Court Opinion

ID: 9430010
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:28:36.812802+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:22.397508
License: Public Domain

Justice Rehnquist,
with whom The Chief Justice and Justice O’Connor join, dissenting.
In In re Winship, 397 U. S. 358 (1970), the trial judge in a bench trial held that although the State’s proof was sufficient to warrant a finding of guilt by a preponderance of the evidence, it was not sufficient to warrant such a finding beyond a reasonable doubt. The outcome of the case turned on which burden of proof was to be imposed on the prosecution. This Court held that the Constitution requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt in a criminal case, and Winship’s adjudication was set aside.
Today the Court sets aside Franklin’s murder conviction, but not because either the trial judge or the trial jury found that his guilt had not been proved beyond a reasonable doubt. The conviction is set aside because this Court concludes that one or two sentences out of several pages of instructions given by the judge to the jury could be read as allowing the jury to return a guilty verdict in the absence of proof establishing every statutory element of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. The Court reaches this result even though the judge admonished the jury at least four separate times that they could convict only if they found guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. The Court, instead of examining the charge to the jury as a whole, seems bent on piling syllogism on *332syllogism to prove that someone might understand a few sentences in the charge to allow conviction on less than proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Such fine parsing of the jury instructions given in a state-court trial is not required by anything in the United States Constitution.
Today’s decision needlessly extends our holding in Sandstrom v. Montana, 442 U. S. 510 (1979), to cases where the jury was not required to presume conclusively an element of a crime under state law. But even assuming the one or two sentences singled out by the Court might conceivably mislead, I do not believe that a reasonable person reading that language “in the context of the overall charge,” see Cupp v. Naughten, 414 U. S. 141, 147 (1973), could possibly arrive at the Court’s conclusion that constitutional error occurred here. I disagree with the Court’s legal standard, which finds constitutional error where a reasonable juror could have understood the charge in a particular manner. But even on the facts, the Court’s approach to the charge is more like that of a zealous lawyer bent on attaining a particular result than that of the “reasonable juror” referred to in Sandstrom.
In Sandstrom the jury was charged that “[t]he law presumes that a person intends the ordinary consequences of his voluntary acts.” 442 U. S., at 515 (emphasis supplied). As in this case, intent was an element of the crime charged in Sandstrom, and the Court was of the opinion that given the mandatory nature of the above charge it was quite possible that the jury “once having found [Sandstrom’s] act voluntary, would interpret the instruction as automatically directing a finding of intent.” Id., at 515-516. Such a presumption would have relieved the State entirely of the burden it had undertaken to prove that Sandstrom had killed intentionally — i. e., “purposely or knowingly” — and would have mandated a finding of that intent regardless of whether other evidence in the case indicated to the contrary. Id., at 520.
The Sandstrom Court went on, however, to discuss the constitutionality of a presumption that “did not conclusively *333establish intent but rather could be rebutted.” Id., at 515. The Court opined that such a presumption would be unconstitutional because it could be understood as shifting the burden to the defendant to prove that he lacked the intent to kill. Id., at 524 (citing Mullaney v. Wilbur, 421 U. S. 684 (1975)). In addition, the Court in a footnote stated that such a burden-shifting “mandatory rebuttable presumption” could not be cured by other language in the charge indicating that the State bore the burden of proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, because “the jury could have interpreted the . . . instructions as indicating that the presumption was a means by which proof beyond a reasonable doubt as to intent could be satisfied.” 422 U. S., at 519, n. 7.
It should be clear that the instructions at issue here— which provide that the challenged presumptions “may be rebutted” — are very different from the conclusive language at issue in Sandstrom. The conclusive presumption eliminates an element of the crime altogether; the rebuttable presumption here indicates that the particular element is still relevant, and may be shown not to exist. Nevertheless, the Court relies on the latter portion of the Sandstrom opinion, outlined above, as the precedent dictating its result. Ante, at 316-317, 319. The language relied upon is, of course, manifestly dicta, inasmuch as the Sandstrom Court had already held (1) that a mandatory conclusive presumption on intent is unconstitutional and (2) that a reasonable juror could have understood the instruction at issue as creating such a conclusive presumption.
Even if one accepts the Sandstrom dicta at face value, however, I do not agree with the Court that a “reasonable juror” listening to the charge “as a whole” could have understood the instructions as shifting the burden of disproving intent to the defendant. Before examining the convoluted reasoning that leads to the Court’s conclusion, it will be useful to set out the relevant portions of the charge as the jury heard them, and not in scattered pieces as they are found in *334the Court’s opinion. The trial court began by explaining the general presumption of innocence:
“I charge you that before the State is entitled to a verdict of conviction . . . the burden is upon the State of proving the defendant’s guilt as charged in such count beyond a reasonable doubt. . . .
