Court Opinion

ID: 9452942
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 17:57:42.400174+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:33:25.968092
License: Public Domain

DANAHER, Circuit Judge
(dissenting) :
At the point where my colleagues abandon their “consideration of murder instructions assailed by the appellant,” they decide "that the trial court erred by not granting appellant’s motion for acquittal on the first-degree murder charge at the conclusion of the Government’s case.” I disagree.
My colleagues say thus that “the Government’s evidence was insufficient to warrant submission to the jury of the issue of premeditation and deliberation.” Again I disagree, for in my study of the record I am convinced that the District Judge properly submitted the issues to the jury. On the same evidence, my colleagues find themselves satisfied that Austin “has had a fair adjudication of guilt on all elements of the crime of murder in the second degree.”
My colleagues outline what they say was the “Government’s evidence.” Omitted entirely from that recital are the many inferences which the trial judge was free to draw from the facts he was entitled to find at the close of the Government’s case in chief. He was bound to view that case in the light most favorable to the Government.
With the case thus appraised, the trial judge could have concluded that a reasonable juror could have had no reasonable doubt that (1) Austin had murdered Nettie Scott, (2) he had done so in furtherance of a premeditated and positive design to kill, and (3) he had acted deliberately. I think Austin’s counsel found himself of like mind even as, for the record, he moved for acquittal as to murder in the first degree. Since I believe the trial judge ruled correctly, Part I will deal solely with the facts and the inferences deducible therefrom as developed during the Government’s prima facie case.
I
The judge looking back over the case would readily recall that after the prosecutor had outlined the scope of the case he intended to present, Austin’s trial attorney addressed the jury. Here is what he said:
“This is a tragic and frightful case. What happened was horrible. You *144have heard the details from [the prosecutor]. I am here under authority from my client to tell you that he does not deny that he did any of these things. He admits that he did them, and we say this to you at the very outset. All of the questions of whose blood was where, and who did what, are in reality out of this case. There is no attempt to evade or to deny that he did these things.
“Neither he nor I wish to leave any implication in your minds that there is any doubt that Bernard Austin did these things."1 (Emphasis added.)
And so the trial got under way, with the Government calling as its first witness a Mrs. Riley, a waitress at Goldie’s Tavern. There she had seen the victim, Nettie Scott, when she entered about 10:30 P.M., and there she later saw Austin.
Some time after 2 A.M., Mrs. Riley went over to an “after hours spot,” operated by one Turner. Upon arrival Mrs. Riley noticed that Nettie Scott was seated with many others at a large table. Patrons were free to sit down at that table or to move about, and in due course, Austin sat at the table. Nettie Scott was “having a good time, drinking” and, the witness said, was under the influence of liquor, “high.” At that table also was a woman who broke her thumbnail. Austin offered to cut off the hanging nail. He took out a pocket knife, and cut off the broken nail. Austin remarked “Look, the knife is so sharp she didn’t even feel it,” and he put the knife back in his pocket.
Mrs. Riley left Turner’s between 4:30 and 5 A.M., but Nettie Scott had preceded her, departing with one Mabel Proctor, “between 4:10 and 4:20.”
Mrs. Riley had known Austin for about a year. He did not appear to be “drunk” or “high” but rather, to be in good control of himself. As a waitress in the liquor establishment, she had had “considerable opportunity” to judge whether or not a person was intoxicated, and Austin “did not appear to be.”2
Mabel Proctor was the next witness. She had seen Nettie Scott at Goldie’s and later at Turner’s. The witness said she began to doze whereupon Nettie said “Mickey, I will take you home.” Austin came to her, pulled her up and said “Nettie and me are going to take you home.” She and the victim and the killer left Turner’s and got into a white panel truck which Austin drove. The three left Turner’s between 4:10 and 4:15 A.M., stopped at a restaurant and dropped off the Proctor woman between 4:30 and 4:40 A.M.
When these three people reached the restaurant and Nettie Scott had jumped out of the truck, Austin undertook to put his hands “back there” and the witness commanded .“Take your hands off of me.” Mabel Proctor testified that she was “stone sober that night” as she drinks “very little” and is “always sober.”
