defendant’s conviction of voluntary manslaughter and remanded for a new trial, holding that if Appellant was acting in self-defense when scuffling with McGlammer, such scuffling “was not an unlawful act, although the court peremptorily instructed the jury that it was.” Id. at 327.
As Palmore & Lawson suggested, situations when a defendant would believe the victim was about to lawfully use physical force against him are rare. Instances of lawful use of physical force are defined in KRS Chapter 503, “General Principles of Justification,” and include force used by the victim in self-protection when the defendant was the initial aggressor, KRS 503.060(3); force provoked by the defendant, KRS 503.060(2); force used by a police officer or a person acting under official authority in effecting a lawful arrest, KRS 503.060(1), KRS 503.090; force used to prevent suicide or to prevent the commission of a crime involving or threatening serious physical injury to person, substantial damage to or loss of property, or any other violent conduct, KRS 503.100; or force used by a parent, guardian, teacher, official at a correctional institution, operator of a common carrier vehicle, doctor, or other therapist under circumstances specified in KRS 503.110. When there is evidence of such an exception to the privilege to act in self-protection, it is usually identified as such in a separate instruction or by a proviso to the self-protection instruction, itself. See, e.g., Cooper, supra, §§ 11.11 — 11.13, 11.18B, & 11.20 — 11.27. For example, under the facts of this case, if the trial court believed there was sufficient evidence for the jury to find that Appellant believed Pruitt was about to use physical force against him for a lawful *434purpose, the following specimen instruction would have been appropriate:
INSTRUCTION NO_SELF-PROTECTION
Even though the Defendant might otherwise be guilty of Murder under Instruction No._, if at the time the Defendant killed Byron Pruitt (if he did so), he believed that Pruitt was then and there about to use physical force upon him, he was privileged to use such physical force against Pruitt as he believed to be necessary in order to protect himself against it, but including the right to use deadly physical force in so doing only if he believed it to be necessary to protect himself from death or serious physical injury at the hands of Pruitt.
Provided, however, if you further believe beyond a reasonable doubt that the Defendant believed Pruitt intended to use physical force against him for the purpose of preventing him from committing a crime involving or threatening substantial damage to or loss of property, then the Defendant was not so privileged and is not entitled to the defense of self-protection.
KRS 503.100(l)(b); cf. Cooper, supra, § 11.13.
Use of this or a similar specimen would have eliminated any speculation by the jury as to what conduct by Pruitt would have been lawful and whether Appellant believed that Pruitt’s threatened use of physical force against him was for a lawful purpose. E.g., under the trial court’s instruction, the jury may have concluded that Appellant believed that Pruitt intended to arrest him for his previous crimes and that such was a lawful purpose for the use of physical force — which, of course, would have been incorrect since Pruitt was neither a police officer nor acting under official authority. If, as is usually the case, there is no evidence that would support a finding by the jury that the defendant believed that the victim’s threatened use of physical force was lawful, use of the specimen instruction recommended in Pal-more & Lawson, supra, § 10.01, in Cooper, supra, § 11.07, and in Hager will avoid any such speculation.
However, if there is evidence from which the jury could find that the defendant believed the victim’s threatened use of physical force was lawful, the nature of the lawful conduct should be identified. Assuming there was sufficient evidence from which the jury could have found that Appellant believed Pruitt intended to use physical force against him for the purpose of preventing him from committing a crime involving substantial damage to or loss of property, the instruction given by the trial court was not erroneous, just insufficiently specific, thus permitting unwarranted speculation by the jury. Appellant did not object to the instruction on that ground and did not tender a clarifying instruction, such as the specimen described, supra. RCr 9.54(2).
JOHNSTONE, J., joins this concurring opinion.