“Now, reasonable doubt is just what that term implies. It’s a doubt based on reason. ... [A] reasonable doubt is the doubt of a fair-minded, impartial juror actively seeking for the truth and it may arise from a consideration of the evidence, from a conflict in the evidence or from a lack of evidence. If, upon a consideration of all the facts and circumstances of this case, your mind is wavering, unsettled, not satisfied, then that is the reasonable doubt under the law and if such a doubt rests upon your mind, it is your duty to give the defendant the benefit of that doubt and acquit him. If, on the other hand, no such doubt rests upon your mind, it would be equally your duty to return a verdict of guilty.
“Now, the defendant enters upon his trial with the presumption of innocence in his favor and this presumption, while not evidence, is yet in the nature of evidence and it remains with him throughout the trial, unless and until it is overcome by evidence sufficiently strong to satisfy you of his guilt to a reasonable and moral certainty and beyond a reasonable doubt.”
The court stated the burden of proof once more in its general instructions concerning evaluation of witness credibility, and then stated it again before it turned to more specific instructions:
“Now, Ladies and Gentlemen, the burden is upon the State to prove to a reasonable and moral certainty and beyond a reasonable doubt every material allegation in each count of this indictment and I charge you further, *335that there is no burden on the defendant to prove anything. The burden is on the State.
“Now I give you in charge, certain definitions as found in the Criminal Code of the State of Georgia.
“A crime is a violation of a statute of this State in which there shall be a union of joint operation of act or omission to act, and intention or criminal negligence. A person shall not be found guilty of any crime committed by misfortune or accident where it satisfactorily appears there was no criminal scheme or undertaking or intention or criminal negligence. The acts of a person of sound mind and discretion are presumed to be the product of the person’s will, but the presumption may be rebutted. A person of sound mind and discretion is presumed to intend the natural and probable consequences of his acts but the presumption may be rebutted. A person will not be presumed to act with criminal intention but the trier of facts, that is, the Jury, may find criminal intention upon a consideration of the words, conduct, demeanor, motive and all other circumstances connected with the act for which the accused is prosecuted.” (Emphasis supplied.)
After instructing the jury on the specific elements of Count I, charging respondent with the kidnaping of the nurse, the Court went on to instruct on the elements of murder:
“I charge you that the law of Georgia defines murder as follows: A person commits murder when he unlawfully and with malice aforethought, either express or implied, causes the death of another human being. Express malice is that deliberate intention unlawfully to take away the life of a fellow creature which is manifested by external circumstances capable of proof. Malice shall be implied where no considerable provocation appears and where all the circumstances of the killing show an abandoned and malignant heart.
*336“Now, you will see that malice is an essential ingredient in murder as charged in this indictment in Count II, and it must exist before the alleged homicide can be murder. Malice in its legal sense is not necessarily ill will or hatred; it is the unlawful, deliberate intention to kill a human being without justification or mitigation or excuse, which intention must exist at the time of the killing. . . .
“Members of the Jury, I charge you that it is not encumbent upon the accused to prove an absence of malice, if the evidence for the prosecution shows facts which may excuse or justify the homicide. The accused is not required to produce evidence of mitigation, justification or excuse on his part to the crime of murder. Whether mitigation, justification or excuse is shown by the evidence on the part of the State, it is not required of the accused to prove an absence of malice, if the evidence for the State shows facts which may excuse or justify the homicide. But it is for you, the members of the Jury to say after a consideration of all the facts and circumstances in the case, whether or not malice, express or implied, exists in the case.” (Emphasis supplied.)
In Cupp v. Naughten, 414 U. S. 141 (1973), we dealt with a constitutional challenge to an instruction that “every witness is presumed to speak the truth,” in the context of a criminal trial where the defense presented no witnesses. We there reaffirmed “the well-established proposition that a single instruction to a jury may not be judged in artificial isolation, but must be viewed in the context of the overall charge.” Id., at 146-147 (citing Boyd v. United States, 271 U. S. 104, 107 (1926)). We noted that if a particular instruction was erroneous a reviewing court still must ask “whether the ailing instruction by itself so infected the entire trial that the resulting conviction violates due process.” 414 U. S., at 147. In reaching our conclusion that the instruction at issue in Cupp did not violate due process, we noted that the jury had *337been fully informed of the State’s burden to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. We also pointed out that the instruction concerning the presumption of truthfulness had been accompanied by an instruction that in assessing a witness’ credibility the jury should be attentive to the witness’ own manner and words. We concluded that these instructions sufficiently allowed the jury to exercise its own judgment on the question of a witness’ truthfulness; we also found no undue pressure on the defendant to take the stand and rebut the State’s testimony, since the instruction indicated that such rebuttal could be founded on the State’s own evidence. Id., at 149.
