Commonwealth v. Mouzon

• Decision Date: 21 August 2012
• Citation: 53 A.3d 738
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellant v. Darrin MOUZON, Appellee.
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

53 A.3d 738

COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellant

v.Darrin MOUZON, Appellee.

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

Argued Sept. 15, 2011.

Decided Aug. 21, 2012.

Hugh J. Burns Jr., Philadelphia, Peter Carr, Philadelphia District Attorney's Office, for Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

Mitchell S. Strutin, for Darrin Mouzon.

BEFORE: CASTILLE, C.J., SAYLOR, EAKIN, BAER, TODD, McCAFFERY, ORIE MELVIN, JJ.

OPINION

Chief Justice CASTILLE.

This appeal by the Commonwealth, the prevailing party at trial which was aggrieved by the Superior Court's grant of a new trial, centers on principles of self-defense for purposes of assessing whether the trial court abused its discretion in excluding evidence of the murder victim's nine-year-old conviction for robbery. The Commonwealth contends, among other points, that the Superior Court's assessment of the evidentiary ruling misapprehended the law governing self-defense. For the reasons that follow, we reverse the Superior Court and reinstate the judgment of sentence for first-degree murder, aggravated assault and related offenses.¹

I.

By way of background, a claim of self-defense (or justification, to use the term employed in the Crimes Code) requires evidence establishing three elements: “(a) [that the defendant] reasonably believed that he was in imminent danger of death or serious bodily injury and that it was necessary to use deadly force against the victim to prevent such harm; (b) that the defendant was free from fault in provoking the difficulty which culminated in the slaying; and (c) that the [defendant] did not violate any duty to retreat.” Commonwealth v. Samuel, 527 Pa. 298, 590 A.2d 1245, 1247–48 (1991). See also Commonwealth v. Harris, 550 Pa. 92, 703 A.2d 441, 449 (1997); 18 Pa.C.S. § 505.² Although the defendant has no burden to prove self-defense, see discussion below, before the defense is properly in issue, “there must be some evidence, from whatever source, to justify such a finding.” Once the question is properly raised, “the burden is upon the Commonwealth to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was not acting in self-defense.” Commonwealth v. Black, 474 Pa. 47, 376 A.2d 627, 630 (1977). The Commonwealth sustains that burden of negation “if it proves any of the following: that the slayer was not free from fault in provoking or continuing the difficulty which resulted in the slaying; that the slayer did not reasonably believe that [he] was in imminent danger of death or great bodily harm, and that it was necessary to kill in order to save [him]self therefrom; or that the slayer violated a duty to retreat or avoid the danger.” Commonwealth v. Burns, 490 Pa. 352, 416 A.2d 506, 507 (1980). Further, as an evidentiary matter, this Court has held that when self-defense is properly at issue, evidence of the victim's prior convictions involving aggression may be admitted, if probative, either (1) to corroborate the defendant's alleged knowledge of the victim's violent character, to prove that the defendant was in reasonable fear of danger, or (2) as character/ propensity evidence, as indirect evidence that the victim was in fact the aggressor. Commonwealth v. Beck, 485 Pa. 475, 402 A.2d 1371, 1373 (1979) (plurality) (citing and applying Commonwealth v. Amos, 445 Pa. 297, 284 A.2d 748, 750–51 (1971)). Only those past crimes of the victim that are similar in nature and not too distant in time will be deemed probative, with the determination as to similar nature and remoteness resting within the sound discretion of the trial judge. Amos, 284 A.2d at 752.³

Assignment of a burden upon the Commonwealth to disprove self-defense is a relatively recent, and significant, adjustment of law. Traditionally, the defendant had the burden to prove affirmative defenses, including self-defense, by a preponderance of the evidence. The practice derived from the common law. ⁴ The Crimes Code, which became effective June 6, 1973, included a provision on justification, which encompasses self-defense. 18 Pa.C.S. § 505. However, the Official Comment to Section 515 states that: “This section is derived from Section 3.04 of the Model Penal Code, and makes no substantial change in existing law. The intent of this section is to codify existing case law pertaining to self-defense and to cover in a single rule the law governing the use of defensive force against both attack and in crime prevention.” By its terms, Section 505 does not address the burden of proof or assign the burden to the Commonwealth.

