People v. ButlerPeople v. Butler
Lead Opinion
OPINION OF THE COURT
The People appeal from an order of the Appellate Division that reversed, on the law, a judgment of Westchester County Court. Defendant was convicted after a jury trial of murder in
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During the night of April 20, 1990, the homicide victim Anderson was socializing with some friends in her Yonkers apartment building. She decided to visit her cousin, a taxi dispatcher, at his company’s office. She went there and, at approximately 2:00 a.m., she met her cousin and defendant Butler. The trio talked, drank beer, smoked marijuana, and inhaled cocaine for several hours. At approximately 4:45 a.m., the taxi dispatcher called an end to the "party” and offered defendant and decedent a taxi ride. The latter two were described as being engaged in friendly conversation during the taxi ride as they next proceeded to decedent’s apartment at about 5:00 a.m. Decedent was last seen alive at 6:00 a.m. Neighbors discovered decedent lying semiconscious on the floor just outside her apartment, covered with blood, at approximately 7:00 a.m. She died in the hospital emergency room from three head contusions and 34 kitchen knife stab wounds, of which nine were fatal.
The police investigated, arrested and charged defendant in the killing. He was tried before a jury and requested jury instructions on intoxication and lesser-included homicide levels of manslaughter in the first degree and second degrees. The trial court gave the intoxication instruction, but refused the request with respect to the lesser-included offenses. The court reasoned that based on the brutality and ferocity of the
The jury’s conviction was overturned by the Appellate Division, on the law (
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At the outset, the correctness of the intoxication instruction is not before us. For purposes of the dispositive analysis of the instructional issue involving the lesser-included manslaughter offenses, the intoxication instruction, although based on a thin evidentiary predicate, is deemed warranted in this case (see, People v Perry,
Contrary to defendant’s assertions, the Appellate Division’s rationale, and the discrete instructional trial court error propounded by Judge Levine, we conclude that a trial court’s decision to give a defendant an intoxication instruction does not mechanically trigger a corresponding obligation for the trial court to give defendant complementary lesser-included offenses instructions within the homicide classification. The two species of instructions — Penal Law § 15.25 (intoxication) and CPL 300.50 (charging lesser-included offense) — may often be intertwined, but they are distinct and not inexorably and inextricably linked for trial instructional rubrics or for appellate review evaluation. Independent consideration of the complex variety of factual and evidentiary situations facing trial courts should control their rulings and our review. That has been the guiding lesson of our precedents in this area. In other words, the evidence of the particular case, not pure or abstract logic, governs.
Thus, the holding in this case realistically respects the view that in a great many cases in which an intoxication instruction may be warranted and is given, some corresponding lesser-included offense instruction might be necessitated. The
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The textual guide on lesser-included offense instructions is found in CPL 300.50:
"1. In submitting a count of an indictment to the jury, the court in its discretion may, in addition to submitting the greatest offense which it is required to submit, submit in the alternative any lesser included offense if there is a reasonable view of the evidence which would support a finding that the defendant committed such lesser offense but did not commit the greater. If there is no reasonable view of the evidence which would support such a finding, the court may not submit such lesser offense * * *
"2. If the court is authorized by subdivision one to submit a lesser included offense and is requested by either party to do so, it must do so.”
Despite a defendant’s request, a lesser-included offense cannot be submitted to the jury unless two requirements are met. The lesser and the greater offenses must be analyzed in such a manner that it would be impossible to commit the greater offense without, at the same time, committing the lesser offense. A reasonable view of the evidence must also support defendant’s guilt on the lesser offense, but not on the greater offense (People v Cabassa,
The trial court, therefore, has the responsibility — usually in tandem but occasionally independent of its intoxication evidence and instruction assessment — to make a thorough and careful evidentiary assessment in the first instance to determine whether the evidence may reasonably support defendant’s guilt on the lesser, but not the greater, offense (People v Cabassa, supra, at 728). Then-Judge Fuld cautioned in a seminal case that "a court should avoid doing anything, such as submitting lower crimes in an inappropriate case, that would constitute an invitation to the jury to foreswear its duty and return a compromise or otherwise unwarranted verdict. Or, to express the matter in somewhat different terms, the jury’s power to dispense mercy, by favoring the defendant despite the evidence, should not be allowed so to dominate the trial proceedings as to impede or interfere with the jury’s primary fact-finding function” (People v Mussenden,
We are unpersuaded that, generally and especially not in this case, an arguable intoxication instruction inexorably binds the trial court to instruct automatically on lesser-in-eluded manslaughter offenses, irrespective of particularized evidentiary evaluation. Intent to kill and intent to injure seriously have been said to require the same cognitive abilities (see, Commentary to Criminal Jury Instructions, 1 CJI[NY] 9.45, at 516). Taking this view, an intoxication instruction on a second degree murder charge does not compel an instruction down to manslaughter in the first degree (see, Penal Law § 125.20). The Court unanimously coalesces on that aspect and concludes that the Appellate Division erred in ordering a new trial on that theory. Even were the intent element for intentional manslaughter — intent to seriously physically injure— viewed as one of the " 'fine gradations along * * * [the] single spectrum of culpability’ ” (see, People v Green,
Likewise, an intoxication instruction on murder second
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Procedure, policy, practicalities and sound statutory interpretation and harmonization support reversal in favor of the People’s appeal in this case. We recognize the procedural conundrum that the intoxication instruction may sometimes logically engender. It is not incumbent on this Court, however, in these circumstances, to join two distinct, though related, instructional species into an indissoluble union.
The court’s thorough set of instructions to the jury included this unequivocal, easily understood choice:
"The question is one of degree and it is for you to decide whether the defendant was so intoxicated as to be unable to form the required intent. I will explain later the intent relative to each of the crimes charged.
