Guidry v. State
| Decision Date | 02 June 2022 |
| Docket Number | 80156 |
| Citation | 510 P.3d 782 |
| Parties | Ronneka Ann GUIDRY, Appellant, v. The STATE of Nevada, Respondent. |
| Court | Nevada Supreme Court |
Darin F. Imlay, Public Defender, and Sharon G. Dickinson, Chief Deputy Public Defender, Clark County, for Appellant.
Aaron D. Ford, Attorney General, Carson City; Steven B. Wolfson, District Attorney, Jonathan E. VanBoskerck, Chief Deputy District Attorney, and Michael J. Scarborough, Deputy District Attorney, Clark County, for Respondent.
BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT, SILVER, CADISH, and PICKERING, JJ.
Appellant Ronneka Guidry challenges her convictions for second-degree murder, robbery, grand larceny, and leaving the scene of an accident that resulted in bodily injury. She argues that the district court's instruction on murder was inaccurate and caused prejudice because the court instructed on an irrelevant legal principle—second-degree felony murder—in an incomplete way. We agree, especially because the instruction had the effect of relieving the jury of its burden to find beyond a reasonable doubt that Guidry acted with implied malice aforethought. Guidry's challenges to her remaining convictions fail. We therefore reverse Guidry's murder conviction, affirm her remaining convictions, vacate the sentences on those convictions, and remand.
While Eduardo Osorio was on vacation in Las Vegas, he met Ronneka Guidry, a stranger to him, inside Caesars Palace at two in the morning. Osorio was wearing an $8,000 Rolex watch that his father had given him for his 18th birthday. According to Guidry, Osorio asked her for a ride, and she agreed. The two walked to Guidry's car, occasionally touching each other, then drove to an open-air self-parking lot attached to the Westin Las Vegas Hotel & Spa. Seven minutes later, Osorio left the car, and Guidry drove into the parking garage structure in the Westin, exiting the property and returning to the public street.
Eyewitness Timothy Landale was at the nearby intersection of East Flamingo Road and Koval Lane when he saw someone, later identified as Osorio, run past him into the street and jump in front of a moving car. The car stopped, and Osorio got on the hood of the car, screaming, and began punching the windshield. Osorio's screaming, which may have been in a language other than English, was incomprehensible to Landale. Landale said that Osorio "just kept punching the windshield"—"[h]e was trying to break the windshield it looked like"—and "when it looked like [Osorio] was going to the [driver's] side to try to punch the other window," the driver accelerated and drove forward. Osorio hung on to the car for a few seconds, then either let go or fell, hitting his head. He died of multiple blunt force injuries, and the forensic pathologist determined his manner of death to have been an accident.
Osorio's Rolex, however, was missing. Using security footage from Caesars and the Westin, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police identified Guidry's car as the vehicle involved in Osorio's death, arrested her on an outstanding, unrelated traffic warrant, and brought her in for questioning. Under questioning, Guidry stated that Osorio "attacked" her car and "[j]ust imagine if I wasn't in the car." She said that the way Osorio was banging on her window scared her, made plain that she believed she would be harmed, and said, "I'm a female, I can't beat this man up." She also repeatedly denied ever taking property belonging to Osorio, including his watch. The footage shows that under two minutes had passed between the time Osorio left Guidry's car and the time Landale saw him jump on the hood of her car.
The police executed search warrants at Guidry's house and on her iPhone. On Guidry's iPhone, police found a photo of her badly fractured windshield, as well as photos of Osorio's Rolex. Detective Kenneth Salisbury testified that, looking at the type of fracturing of Guidry's windshield and the lacerations on Osorio's hand, he believed that Osorio's punching had caused the fracturing, although he could not rule out the possibility that Osorio had fallen into the windshield as the car accelerated. There were also text messages showing that Guidry had negotiated the sale of the Rolex for $4,500 and had shipped the watch to a buyer in Florida.
The State charged Guidry with first-degree murder with use of a deadly weapon, robbery with use of a deadly weapon, grand larceny, and leaving the scene of an accident that resulted in bodily injury (leaving the scene). At trial, the State presented evidence that Guidry's car was traveling at around 23 miles per hour when Osorio fell from its hood, then reached a speed of around 59 miles per hour by the time it left the surveillance footage. The jury convicted Guidry of second-degree murder, robbery, grand larceny, and leaving the scene, acquitting her of first-degree murder on a felony-murder theory. Guidry appealed.