Metropolitan Police Lt. Ritter had the rank of sergeant on April 24, 1964. About 5 o’clock that morning, he and Sgt. Klotz drove along Anacostia Parkway. In a nearby parking bay they saw a white panel truck with the door open on the passenger side. They saw clothing on the grass strip between the parking area and the roadway. Just then they saw a man coming up the bank from the *145river. He closed the door on the passenger side, ran around the front of the truck, jumped in and drove away. The officers were some 16 to 18 feet distant. Sgt. Klotz copied down the registration number of the truck, CF 4125, 1964 tags, and the police commenced their investigation. They saw a woman’s brassiere, the clothing spattered with blood, and there was a large pool of blood in the grassy area. They went to the river bank and there saw a body floating.
The officers pulled from the river a nude female with only one piece of clothing around her neck. Stab wounds were immediately visible. The woman moaned, but presently died.
Ritter drove to the nearest patrol signal box and gave an alarm for the white panel truck. Presently other officers appeared. Over the radio came the report that the truck had been stopped in the 1300 block of Massachusetts Avenue, Southeast. There, upon arrival, Sgt. Klotz recognized the driver of the truck as the same man who had earlier come up the river bank. Klotz said to Austin “You are the man.” Austin replied “What man?”
Then the testimony went:
“I said ‘You are the man that I saw down by the river a little while ago.’ He said ‘You are crazy. I just came from my girl friend’s house.’ ”
That statement, the witness testified, was made “in a belligerent tone of voice.” The police officers had taken many photographs of the scene, and the witness identified each as the photographs were marked for identification.
The record shows that trial counsel informed the judge he had no objection to the photographs becoming full exhibits. “We are going to put them in,” he said; “We want to put them in and we won’t object as to identification.” His purpose, he explained to the judge, was to demonstrate “the bizarre nature of the crime.”
Each of the photographs was explained by the witness, one depicting “the marks that were on the ground and apparently where the body was drug [sic] and where the clothing was found.”
It was brought out that the drag marks passed from a point on the embankment down to the river, in the very area from which the officers had first seen Austin running.
I may mention out of order that the photographs of the scene and the evidence elicited from the coroner had led defense counsel to certain conclusions which he submitted to the trial judge thus:
“Your Honor, may I bring this to your attention?
“This battle, I think the evidence is going to show that, took place over the course of many yards. She obviously was smashed in the face and sustained a broken nose.
“She may have been standing up at one point or laying [sic] down at another on her back, or forward. But the point I make from it is in the truck and some of it is through the area, all through there.”
Let us turn to the testimony of the coroner. Dr. Rayford testified that Nettie Scott had been 5 feet 7 inches tall and had weighed 195 pounds. The exact cause of her death was hemorrhage from multiple stab wounds. A blood test revealed a .24 per cent of alcohol from which the witness concluded, the victim could have been considered well under the influence of alcohol. She had suffered a broken nose which, in the doctor’s opinion, could have been caused by the blow of a human fist.
The doctor’s examination revealed some 26 stab wounds resulting from the use of a sharp-bladed instrument. Additionally, the doctor had found at least 20 smaller wounds.
Finally, the doctor testified that the stab wounds could have been inflicted *146by an assailant who used a knife of the type he had found in the victim’s head. The assailant had struck his victim above the jaw angle in such fashion that the knife blade penetrated the cranium and broke off in the skull.
Previously, the woman had been stabbed in the area of her sexual organs. Carved on the victim’s thigh was an intricate design, much resembling what the doctor called a “tic-tac-toe.” That any such result could have been achieved, the testimony ran, the victim must have been recumbent and passive by that time. It fairly could have been inferred by the trial judge from all the evidence and from the doctor’s testimony, as it was by defense counsel, that this appellant had fought with his stupefied victim, had knocked her out, had stripped her of her clothing and sexually assaulted her. That all of these events must have involved a substantial period of time would seem beyond question. Finally, Austin had to take whatever time was necessary to drag her body to the river and to throw her in as he sought to drown her.
Against that background the judge denied trial counsel’s motion for acquittal when the Government rested. My colleagues say that the ruling of the District Judge constitutes reversible error. I reject that conclusion.