I see no meaningful distinction between Cupp and the case at bar. Here the jury was instructed no less than four times that the State bore the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. This language was accompanied early in the charge by a detailed discussion indicating that the jurors were the judges of their own reasonable doubt, that this doubt could arise after taking into account all the circumstances surrounding the incident at issue, and that where such doubt existed it was the jurors’ duty to acquit. Four sentences prior to the offending language identified by the Court the jury was explicitly charged that “there is no burden on the defendant to prove anything.” Immediately following that language the jury was charged that a person “will not be presumed to act with criminal intention,” but that the jury could find such intention based upon the circumstances surrounding the act. The jury was then charged on Georgia’s definition of malice, an essential element of murder which includes (1) deliberate intent to kill (2) without justification or mitigation or excuse. Again, the jury was explicitly charged that “it is not incumbent upon the accused to prove an absence of malice, if the evidence for the prosecution shows facts which may excuse or justify the homicide.”
The Court nevertheless concludes, upon reading the charge in its entirety, that a “reasonable juror” could have *338understood the instruction to mean (1) that the State had satisfied its burden of proving intent to kill by introducing evidence of the defendant’s acts — drawing, aiming, and firing the gun — the “natural and probable consequences” of which were the death in question; (2) that upon proof of these acts the burden shifted to the defendant to disprove that he had acted with intent to kill; and (3) that if the defendant introduced no evidence or the jury was unconvinced by his evidence, the jury was required to find that the State had proved intent to kill even if the State’s proof did not convince them of the defendant’s intent.
The reasoning which leads to this conclusion would appeal only to a lawyer, and it is indeed difficult to believe that “reasonable jurors” would have arrived at it on their own. It runs like this. First, the Court states that a “reasonable juror” could understand the particular offending sentences, considered in isolation, to shift the burden to the defendant of disproving his intent to kill. Ante, at 318. The Court then proceeds to examine other portions of the charge, to determine whether they militate against this understanding. It casually dismisses the “general instructions on the State’s burden of persuasion,” relying on the Sandstrom footnote which stated that the burden-shifting instruction could be read consistently with the State’s general burden because “[t]he jury could have interpreted the two sets of instructions as indicating that the presumption was a means by which proof beyond a reasonable doubt as to intent could be satisfied.” Ante, at 319.
Pausing here for a moment, I note that I am not at all sure that this expository fast footwork is as applicable where, unlike in Sandstrom, the presumption created by the charge is not conclusive, but rebuttable. Since in this case the presumption was “rebuttable,” the obvious question is: “re-buttable by what?” The Court’s analysis must assume that a “reasonable juror” understood the presumption to be a means *339for satisfying the State’s burden unless rebutted by the defendant. The italicized words, of course, are not included in the charge in this case, but if the jurors reasonably believed that the presumption could be rebutted by other means — for example, by the circumstances surrounding the incident— then the Court’s analysis fails. But I find the Court’s assumption unrealistic in any event, because if the jurors understood the charge as the Court posits then that conclusion was reached in the face of the contradictory preceding statement that the defendant had no burden to prove anything.
Undaunted, the Court does not even mention the italicized portion of the charge. Instead, it proceeds to dispose of the sentence immediately following the challenged sentences, which states that a person will not be presumed to act with “criminal intent.” With respect to this language, the Court first speculates that it might have been directed, not to the “intent” element of malice, but rather to the element of malice which requires that the defendant act without justification or excuse. Thus, the Court explains that its “reasonable juror” could have reconciled the two apparently conflicting sentences by deciding “that the instructions related to different elements of the crime and were therefore not contradictory — that he could presume intent to kill but not the absence of justification or provocation.” Ante, at 321.
This statement defies belief. Passing the obvious problem that both sentences speak to the defendant’s “intent,” and not to “justification or provocation,” the Court has presumed that the jurors hearing this charge reconciled two apparently contradictory sentences by neatly attributing them to separate elements of Georgia’s definition of “malice” — no small feat for laymen — and did so even though they had not yet been charged on the element of malice. Either the Court is attributing qualities to the average juror that are found in very few lawyers, or it perversely reads the instructions as a *340“looking-glass charge” which, when held to a mirror, reads more clearly in the opposite direction.*
Alternatively, the Court suggests that the sentences dealing with the presumptions on intent are flatly contradictory, and that the charge therefore is defective since there is no way to determine which instruction a reasonable juror would have followed. The Court reasoned in this regard:
“Nothing in these specific sentences or in the charge as a. whole makes clear to the jury that one of these contradictory instructions carries more weight than the other. Language that merely contradicts and does not explain a constitutionally infirm instruction will not suffice to absolve the infirmity.” Ante, at 322.
