EDWARD BROWN v. UNITED STATES, 139 A.3d 870

Victim Torita Burt visited Edward Brown’s apartment; Brown struck her on the head with the blunt end of a hatchet. Burt suffered a subdural hematoma and required nine stitches.
Brown admitted striking Burt but claimed self-defense during a struggle over a hatchet after accusing Burt of stealing his property; prosecution presented testimony that Burt was pinned and forced to have sex before leaving.
Brown was tried by jury on charges including assault with a dangerous weapon and assault with significant bodily injury; acquitted of sexual abuse and kidnapping but convicted of the two assault counts.
At trial Brown requested a defense-of-personal-property instruction and a definition of “serious bodily harm” (i.e., the level of harm that makes force “deadly” and thus precludes the property-defense). The court gave the property-defense instruction but declined to define “serious bodily harm.”
Brown asked the court to adopt the Nixon definition of “serious bodily injury” (unconsciousness, extreme pain, protracted disfigurement, protracted loss or impairment, or substantial risk of death) as the definition of “serious bodily harm.” The trial court refused, preferring to leave the term to juror commonsense.
The D.C. Court of Appeals held the trial court should have instructed using the Nixon definition but found the omission harmless on this record and therefore affirmed the convictions.

Issue	Brown's Argument	Government's Argument	Held
Whether "serious bodily harm" in the property-defense instruction must be defined using the Nixon definition of "serious bodily injury"	The term has a fixed legal meaning identical to Nixon and the jury needed that definition to distinguish deadly vs nondeadly force	The common-law property-defense term may be left to the jury’s commonsense; no fixed borrowed definition required	The court held the Nixon definition applies and the trial court should have given it
Whether refusing Brown’s requested definition was reversible instructional error	Failure to define could lead jury to treat Brown’s force as deadly and foreclose the property-defense	The instruction as given left the threshold question to jury judgment and was adequate	The court concluded the instruction was legally deficient (instructional error)
Whether the instructional error requires reversal (harmlessness)	Error likely affected jury’s verdict because it related to threshold of deadly force	Any error was harmless because Brown primarily argued self-defense, not property-defense, and the force used was unreasonable as matter of law	The court held the error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt and affirmed convictions

Nixon v. United States, 730 A.2d 145 (D.C. 1999) (defines "serious bodily injury" for aggravated assault)
McPhaul v. United States, 452 A.2d 371 (D.C. 1982) (deadly force includes force likely to cause death or serious bodily harm)
United States v. Peterson, 483 F.2d 1222 (D.C. Cir. 1973) (historical support for deadly-force definition)
Perry v. United States, 422 F.2d 697 (D.C. Cir. 1969) (reversal where jury lacked guidance on boundaries of self-defense)
Gatlin v. United States, 833 A.2d 995 (D.C. 2003) (limits on property-defense: force must be reasonable and proportional)
Wilson-Bey v. United States, 903 A.2d 818 (D.C. 2006) (en banc) (review standards for jury instruction content)
Savage-El v. United States, 902 A.2d 120 (D.C. 2006) (instructional-error analysis in context; no automatic rule distinguishing elements vs definitional terms)
Neder v. United States, 527 U.S. 1 (1999) (harmless error principles for omitted or misstated elements)
Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18 (1967) (constitutional harmless-error standard)
Kotteakos v. United States, 328 U.S. 750 (1946) (non-constitutional harmless-error standard)