Austin’s trial counsel in light of facts which he took as established had obviously drawn certain inferences, as is apparent from his statement to the judge, supra, concerning the “battle.”3 This victim, Nettie Scott, was tall for a woman and heavy by some standards, and possibly strong. Her assailant had already been careless with the use of his hands upon the other woman, to the point of reproof by the witness Proctor. Austin had driven the panel truck to a parking bay with a single entrance from, the parkway. The door on the passenger side had been opened. That the victim after getting out had resisted whatever advances Austin might have made toward her might reasonably be inferred from the fact that her nose had been broken, with a human fist as the cause. That she engaged in a “battle,” as defense counsel called it, with her assailant might reasonably be deduced from the trampled grass as depicted in the Government’s exhibits.
Austin had earlier used and had in his pocket a sharp knife. He had to decide to take that knife from his pocket and to open it. That thought and that action without more resulted from deliberation. He had evolved a definite purpose to wield that knife upon the woman. His plan and his actions reflected his intent, deliberately pursued, the judge could have deduced. Stab wounds in the chest had led to massive bleeding. Austin had stabbed Nettie Scott no less than four times in the vicinity of her sexual organ. Over and over again the assailant stabbed and cut his victim, a total of more than fifty times, until she was helpless. The last blow from the knife had been into her skull where the blade broke off.
Seeing that she was still alive, determined to kill her, Austin dragged her body some thirty-five feet down the bank and into the river that as a last resort in the accomplishment of his purpose, she would drown.
Then he took flight, giving rise to an inference of consciousness of guilt. Apprehended within a few minutes, he lied to the arresting officers as to his earlier movements.
Only sketchily have I reviewed the salient facts and only briefly touched upon the inferences which the judge was free to draw from those facts. I submit that the judge could properly come to no other conclusion than that Austin had acted with that degree of deliberation which the law requires.4
*147It will be remembered that my colleagues find error in the ruling upon the motion for acquittal at the close of the Government’s case. It was the duty of the judge at that point to determine credibility and the weight to be given to the evidence and the justifiable inferences to be drawn from the facts he deemed to have been established.5 Thinking thus, upon all that had gone before, he readily could have concluded that Austin with premeditation had decided upon the steps he intended to take and with deliberation undertook to execute his plan. From the moment Austin reached into his pocket, took out his knife, opened it and commenced slashing and stabbing his victim, the successive steps might have required only a short time. But as his victim resisted him, kicked him, struggled for her life, Austin’s purpose, deliberately conceived, was accentuated down to where his knife became lodged in her skull. He took one more step, finally. He had to drag that woman’s dying body down to the river and throw it in. Deliberation? A “second thought” ?
II
D.C.Code § 22-2401 (1961) in pertinent part provides:
“Whoever, being of sound memory and discretion, kills another purposely, either of deliberate and premeditated malice or [by certain means or in perpetrating certain offenses not here relevant] is guilty of murder in the first degree.”
The defense called as its chief expert witness a Dr. LeGault who testified that at St. Elizabeths Hospital, by means of certain drugs and hypnotism, he had caused Austin to relive the events of the evening. The substance of the doctor’s testimony at trial disclosed what he, as Austin’s expert, had elicited from the appellant. His narration incuded Austin’s statement that at Turner’s, Austin 'had made a date with the victim to go to a tourist home to have intercourse. Nettie Scott and Austin had dropped off “Mickey” at her home after which the victim changed her mind about going to the tourist home and asked to be taken to her own residence. (Instead, as we know, the couple wound up at the scene of the crime.) In the course of an argument there, Nettie had slapped him, he hit her and knocked her out. When she came to and tried to run, as Austin told the expert, he knocked her out again and raped her. She regained consciousness and threatened to notify the authorities. He said to her “You are not going to tell anybody on me--cheating bitch, I will cut your heart out.” Thereupon Austin drew out his knife, producing the results previously described. The expert’s testimony as to what Austin had told him corroborated the Government’s case.
I have said enough to disclose the state of the record against which the trial judge was to frame his instructions to the jury. He was not bound to consider what some courts in Missouri and Tennessee and New Mexico may have said. There was no occasion for him to rely upon text writers and commentators. His duty was to take account of the statute applicable in the District of Columbia and the decisional law evolved both in this Circuit and in the Supreme Court of the United States. There was no suggestion in any such source that there can be a murder in the first degree under our statute only if it be committed “in cold blood.”