Soon after adoption of the Crimes Code, however, and in response to contemporaneous decisions from the U.S. Supreme Court establishing federal constitutional restrictions upon requiring a criminal defendant to prove certain affirmative defenses, this Court re-examined and discarded the historical view that the burden of proving affirmative defenses was on the defendant. Thus, in Commonwealth v. Rose, 457 Pa. 380, 321 A.2d 880 (1974), an intoxication defense case, the Court disapproved the approach to affirmative defenses found in this Court's prior decision in Commonwealth v. Winebrenner, 439 Pa. 73, 265 A.2d 108 (1970), a self-defense case. Rose observed that the then-recent trend was for the accused to have the initial burden of producing evidence of an affirmative defense, but once he did so, the Commonwealth bore the burden to disprove the defense beyond a reasonable doubt. The Rose Court attributed this break from precedent to the never-shifting burden of the Commonwealth to prove the elements of a crime beyond a reasonable doubt. 321 A.2d at 883 (citing Commonwealth v. Bonomo, 396 Pa. 222, 151 A.2d 441, 446 (1959) (in alibi defense case, Court created exception to traditional rule that defendant had burden to prove affirmative defense by preponderance of evidence)).

This Court's first opportunity to specifically examine self-defense and Section 505 arose the next year, in Commonwealth v. Cropper, 463 Pa. 529, 345 A.2d 645 (1975). Citing Rose, Cropper claimed that the trial court erred in placing the burden on him to prove self-defense by a preponderance. The Court rejected the claim as stated, since the appellant had failed to object at trial or in post-trial motions. Notwithstanding the default, when the Court reviewed the sufficiency of the evidence, it looked to the new Crimes Code, and then effectively imported the intoxication affirmative defense reasoning from Rose into the self-defense realm, as a matter of statutory interpretation. The Cropper Court noted that Section 505 did not affirmatively state that a defendant who asserts self-defense has the burden of proving the defense. The Court found this silence significant because a number of other sections of the Crimes Code addressing defenses specifically required that the defenses, or certain elements of them, be proved by the defendant by a preponderance of evidence. The absence of such a stipulation in Section 505, the Court held, suggested that the General Assembly did not intend to impose on defendants the burden of proving self-defense. The Court did not note or discuss the common law approach or the legislative commentary stating that Section 505 intended to merely codify existing law pertaining to self-defense.

As an apparent independent ground for its conclusion that defendants no longer should bear the burden to prove self-defense, the Cropper Court stated that, “in light of the United States Supreme Court's decision in Mullaney v. Wilbur, [421 U.S. 684, 95 S.Ct. 1881, 44 L.Ed.2d 508 (1975) (federal Due Process Clause requires that state prove beyond reasonable doubt absence of heat of passion or sudden provocation when issue is properly presented in homicide trial) ], which would appear to render unconstitutional any attempt to place on a criminal defendant the burden of disproving any element of a crime, it is incumbent upon us, if possible, to construe the provisions of the Code in such a way as to pass constitutional muster.” 345 A.2d at 649 n. 9. In short, both Rose and Cropper had predicted, based upon Mullaney and In re Winship, 397 U.S. 358, 90 S.Ct. 1068, 25 L.Ed.2d 368 (1970) (federal Due Process Clause requires proof beyond reasonable doubt of every fact necessary to constitute charged crime), that placing any burden on the defendant to prove an affirmative defense would offend Fourteenth Amendment due process.

Subsequent decisions from the High Court, however, reveal that the federal constitutional predictions respecting affirmative defenses in Pennsylvania did not materialize, including the affirmative defense of self-defense. After Rose and Cropper were decided, Mullaney was significantly narrowed by Patterson v. New York, 432 U.S. 197, 97 S.Ct. 2319, 53 L.Ed.2d 281 (1977), where the Court found constitutional a New York statute that placed the burden of persuasion upon the accused to prove the affirmative defense of extreme emotional disturbance. The controlling distinction for the Patterson Court was that the Maine statute at issue in Mullaney had shifted the burden of proof with respect to an essential element of the crime, while the New York statute in Patterson did not. Ten years later, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld an Ohio approach that placed the burden on the defendant to prove self-defense by a preponderance of the evidence. See Martin v. Ohio, 480 U.S. 228, 107 S.Ct. 1098, 94 L.Ed.2d 267 (1987). In holding that placing the burden on the defendant did not violate due process, the Court relied upon Patterson. The overall principle that emerges from the High Court's decisional law is that federal due process permits States to place a burden on the defendant to prove an affirmative defense by a preponderance of the evidence, so long as the defendant is not thereby required to negate an element of the offense. See also Dixon v. United States, 548 U.S. 1, 126 S.Ct. 2437, 165 L.Ed.2d 299 (2006) (defense of duress).

The above background provides context for our consideration. Appellee...