People v. Duncan
| Decision Date | 23 May 2000 |
| Docket Number | Docket No. 112997. |
| Citation | 610 N.W.2d 551,462 Mich. 47 |
| Parties | PEOPLE of the State of Michigan, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Timothy Lee DUNCAN, Defendant-Appellant. |
| Court | Michigan Supreme Court |
Jennifer M. Granholm, Attorney General, Thomas L. Casey, Solicitor General, Tony Tague, Prosecuting Attorney, and Danielle DeJong, Assistant Prosecuting Attorney, Muskegon, MI, for the people.
State Appellate Defender (by Peter Jon Van Hoek), Detroit, MI, for the defendant-appellant.
A jury convicted the defendant of two counts of first-degree murder and two counts of felony-firearm. The Court of Appeals affirmed. We reverse the felony-firearm convictions because the jury was not instructed on any of the elements of that offense.
We issue this opinion to iterate a bright line rule: It is structural error requiring automatic reversal to allow a jury to deliberate a criminal charge where there is a complete failure to instruct the jury regarding any of the elements necessary to determine if the prosecution has proven the charge beyond a reasonable doubt.
In late 1994, the defendant used a shotgun to kill two persons. They were his former spouse and a man to whom she had been married before she wed the defendant. The decedents had remained good friends, and the defendant apparently would not accept his former spouse's preference for the company of the other man.
The court added, "It's known as felony-firearm."
After hearing prosecution and defense witnesses, as well as closing argument, the jurors were instructed by the court. In the course of these instructions, they learned the elements of first- and second-degree murder, and of voluntary manslaughter. However, the court entirely omitted any instruction regarding the elements of felony-firearm.3 Indeed, the only mention of felony-firearm was in relation to the verdict form.4 Defense counsel did not object to the omission.
The jury found the defendant guilty of the murders and both counts of felony-firearm. The circuit court then imposed the mandatory sentences of life for first-degree murder and two-years for felony-firearm.5 Later, the court denied the defendant's motion for new trial.
After the Court of Appeals affirmed,6 the defendant applied to this Court for leave to appeal. Initially, we held the case in abeyance7 pending the decision in People v. Carines, 460 Mich. 750, 597 N.W.2d 130 (1999). Now that Carines has been decided, the present case is again before us.
The Court of Appeals found that it was error for the circuit court not to instruct the jury regarding the elements of the felony-firearm charges.8 It nevertheless affirmed the felony-firearm convictions on the ground that the error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt utilizing either Justice BRICKLEY's lead opinion in People v. Vaughn, 447 Mich. 217, 238, n. 17, 524 N.W.2d 217 (1994), or the test stated in Justice LEVIN's dissent in Vaughn. 447 Mich. at 272, 524 N.W.2d 217.
As explained in People v. Grant, 445 Mich. 535, 520 N.W.2d 123 (1994), constitutional error such as occurred here must be classified as either structural or nonstructural. If the error is structural, reversal is automatic. People v. Anderson (After Remand), 446 Mich. 392, 404-405, 521 N.W.2d 538 (1994). If the constitutional error is not structural, it is subject to the harmless beyond a reasonable doubt test. Id. The United States Supreme Court recently explained that most constitutional errors can be harmless, but that a limited class of constitutional errors are structural and subject to automatic reversal. Neder v. United States, 527 U.S. 1, 8, 119 S.Ct. 1827, 144 L.Ed.2d 35 (1999).