The trial judge could have seen, for example, that there is a distinction between what is an instantaneous killing and one which is deliberate and premeditated. My colleagues. have omitted pertinent language which I supply in italics as follows:
“There is nothing deliberate and premeditated about a killing which is done within a second or two after the accused first thinks of doing it; or, as *148we think the evidence shows, instantaneously, as appellant interrupted in his quarrel, turned and fired.” (Emphasis added.)6
The trial judge here obviously knew that there had been no suggestion of an instantaneous killing. On the contrary, in addition to the facts to be found and the inferences to be drawn from the Government’s case in chief, the defense itself had supplied its own version of both motive and action on the part of Austin.
The judge knew in considering the adequacy of time for deliberation that there must be “an appreciable period.” But he also knew that such period must be one which in his judgment, “under the circumstances, was sufficient time for deliberation.”7 The judge undoubtedly knew that the Supreme Court had considered the state of the law in this jurisdiction in Fisher v. United States, 328 U.S. 463, 470, 66 S.Ct. 1318, 1322, 90 L.Ed. 1382 (1946), where the Court said:
“The instructions, we think, were clear, definite, understandable and applicable to the facts developed by the testimony. We see no error in them.”
The instructions which the Court there had approved as here pertinent appear in 328 U.S. at 469, 66 S.Ct. at 1321. Speaking of the particular time or the period within which an assailant may give a “second thought” to his intended act, the approved instructions included the following :
“The law prescribes no particular period of time. It necessarily varies according to the peculiar circumstances of each case. Consideration of a matter may continue over a prolonged period — hours, days, or even longer. Then again, it may cover but a brief span of minutes. If one forming an intent to kill does not act instantly, but pauses and actually gives second thought and consideration to the intended act, he has, in fact deliberated. It is the fact of deliberation that is important, rather than the length of time it may have continued.”
Ill
As will have been observed, I discussed in Part I the basis upon which, in my view, the trial judge had correctly applied the rule so readily discernible from our opinions. Without even considering defense evidence thereafter adduced,8 I would not disturb his decision that the Government had made out a prima facie case, and the motion for acquittal then made was properly denied.
In Part II, I have discussed what I deem to be the governing principles and the background for the trial judge’s denial of the motion for acquittal after the defense had put on its evidence which, as previously noted, tended to corroborate what was already a sufficient case.
*149In light of the record as it then stood, the judge instructed the jury. He made it clear that all essential elements must be proved to the satisfaction of the jury beyond a reasonable doubt.9
10And so, in light of our law as applied to our statute the judge’s instructions went thus:
“Now as to the fourth element of first degree murder, that the defendant acted with premeditation and with deliberation. Now premeditation is the formation of the intent or plan to kill; the formation of a postitive design to kill. Deliberation means further, or to put it in another way — I am speaking now of deliberation — that deliberation means a further thought upon the plan or the design to kill. It must have been considered by the defendant Bernard Austin.
“It is your duty to determine from all of the facts and the circumstances which have been presented to you in this case that you may find surrounding the killing on April 24, some time between four-forty and five o’clock, whether there was any reflection and consideration amounting to deliberation by the defendant Bernard Austin. Now if there was such deliberation, even though it be of an exceedingly brief duration, that is in itself, so far as the deliberation is concerned, is sufficient. Because it is the fact of deliberation rather than the length of time it required that is important. Although some time, that is there must be some time to deliberate and to create in the mind of the defendant Austin the premeditation and the deliberation. As I have told you before, the time itself may be in the nature of hours, minutes, or seconds. But there must be the deliberation and the premeditation.” (Emphasis added.)
As the Supreme Court said in Fisher, supra, I think the instructions were clear, definite, understandable and applicable to the facts developed by the testimony.10 I would affirm the judgment of the District Court.

