Court Opinion

ID: 9443423
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 19:19:38.129299+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:28.789269
License: Public Domain

FAHY, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
Convinced that the court erred in instructing the jury on the difference between first and second degree murder and in defining the latter, I think a new trial is required. I agree with the disposition made of the other questions presented.
The trial court charged the jury at one point as follows:
“In order to constitute murder in the first degree there must be a purpose and an intent to kill, coupled with premeditation and deliberation * *
This was a correct statement of the law. But the court added:
“Murder in the second degree is an unlawful killing with malice, but without a purpose or intent to kill and without premeditation and deliberation.” (Emphasis supplied.)
This was in part erroneous, because the homicide might have been second degree murder even though committed with a purpose or intent to kill. It is the absence of deliberation and premeditation, not the absence of purpose or intent, which makes the difference. This error was repeated in the following manner:
“ * * * if you believe beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant purposely killed Thomas Carnes with malice and premeditation and deliberation, your verdict should be guilty as indicted”—
that is, of first degree murder; but the court added:
“If you believe that the defendant killed Carnes with malice, but without a purpose to do so and with no deliberation or premeditation, your verdict should be guilty of murder in the second degree.” (Emphasis supplied.)
Clearly the jury might have concluded from these instructions that if they found a purpose to kill it amounted to deliberation and premeditation or, in any event, that murder in the first degree had been committed.
True the court made the correct statement:
“Murder in the second degree differs from murder in the first degree in that murder in the second degree may be committed without a purpose to kill and without premeditation and deliberation. * * * ” (Emphasis supplied.)
But this was immediately explained by a sentence1 indicating when an intention to kill may be absent in second degree murder. This of course did not fill the need for instructing the jury that such an intention may be present in second degree murder in circumstances such as disclosed by the evidence in this case.
The matter became of paramount and critical importance by reason of an in*943cident now to be related. After the jury had retired they returned for further instructions, the foreman advising the court,
“We would like to know the first degree and second degree charge, the difference between it." (Emphasis supplied.)
The error of the instructions regarding the difference was then repeated:
“If a person kills another purposely with deliberate and premeditated malice, he is guilty of murder in the first degree.
“In order to constitute murder in the first degree there must be a purpose and an intent to kill. There must be coupled with this purpose and intent to kill premeditation and deliberation.
“Now, that merely means that there is a turning over in the mind of the defendant a conceived plan or design whereby he is going to take and does take a human life. That is murder in the first degree.
“Murder in the second degree is an unlawful killing with malice but without a purpose or an intent to kill, and without premeditation and deliberation.” (Emphasis supplied.)
This is not cured by the further statement, immediately following, like that previously discussed, that the difference is that second degree murder “may be” committed without a purpose to kill. Here again there is the omission to clear away the confusion at the very time the jury explicitly indicated the matter was not clear to them. It was essential to a full and fair instruction, in such a case as this, that the jury understand they could convict of second degree murder though there was a purpose to kill provided the purpose was not accompanied by deliberation and premeditation. If the jury believed, as the evidence permitted, that the killing was purposeful or intentional, the instructions given well might have led them to conclude they were required to bring in a verdict of first degree murder. This is not the law. An intent to kill is not inconsistent with second degree murder. Under certain circumstances such an intention may be present in that degree. State v. Johnson, 1931, 211 Iowa 874, 234 N.W. 263; State v. O’Donnell, 1916, 176 Iowa 337, 157 N.W. 870; see Bullock v. United States, 1941, 74 App. D.C. 220, 122 F.2d 213. Miller, Criminal Law, 277 (1934). This should have been made clear. The decisive difference between first and second degree is not intent or purpose, which might be present in either, but premeditation and deliberation.2 Intent or purpose must be present in first degree murder but might be present in second degree, for an intentional killing without premeditation and deliberation may be murder in the second degree, Bullock v. United States, supra.
The error no doubt is attributable to a misconstruction of our statutory definitions of the degrees of murder. Omitting, as not now relevant, homicide by means of poison or in perpetrating or attempting to perpetrate a penitentiary or other specified offense, § 22-2401, D.C.Code (1940), first degree murder occurs when one,
“ * * * kills another purposely * * * of deliberate and premeditated malice * * *.” (§ 22-2401)
Second degree murder occurs, § 22-2403, when one kills another,
“ * * * with malice aforethought, except as provided in section[s] 22-2401 * *
These provisions are not to be read as though the clause “except as provided in section[s] 22-2401 * * * ” excludes from second degree murder every purposeful killing since § 22-2401 includes purpose as an element of first degree murder. Where there are deliberation and premeditation there necessarily is purpose and, therefore, the ingredients of first degree. Where, however, there is purpose but not deliberation and premeditation the crime may be second degree. The jury were never so instructed and indeed were led to believe *944the homicide could not he second degree murder if there was a purpose to kill.
This error, which alone in my opinion requires a new trial, is emphasized by the instruction on premeditation and deliberation, stated to be present when,
“ * * * there is a turning over in the mind of the defendant a conceived plan or design whereby he is going to take and does take a human life. * * *»
It would have been sounder to have given the jury a fuller conception of the essentials of premeditation and deliberation, as was done in Pritchett v. United States, 1950, 87 U.S.App.D.C. 374, 185 F.2d 438, certiorari denied, 1951, 341 U.S. 905, 71 S.Ct. 608, 95 L.Ed. 1344 ;3 in Bullock v. United States, supra; and in Fisher v. United States, 1946, 328 U.S. 463, at page 468, 66 S.Ct. 1318, 90 L.Ed. 1382, affirming, 1945, 80 U.S.App.D.C. 96, 149 F.2d 28. No specific mention was made that in first degree murder an appreciable time must elapse between formation of the intent to kill and commission of the fatal act itself. See Bullock v. United States, supra. To say that the intent to kill need be turned over in the mind of the accused is not precisely the same as saying that an appreciable time need elapse between formation of intent and the doing of the homicidal act. This failure to point up with clarity the appreciable time factor aggravated the error previously discussed. From all of this the jury could well have equated premeditation and deliberation with purpose or intent. The result would be to deprive of all meaning the statutory distinction between first and second degree murder. See Bullock v. United States, supra. Aside, however, from the omission to develop the meaning of deliberation and premeditation, if the accused is to be executed it should be only after conviction by a jury which has been instructed correctly as to the difference between the crime for which death is the penalty and second degree murder for which death is not the penalty.
I would grant a new trial.

. The sentence referred to reads:
“ * * * A killing under the influence of passion induced by an insuflicient provocation may be murder in the second degree, or an unintentional killing may be murder in the second degree if it is accompanied by malice.”

. I am not now considering first degree murder committed in connection with a felony where premeditation and deliberation might not he necessary. (§ 22-2401, D.C.Code (1940) )

. The text of the charge appears in the record on file in the office of the) Clerk: of the Supreme Court.