It is appropriate to reverse Guidry's conviction for second-degree murder because the district court's murder instruction was plainly inaccurate and caused prejudice. Specifically, Guidry argues that the murder instruction set out a theory of murder that was both irrelevant to her case and inaccurate. We review whether a particular instruction gives the jury a correct statement of law de novo. Cortinas v. State , 124 Nev. 1013, 1019, 195 P.3d 315, 319 (2008). Because Guidry did not object to the phrasing of the instructions in question, plain-error review applies. To secure reversal based on plain error Guidry must show that (1) "there was ‘error,’ " (2) it "was ‘plain’ or clear," and (3) it "affected [her] substantial rights." Green v. State, 119 Nev. 542, 545, 80 P.3d 93, 95 (2003). The " ‘plainness’ of the error can depend on well-settled legal principles as much as well-settled legal precedents ." United States v. Brown, 352 F.3d 654, 664 (2d Cir. 2003). When assessing whether an error affected the defendant's substantial rights, we look to whether it had a "prejudicial impact on the verdict," contributed to a miscarriage of justice, or otherwise "seriously affects the integrity or public reputation of the judicial proceedings." Gaxiola v. State, 121 Nev. 638, 654, 119 P.3d 1225, 1236 (2005) (quoting Rowland v. State, 118 Nev. 31, 38, 39 P.3d 114, 118 (2002) ); Green, 119 Nev. at 545, 80 P.3d at 95.
Murder is the "unlawful killing of a human being" with express or implied malice aforethought. NRS 200.010(1) ; see 2 Wayne R. LaFave, Substantive Criminal Law § 14.1(a) (3d ed. 2017) (). To find a defendant guilty of killing with express malice, the jury must find that the defendant intended to kill. NRS 200.020. Or, for implied malice under a "depraved heart" theory of second-degree murder, the defendant must have acted with extreme recklessness regarding the risk to and conscious disregard for human life. Collman v. State, 116 Nev. 687, 715-18 & n.13, 7 P.3d 426, 444-45 & n.13 (2000) (citing People v. Mattison, 4 Cal.3d 177, 93 Cal.Rptr. 185, 481 P.2d 193, 196-97 (1971) ); see also id. at 712-13, 7 P.3d at 442 ; Model Penal Code § 210.2(1)(b) (); see also Labastida v. State, 115 Nev. 298, 307-08, 986 P.2d 443, 449 (1999) (). Absent either of these permutations of malice, a jury could convict of second-degree felony murder, but only if it finds that the defendant committed an inherently dangerous predicate felony and that there was an immediate and direct causal relationship between the defendant's acts and the victim's death. Ramirez v. State, 126 Nev. 203, 207, 235 P.3d 619, 622 (2010) ().
In this case, the instructions on murder described the concept of malice but also allowed the jury to convict without finding that Guidry acted with malice. Specifically, instruction 11 provides the following:
The instruction begins by stating that murder "includes" two individually numbered subsections, indicating to the jury that it may choose between the options, the second being an "unintentional killing occurring in the commission of an unlawful act, which, in its consequences, naturally tends to destroy the life of a human being, or is committed in the prosecution of a felonious intent." This language regarding an "unintentional killing" derives from NRS 200.070(1), the involuntary manslaughter statute, but it is not a complete statement of the elements of any type of murder explained above.
The State first argues that subsection two does not matter because it relates only to second-degree felony murder, which the State concedes it did not, and could not, have pursued given the facts. But this is unavailing—along with the duty to correctly instruct the jury on relevant general principles of law, the trial court "has the correlative duty to refrain from instructing on principles of law which not only are irrelevant to the issues raised by the evidence but also have the effect of confusing the jury or relieving it from making findings on relevant issues." Gonzalez v. State, 131 Nev. 991, 997-98, 366 P.3d 680, 684 (2015) (quoting People v. Alexander, 49 Cal.4th 846, 113...
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