"Remember, however, that since the People bear the burden of establishing that the defendant acted with the requisite intent you must find the defendant not guilty of a particular crime because of the evidence of intoxication [if] they were unable to prove that the defendant acted with the required intent”.
Thus, if the intoxication feature — emphasizing the Penal Law dictate that intoxication is neither a defense nor affirmative defense — were believed and credited, the jury would have been obligated to acquit defendant on the only indictment count before it — murder in the second degree.
The People in this case rely heavily on the nature and brutality of the slaying to support the argument that defendant’s actions belie his having formed anything other than intent to kill, irrespective of the arguable intoxication palliative offered to the jury. Reciting the severity of the numerous wounds, nine of which were individually fatal, the People assert that defendant could have acted neither recklessly nor with intent merely to seriously injure (see, e.g., People v Tai,
In the end, the burden remains always on the People to establish beyond a reasonable doubt that defendant, despite the possible effect of the arguable intoxication evidence, was capable of and did form the necessary intent to kill. The jury did so find. Had it acquitted defendant, under the precise and thorough and correct instructions given, it would be attributable to a failure of the People to satisfy their burden of proof on intentional murder, not that defendant in these circumstances was realistically guilty of some lesser degree of vicious
Accordingly, the order of the Appellate Division should be reversed and the case remitted to the Appellate Division for further proceedings in accordance with CPL 470.25 (2) (d) and 470.40 (2) (b).
Dissenting Opinion
(dissenting). I respectfully dissent. In my view, the trial court erred in refusing to submit to the jury the lesser included offense of manslaughter in the second degree (Penal Law § 125.15 [1] [reckless homicide]). Thus, I would affirm the order of reversal and remittal for a new trial, but on a ground different from that adopted by the Appellate Division.
As the majority notes, we must assume for purposes of this appeal that the proof of defendant’s consumption of drugs and alcohol and their effect on him constituted "sufficient evidence of intoxication in the record for a reasonable person to entertain a doubt as to the element of intent [to cause the victim Anderson’s death] on that basis” (People v Perry,
Applying the required CPL 300.50 (1) analysis here, I also agree with the majority that, on the undisputed facts of this case, notably the vicious infliction of 34 knife stab wounds to Anderson’s body, nine of which were fatal, submission of the lesser included offense of manslaughter in the first degree under Penal Law § 125.20 (1) was not required, and that the Appellate Division erred in so holding. There simply was no evidentiary basis in the record for the jury to have found that defendant’s intoxication created a reasonable doubt as to his intent to cause the victim’s death (the culpability element of murder in the second degree) but not as to his intent to cause
At first blush, the same reasoning would seem likewise to apply to the intentional murder lesser included offense of manslaughter, second degree, as "recklessly caus[ing] the death of [Anderson]” (Penal Law § 125.15 [1]); that is, that the jury had no basis upon which to conclude that defendant’s intoxication negated his specific intent to kill but did not negate his awareness and conscious disregard of the substantial and unjustifiable risk that his conduct would cause Anderson’s death (see, definition of "recklessly”, Penal Law § 15.05 [3]). Indeed, it is this reasoning that forms the basis of the majority’s conclusion that, in view of the ferocity of defendant’s attack on Anderson, "[t]he crime was intentional murder * * * or nothing” (majority opn, at 634).
As both I and the majority have already accepted, however, in this case there was sufficient evidence of intoxication in the record for a reasonable person to entertain a doubt as to the element of intent to kill. What the majority fails to consider in their analysis is that the Legislature has imposed by statute a limitation on the use of evidence of intoxication to negate criminal culpability: evidence of intoxication cannot be used to negate recklessness (Penal Law § 15.05 [3]; People v Register,
As we held in People v Register (
"The rationale is readily apparent: the element of recklessness itself — defined as conscious disregard of a substantial risk — encompasses the risks created by defendant’s conduct in getting drunk. "Ultimately, the only intended purpose in permitting the jury to consider intoxication in a reckless crime is to negate defendant’s awareness and disregard of the risk. It is precisely that point — the inconsistency of permitting reckless and otherwise aggravating conduct to negate an aspect of the offense — that persuades us that intoxication evidence should be excluded whenever recklessness is an element of the offense” (id., at 280).
It follows from the foregoing that, if in this case manslaughter, second degree (reckless homicide), had been submitted as a lesser included offense to intentional murder, the trial court would have appropriately instructed the jury not to consider the evidence of intoxication in determining defendant’s awareness and conscious disregard that his conduct in inflicting 34 stab wounds (nine of which were fatal) upon the victim would create a substantial and unjustifiable risk of her death. Without consideration of the effect of intoxication on defendant’s mental state, clearly the jury could have inferred defendant’s "conscious disregard” from his acts alone.
It appears self-evident that, in performing the required analysis under CPL 300.50 (1) to determine whether manslaughter, second degree (reckless homicide), should have been submitted here as a lesser included offense to intentional murder, we must take into account that the jury would, thus, have been instructed to consider the effect of defendant’s intoxication on his guilt of murder, but not on his guilt of manslaughter in the second degree. That being so, the conclusion appears inescapable that there would indeed have been a rational basis for the jury to have acquitted defendant of murder and yet convicted defendant of manslaughter, second degree (People v Scarborough, supra), and, therefore, the trial court committed reversible error in failing to submit that lesser offense to the jury. Accordingly, I vote to affirm the Appellate Division’s order reversing and remitting for a new trial.
Chief Judge Kaye and Judges Simons, Smith and Ciparick concur with Judge Bellacosa; Judge Levine dissents and
Order reversed and case remitted to the Appellate Division, Second Department, for further proceedings in accordance with the opinion herein.