. Defense counsel in his opening statement announced that the defense was to be insanity. Austin’s attorney accordingly went on to outline the factors upon which he expected to base that defense. Of course no such evidence was adduced while the Government was establishing its prima facie ease. I do not here discuss the evidence upon which Austin later relied, but the jury was clearly justified in rejecting the insanity defense. McDonald v. United States, 114 U.S.App.D.C. 120, 312 F.2d 847 (en bane, 1962).

. Appellant’s counsel was later to argue in closing before the jury that there had been no evidence that whatever Austin drank had “significantly affected his behavior.” He asked: “Why did two eyewitnesses one hour before the crime find him not intoxicated ?”

. Will it be said that the judge was precluded from like conclusions?

. My colleagues’ “cold blood” theory finds support in Oapote’s work, to be sure; the criteria I deem applicable derive from our case law.

. Curley v. United States, 81 U.S.App.D.C. 389, 392, 393, 160 F.2d 229, 232, 233, cert, denied, 331 U.S. 837, 67 S.Ct. 1511, 91 L.Ed. 1850 (1947).

. Bullock v. United States, 74 App.D.C. 220, 221, 122 F.2d 213, 214 (1941). My colleagues omitted from their quotation from Bullock the language upon which all three judges agreed. The author of the opinion writing for himself only in the first portion of his text nevertheless exhibited in note 4 the portion of the instructions on deliberation which the majority approved.

. Bostic v. United States, 68 App.D.C. 167, 171, 94 F.2d 636, 640 (1937), cert. denied, 303 U.S. 635, 58 S.Ct. 523, 82 L.Ed. 1095 (1938). There, Judge Justin Miller abstracted the principles from various cases from which he concluded “that no particular length of time is necessary for deliberation,” 68 App.D.C. 169, 94 F.2d 638, and that period of time “does not require the lapse of days or hours, or even minutes.” 68 App.D.C. 170, 94 F. 2d 639. Cf. Frady v. United States, 121 U.S.App.D.C. 78, 348 F.2d 84, cert. denied, 382 U.S. 909 (1985).

. But see United States v. Gosser, 339 F. 2d 102, 110 (6 Cir. 1964), cert. denied, 382 U.S. 819, 86 S.Ct. 44, 15 L.Ed.2d 65 (1965) ; Jaben v. United States, 349 F.2d 913, 916, 917 (8 Cir. 1965) ; Hughes v. United States, 320 F.2d 459, 462 (10 Cir.), cert. denied, 375 U.S. 966, 84 S.Ct. 483, 11 L.Ed.2d 415 (1963).

. After a trial running through some three weeks, the jury took the case at 11:55 A.M. on November 2, 1965. It returned its verdicts that same day at 2:35 P.M., finding Austin guilty of murder in the first degree and recommending as a penalty, imprisonment for life.
The Government had expressly informed the jury that it did not ask for the death penalty.
It would seem beyond peradventure that the jury had no doubt whatever concerning Austin’s guilt.

. In my appraisal, no member of that jury could possibly have failed to understand that sufficient time meant adequate time, as we have been discussing the term. Interpolation of the single word “appreciable” could have added nothing to the clarity of the instructions as given.
It is fundamental that a party is not entitled to instructions in language chosen by him if the instructions as given are adapted to the issues and adequate for the guidance of the jury.
Nothing that I can see in our cases lays down the rule that for a murder to be
in the first degree, it must have been committed “In Cold Blood,” as Truman Capote has styled his work. But if that work is to be a reference, we might turn to page 330 and read:
“However, even an attorney of moderate talent can postpone doomsday year after year, for the system of appeals that pervades American jurisprudence amounts to a legalistic wheel of fortune, a game of chance, somewhat fixed in favor of the criminal, that the participants play interminably, first in the state courts, then through the Federal courts until the ultimate tribunal is reached — the United States Supreme Court. But even defeat there does not signify if petitioner’s counsel can discover or invent new grounds for appeal; usually they can, and so once more the wheel turns, and turns until, perhaps some years later, the prisoner arrives back at the nation’s highest court, probably only to begin again the slow cruel contest. But at intervals the wheel does pause to declare a winner — or, though with increasing rarity, a loser.