It may well be that the Court’s technical analysis of the charge holds together from a legal standpoint, but its tortured reasoning is alone sufficient to convince me that no “reasonable juror” followed that path. It is not that I think jurors are not conscientious, or that I believe jurors disregard troublesome trial court instructions; I agree with the Court that we generally must assume that jurors strive to follow the law as charged. See ante, at 324-325, n. 9. Rather, I simply do not believe that a “reasonable juror,” upon listening to the above charge, could have interpreted it as shifting the burden to the defendant to disprove intent, and as requiring the juror to follow the presumption even if he was not satisfied with the State’s proof on that element.
To reach this conclusion the juror would have had to disregard three express statements — that the defendant had no burden to prove anything, that “criminal intent” was not to be presumed, and that there was no burden on the defendant to disprove malice. In addition, he would have had to do so under circumstances where a far more “reasonable” interpre*341tation was available. The challenged language stated that the presumption could be rebutted. Throughout the charge the jury was told that they were to listen to all the evidence and draw their own conclusions, based upon a witness’ demeanor and words and their own common sense. They were told that the burden of proof rested on the State, and they were told that circumstances surrounding the acts in question would provide a basis for drawing various conclusions with respect to intent and malice. The reasonable interpretation of the challenged charge is that, just as in Cupp, the presumption could be rebutted by the circumstances surrounding the acts, whether presented by the State or the defendant. Such an interpretation would not require a juror to disregard any possibly conflicting instructions; it also would have been consistent with the entire tone of the charge from start to finish. See McInerney v. Berman, 621 F. 2d 20, 24 (CA1 1980) (“[I]t will be presumed that [a juror] will not isolate a particular portion of the charge and ascribe to it more importance than the rest”).
Perhaps more importantly, however, the Court’s reasoning set out above indicates quite clearly that where a particular isolated instruction can be read as burden-shifting the Court is not disposed to find that instruction constitutionally harmless in the absence of specific language elsewhere in the charge which addresses and cures that instruction. See also ante, at 322-323, n. 8. This reasoning cannot be squared with Cupp, in which this Court emphasized that “the question is not whether the trial court failed to isolate and cure a particular ailing instruction, but rather whether the ailing instruction by itself so infected the entire trial that the resulting conviction violates due process.” 414 U. S., at 147. It is true that the problems raised here probably could be alleviated if the words “is presumed” were merely changed to “may be presumed,” thereby making the presumption permissive, see ante, at 316; Lamb v. Jernigan, 683 F. 2d 1332, 1339-1340 (CA11 1982); McInerney, supra, at 24, and admittedly the Court’s analysis of the charge establishes a *342rule that is easier in application in the appellate courts. But that is not the question. Cupp indicates that due process is not violated in every case where an isolated sentence implicates constitutional problems, and the Court’s hypertechnical arguments only highlight how far it has strayed from the norm of “fundamental fairness” in order to invalidate this conviction.
Thus, even accepting the Court’s reasonable-juror test, I cannot agree that the charge read as a whole was constitutionally infirm. But quite apart from that, I would take a different approach than the Court does with respect to the applicable legal standard. It appears that under the Court’s approach it will reverse a conviction if a “reasonable juror” hypothetically might have understood the charge unconstitutionally to shift a burden of proof, even if it was unlikely that a single juror had such an understanding. I believe that it must at least be likely that a juror so understood the charge before constitutional error can be found. Where as here a Sandstrom error is alleged involving not a conclusive presumption, but a rebuttable presumption, language in the charge indicating the State’s general burden of proof and the jury’s duty to examine all surrounding facts and circumstances generally should be sufficient to dissipate any constitutional infirmity. Otherwise we risk finding constitutional error in a record such as this one, after finely parsing through the elements of state crimes that are really far removed from the problems presented by the burden of proof charge in Winship. I do not believe that the Court must inject itself this far into the state criminal process to protect the fundamental rights of criminal defendants. I dissent and would reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals.

“[Alice] puzzled over this for some time, but at last a bright thought struck her. ‘Why, it’s a Looking-glass book, of course! And, if I hold it up to a glass, the words will all go the right way again.’” L. Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass 19-20 (1950).