Lanier v. State
| Decision Date | 14 November 1996 |
| Docket Number | No. 03-DP-00090-SCT,03-DP-00090-SCT |
| Citation | 684 So.2d 93 |
| Parties | Arthur Ray LANIER v. STATE of Mississippi. |
| Court | Mississippi Supreme Court |
Les Alvis, Tupelo, Jane Tucker, Jackson, for Appellant.
Michael C. Moore, Attorney General, Marvin L. White, Jr., Assistant Attorney General, Jeffrey A. Klingfuss, Sp. Asst. Attorney General, Jackson, for Appellee.
En Banc.
MILLS, Justice, for the Court:
Arthur Ray Lanier (Lanier) appeals from his third trial for the murder of Buford Dedeaux, a policeman for the City of Gulfport. On June 12, 1985, he was found guilty of capital murder in the First Judicial District of the Harrison County Circuit Court. One day later, the jury found that Lanier should suffer the death penalty and the trial court entered judgment thereon. Lanier filed his Notice of Appeal on July 25, 1985. This appeal is now before this Court. Finding issues warranting reversal of Lanier's conviction, we reverse and remand for a hearing to determine whether Lanier may be retried.
The facts of this case are stated succinctly in this Court's opinion from Lanier's first appeal.
Policeman Dedeaux was shot to death by the defendant in the first hour of June 8, 1979, in the First Judicial District of Harrison County, near the city limits of north Gulfport. After being shot Dedeaux requested assistance by radio but died shortly after the arrival of assisting officers. When the first policeman arrived he found Dedeaux in his policeman's uniform lying mortally wounded on the driver's side of his police car. At the scene, the following evidentiary items were found: a yellow bicycle, a green ditty bag, a blue watchcap, several spent .22 calibre cartridge casings and Dedeaux' service revolver. The homicide apparently occurred about 12:30 a.m. and Lanier was arrested about 5:00 p.m. the same day at his grandmother's residence in north Gulfport. He was fully advised of his Miranda rights and at approximately 1:10 a.m. on Sunday, June 10, 1979, made a videotaped statement in which he admitted shooting Dedeaux under the circumstances hereinafter related.
Lanier stated that while riding his bicycle, he was stopped by Officer Dedeaux and directed to empty the ditty bag. In complying Lanier removed a pistol from the bag and Dedeaux drew his gun and fired at him. He stated that he fired at Dedeaux while running backwards but was not sure if any of the shots had actually struck Dedeaux, who entered the patrol car and radioed for help. Lanier then stated that he threw the gun away and returned to his grandmother's home. Following this statement, Lanier assisted the officers in locating the gun he had thrown away.
Lanier v. State, 450 So.2d 69, 71-72 (Miss.1984).
In his first trial, this Court reversed Lanier's conviction for failure to grant an instruction which read The Court instructs the Jury that if you find that the State has failed to prove any one of the essential elements of the crime of capital murder, you must find the defendant not guilty of capital murder, and you will proceed with your deliberation to decide whether the State has proved beyond a reasonable doubt all the elements of the lesser crime of manslaughter.
If you find beyond a reasonable doubt that Arthur Ray Lanier killed Buford Dedeaux, a human being, without malice but by his own action by the use of a deadly weapon, without authority of law, and not necessarily in self-defense, then you shall find the defendant, Arthur Ray Lanier, guilty of the crime of manslaughter.
Lanier v. State, 450 So.2d 69, 83 (Miss.1984).
The defense also requested that an identical instruction, Instruction D-10, be given in the third trial.
The defense also requested the following instruction, Instruction D-12, which was denied:
The Court instructs the Jury that if a person who is being unlawfully arrested resists that arrest and kills the party seeking to arrest him to prevent such arrest, and the killing is not done with malice aforethought, the killing is not murder, but manslaughter.
Therefore, if you believe from the evidence in this case that on the date and time testified about, Officer Buford Dedeaux was unlawfully attempting to arrest Arthur Ray Lanier and that Arthur Ray Lanier resisted said arrest by shooting and killing Officer Buford Dedeaux, but without malice aforethought, and not in self defense, then Arthur Ray Lanier is guilty of manslaughter and you shall so find.
The Court instead gave Instruction C.02, over the objection of defense counsel which reads:
The Court instructs the Jury that if you find that the State has failed to prove any one of the essential elements of the crime of capital murder, you must find the defendant not guilty of capital murder and you will proceed with your deliberation to decide whether the State has proved beyond a reasonable doubt all the elements of the lesser crime of manslaughter.
