Clark v. Louisiana State Penitentiary
| Decision Date | 10 February 1983 |
| Docket Number | No. 81-3792,81-3792 |
| Citation | 697 F.2d 699 |
| Parties | Colin CLARK, Petitioner-Appellant, v. LOUISIANA STATE PENITENTIARY and Attorney General, State of Louisiana, Respondents-Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit |
Richard E. Shapiro, Div. of Public Interest Advocacy, Dept. of Public Advocate, Trenton, N.J., for petitioner-appellant.
Kay Kirkpatrick, John W. Sinquefield, Asst. Dist. Atty., Baton Rouge, La., for respondents-appellees.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana.
ON PETITION FOR REHEARING AND SUGGESTION FOR REHEARING EN BANC
(Opinion December 7, 1982, 5 Cir., 1982, 694 F.2d 75)
Before INGRAHAM, REAVLEY and POLITZ, Circuit Judges.
We have set aside petitioner's conviction for first degree murder because of the requirements of the Fourteenth Amendment. We only mentioned the problem of the death sentence and the Eighth Amendment because of the overlapping error and the recent decision in Enmund v. Florida, --- U.S. ----, 102 S.Ct. 3368, 73 L.Ed.2d 1140 (1982). We do not suggest that the Fourteenth Amendment forbids a state from defining criminal culpability so as to allow an assumed or deemed assent to the act of a coconspirator in a different crime. There is no bar in the Fourteenth Amendment against the crime of felony murder. When, however, the state law defines the crime to include a state of mind actively desiring that death or great bodily harm occur to another, the trial court may not lighten the state's burden, or dispense with that essential element of the crime, by converting the crime into felony murder.
Louisiana has made specific subjective intent to kill an essential element of the crime of first degree murder. La.Rev.Stat.Ann. Secs. 14:30, 14:10(1). In State v. Holmes, 388 So.2d 722 (La.1980) the same erroneous argument was presented to the jury as was made in the present case, and the Louisiana Supreme Court said (because the statutory requirement of specific intent means that the offender must have subjectively desired the prohibited result) Contrary to the claims of the district attorney, where specific intent is required, one co-conspirator does not necessarily act as the agent for the other. The state has as to the accused on trial the burden of proving his specific intent beyond a reasonable doubt.
In the trial of Colin Clark the court instructed the jury to the contrary, and thereby denied him due process of law.
The state prosecutor compounds his...
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