Structural errors, as explained in Neder, are intrinsically harmful, without regard to their effect on the outcome, so as to require automatic reversal. Id. at 7, 119 S.Ct. 1827. Such an error necessarily renders unfair or unreliable the determining of guilt or innocence. As the United States Supreme Court said in Rose v. Clark, 478 U.S. 570, 577-578, 106 S.Ct. 3101, 92 L.Ed.2d 460 (1986), structural errors deprive defendants of basic protections without which a criminal trial cannot reliably serve its function as a vehicle for determination of guilt or innocence.9
The Court in Neder stated as follows citing several examples of structural error:
Indeed, we have found an error to be "structural," and thus subject to automatic reversal, only in a "very limited class of cases." Johnson v. United States, 520 U.S. 461, 468, 117 S.Ct. 1544, 137 L.Ed.2d 718 (1997) () (biased trial judge); Vasquez v. Hillery, 474 U.S. 254, 106 S.Ct. 617, 88 L.Ed.2d 598 (1986) (); McKaskle v. Wiggins, 465 U.S. 168, 104 S.Ct. 944, 79 L.Ed.2d 122 (1984) (); Waller v. Georgia, 467 U.S. 39, 104 S.Ct. 2210, 81 L.Ed.2d 31 (1984) (); Sullivan v. Louisiana, 508 U.S. 275, 113 S.Ct. 2078, 124 L.Ed.2d 182 (1993) (defective reasonable-doubt instruction). [Id. at 8, 119 S.Ct. 1827.]
In the situation in the case at bar, the defendant was deprived of a "basic protection." The trial court's failure to instruct regarding any of the elements of felony-firearm, while allowing the jury to render a verdict on felony-firearm, sent the jury to its deliberative duties deprived of its essential tool: the law that was to be applied to the facts.10 Such a defect improperly left the jury to speculate, i.e., the absence of any instructions regarding the elements of felony-firearm left the jury to guess what the prosecuting attorney might be required to prove. As we stated in People v. Lambert, 395 Mich. 296, 304, 235 N.W.2d 338 (1975), juries cannot be allowed to speculate. The court must inform the jury of the law by which its verdict must be controlled.11 Incontrovertibly, when a jury is allowed to speculate, the subsequent verdict is not a reliable indicator of the defendant's guilt or lack thereof.
It is also possible that the failure to provide any of the elements of the charge may have suggested to the jury that the two charges were tie-barred, i.e., if the jury found defendant guilty of murder, they were then to find defendant guilty of felony-firearm. Such tie-barring would run counter to our fundamental constitutional law as it directs the jury to return a verdict. Rose explained that a court may not direct a verdict of guilty against a defendant no matter how clear the defendant's culpability. Rose, supra at 578, 106 S.Ct. 3101.
The reason for this is the Sixth Amendment's clear command that the state must afford a trial with a jury at the defendant's request in serious criminal cases. Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U.S. 145, 88 S.Ct. 1444, 20 L.Ed.2d 491 (1968). This means that when a jury is empaneled, the jury, not a judge, renders the verdict. This does not happen when the jury is effectively led to tie one conviction to another. Indeed, this Court has even recognized that a jury is not required to reach consistent verdicts with regard to a felony-firearm charge and the accompanying felony. People v. Lewis, 415 Mich. 443, 330 N.W.2d 16 (1982).
To compel the conviction of felony-firearm is to deprive the defendant of his constitutional right to a jury trial and thus requires automatic reversal no less than in the situation where other basic protections are not afforded. It is no answer when such rights are denied for the state to argue that the deprivation was harmless.
Neder and Carines, supra, held that an instructional error regarding one element of a crime, whether by misdescription or omission, is subject to a harmless error analysis. Our holding today is not inconsistent with these cases. With some but not all elements missing, the jury still may be able to fulfill its intended function. But, with all elements missing, such as in a case where only the title of the crime was given to the jury, the reliability of the subsequent verdict is grossly undermined. Thus, we find that the failure to provide the jury with the definition of any of the elements of the crime charged is an error of much greater magnitude than presenting less than all elements and fits within the limited class of cases that are properly characterized as structural and therefore automatically reversible.12 Defendant is entitled to a new trial on the felony-firearm charges because the jury's verdict, uninformed of the elements of the crime, did not reliably serve its function of determining guilt or innocence.
Our decision is supported by Harmon v. Marshall, 69 F.3d 963 (C.A.9, 1995), where the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit found that a complete failure to instruct on any elements of an offense is a ground for automatic reversal. The court in Harmon explained:
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