The Court instructs the Jury that manslaughter is the killing of a human being without malice and in the heat of passion without authority of law and not in necessary self-defense; and if the Jury believes from the evidence in this case beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant, Arthur Ray Lanier, so killed Buford Dedeaux then you will find the defendant guilty of manslaughter.
(Emphasis added.)
During the instruction conference, the following was said concerning the above instructions.
... And C.02, now, will follow now on Manslaughter. You got that one, Mr. Rose?
BY MR. ROSE:
Yes, sir. We went over this one last time, as I recollect.
This is the one that was here before, this is the one we gave before.
BY MR. ROSE:
Do you have a copy of the Supreme Court decision in the file there? I just want to ...
(Interposing) It should be, right here it is.
BY MR. ROSE:
I filed a Manslaughter Instruction. Is that the same one I submitted, I don't remember all of that.
BY MR. GOLDEN:
It isn't.
BY MR. ROSE:
I didn't think that it was.
BY MR. GOLDEN:
We had this discussion last time, Your Honor, and he objected to the part about "in the heat of passion." He didn't want that in and this is the same instruction that the Defense, that they should have refused it anyway because the instruction, it wasn't a good Manslaughter instruction because it should reflect that language and that language should be in the instruction
But, they sent it back.
BY MR. GOLDEN:
Yes, sir. But, when they overruled it the first time, the Court said that even if they should have had a Manslaughter instruction, the one that was submitted by the Defense wasn't the proper instruction and this is it and this is the one that you, that we drafted last time and Jim objected to it based on the statute or based on the language of it.
The language in the statute itself he said it wasn't necessary to have the part in there about heat of passion.
BY MR. ROSE:
There's no evidence of that in this case.
Judge, of course, Mr. Golden is saying something that I sometimes have said, quoting dissent, and that is, you know, that's not worth a lot sometimes, but the rest ...
But, the point is, Judge, there's no evidence of heat of passion there.
BY MR. GOLDEN:
Well, that's, that's exactly right and that's why we shouldn't even have the thing in here, off the record.
Say it on the record, you're going to argue it when you get back up there that it shouldn't have been in there. No harm in saying that.
BY MR. GOLDEN:
Okay, we move to leave it on the record, to leave it all on the record.
BY MR. ROSE:
Judge, we think that we're entitled to a manslaughter instruction and the Supreme Court says that and the Supreme Court denied it. This is really my instruction that I submitted to the majority who decided the case didn't oppose it.
I'm going to give it. I think this is a proper Manslaughter instruction. And I think if you had a gun and you shot off into a crowd and accidentally killed somebody, that is what they are talking about, without malice. All right.
Now, C.17 ...
BY MR. ROSE:
(Interposing) Judge, before we go on to C.17, I want to make sure that the record reflects my objection.
I am positive that it does. Mrs. Crawford has been taking down every word you said. All right. And I understood that you were objecting.....
Judge, I have another one on manslaughter that I want you to look at.
With all deference to my good friend, the Chief Justice, I don't believe there's any evidence of manslaughter in this case.
All right, here's your Instructions, Jim.
....
D-10 is refused.
BY MR. ROSE:
D-10, Judge, is my version of, in fact, D-10 is an instruction that was given in Hattiesburg in 1980.
BY MR. GOLDEN:
The State objects, it is not a correct statement of the law and it should reflect the language contained in the Court's Instruction on that.
I'm going to refuse it....
On appeal, Lanier asserts that he was not allowed to present a manslaughter theory that reflected his theory of the case, but instead was given a manslaughter theory that all parties agreed during the instruction conference had no evidentiary support. In essence, Lanier's counsel argues that there are two distinct manslaughter theories: (1) heat of passion manslaughter and (2) involuntary manslaughter and that he was entitled to an instruction on the latter theory.
Miss.Code Ann. § 97-3-35 (1972) reads:
The killing of a human being, without malice, in the heat of passion, but in a cruel or unusual manner, or by the use of a dangerous weapon, without authority of law, and not in necessary self-defense, shall be manslaughter.
In the present case, Instruction C-02 reads, in relevant part: "without malice and in the heat of passion" (emphasis added). This Court reversed Lanier's first conviction because, absent inferences from the...
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