People v. Williams

• Decision Date: 26 August 1970
• Docket Number: No. 1,Docket No. 7437,1
• Citation: 26 Mich.App. 218,182 N.W.2d 347
• Parties: PEOPLE of the State of Michigan, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. John Willie WILLIAMS, Defendant-Appellant
• Court: Court of Appeal of Michigan — District of US

Page 347

182 N.W.2d 347

26 Mich.App. 218

PEOPLE of the State of Michigan, Plaintiff-Appellee, v.John Willie WILLIAMS, Defendant-Appellant.

Docket No. 7437.

Court of Appeals of Michigan, Division No. 1.

Aug. 26, 1970.

Released for Publication Jan. 5, 1971.

Arthur J. Cole, Detroit, for defendant-appellant.

Frank J. Kelley, Atty. Gen., Robert A. Derengoski, Sol.Gen., William L. Cahalan, Pros.Atty., Dominick R. Carnovale, Chief, Appellate Div., Luvenia D. Dockett, Asst. Pros.Atty., for plaintiff-appellee.

Before T. M. BURNS, P.J., and LEVIN and DAVIDSON, ^* JJ.

LEVIN, Judge.

The defendantJohn Willie Williams was convicted by a jury of second-degree murder.¹

The victim was his wife.They were married in 1964 and separated in 1967.A neighbor of the wife testified that two weeks before the homicide he overheard a heated argument between the defendant and his wife and heard the defendant threaten to kill her.On May 1, 1968, policemen were summoned to the wife's home and discovered her body.Multiple stab wounds had been inflicted but the people charged that the immediate cause of death was a bludgeoning administered with the porcelain top of a toilet.A fingerprint in a bloodstain on the porcelain surface matched one of the defendant's fingerprints.

The defendant testified that when the crime was committed he was traveling to a union meeting only to find that the meeting had been postponed.

The first assignment of error is based on the judge's refusal to instruct the jury that it could convict the defendant of the lesser offense of manslaughter.

The general rule appears to be well established that a judge is not obliged to instruct a jury that it may convict one charged with murder of the lesser offense of manslaughter unless evidence has been introduced tending to show that the lesser offense has been committed.²We think there was sufficient evidence in this case tending to show that the lesser offense was committed.

Manslaughter has been defined as homicide committed without malice, 'the result of temporary excitement by which the control of the reason is disturbed, rather than from any wickedness of the heart or cruelty or recklessness of disposition.'People v. Droste(1910), 160 Mich. 66, 79, 125 N.W. 87, 92.³

At the trial the people stressed the evidence that the defendant had a slash wound on his arm.(He claimed that the wound was suffered while he was working.)The same evidence would support the inference that he had been involved in an affray with the victim, and that she had slashed at him with the knife found at the scene.It is entirely true, as the prosecutor successfully argued before the trial judge, that there is inconsistency in claiming that the defendant did not commit the crime and in contending that if he did he acted in the heat of passion.However, a defendant in a criminal case, like a civil litigant, may advance inconsistent claims and defenses.⁴

The people's evidence in this, as in many murder cases, is largely circumstantial.Although they were estranged, the defendant frequently visited his wife.He claimed that the fingerprint on the porcelain top was imprinted when he fixed the toilet on the Saturday preceding the homicide.No one saw the culprit enter or leave the wife's house or knew the precise time the crime was committed.

There was the evidence of the slash on the defendant's arm, the threat two weeks before his wife's death, the fingerprint and, after the defendant put in his defense, his inability to account fully for his time.From this the jury was permitted to find him guilty of second-degree murder.

By the same token, from the evidence that his arm was slashed, that an impromptu weapon, a porcelain top of a toilet was used to bludgeon his wife to death and that when her body was found her head was resting on towels, which the prosecutor argued permitted the inference that the culprit was a person of some solicitude for her comfort, such as an estranged husband, the jury could properly conclude, after having found that the defendant committed the crime, that what he did was not with the purpose of causing his wife's death or out of the wickedness of his heart or cruelty or recklessness of disposition but rather was the result of temporary excitement by which the control of his reason was disturbed.⁵

In People v. Milhem(1957), 350 Mich. 497, 87 N.W.2d 151, ⁶the defendant was charged with murder and convicted of manslaughter.The defense was accidental shooting.There was a history of prior quarreling between the defendant-wife and the victim-husband.Although the wife did not claim that her husband provoked her at the time of the shooting, the Supreme Court said that the jury might find provocation at the time of the shooting from the prior history of quarreling.This, of course, means that even though the wife advanced a defense inconsistent with a finding of provocation and even though there was no direct evidence whatsoever that at the time of the homicide her husband provoked her, the jury was permitted to infer the necessary provocation from other circumstances.⁷

In Marcum v. Commonwealth(1947), 305 Ky. 92, 202 S.W.2d 1012, the Court of Appeals of Kentucky reversed the defendant husband's conviction of murder because the judge did not instruct on voluntary manslaughter.The victim had suffered a stab wound over the heart.Her face and neck were somewhat scratched and bruised.The defense, as here, was alibi.The Court ruled that the scratch and bruise marks 'would indicate some sort of a struggle prior to her death.* * * The duty of reconstructing what happened on those premises that tragic morning is impressed on the jury, and we cannot say under the evidence that Cora Marcum's death was murder and nothing else.'The Court observed (p. 94, 202 S.W.2d p. 1013):

'It is likewise as well recognized that where there is evidence of a struggle or other unusual circumstance from which a jury might infer a lesser degree of the crime or an exoneration of it, the instructions must give the whole law of the case, including voluntary manslaughter, involuntary manslaughter and selfdefense.(Citations omitted.)The rationale of this latter principle is that, because there is no direct proof of what actually happened, the jury must reconstruct the crime and should be authorized to return a verdict based upon whatever state of facts it may reasonable infer to have existed.While the defendant in this and similar cases takes the position that he was not present and therefore could not have committed the homicidal act, the jury may have evidence upon which to reach the conclusion that defendant was there, but that he was not guilty of murder in the first degree.'

It is indeed true that in a prosecution for murder the people need not negative the possibility that the crime committed was manslaughter.⁸However, on the same principle that requires us to consider the defendant's proofs in determining the sufficiency of the evidence to convict, we consider the people's evidence in determining whether the jury should be instructed on the lesser offense of manslaughter.⁹The jurors, in opposition to both the defendant's claim of innocence and his failure to claim mitigation, should have been permitted, upon the evidence presented, appraised in the light of their life experience, to find the defendant guilty of voluntary manslaughter.

The second assignment of error relates to testimony concerning the defendant's conduct at the time of his arrest and the prosecutor's jury argument based on that testimony.The defendant claims that his Fifth Amendment right not to be compelled to be a witness against himself was violated.

At the trial, when a police officer began to relate a conversation with the defendant, the jury was excused and a separate record was made.The officer said that the defendant was advised 'that he was arrested for investigation of murder, and at no time did he ask who was supposed to have been murdered.We told him.'The defendant's counsel objected and the judge ruled that the testimony was inadmissible.

When the officer testified in the presence of the jury he related a statement made by the defendant after his arrest and said 'We told him he would have to accompany us back to Detroit, that we wanted to talk to him regarding a homicide; Q.Did you tell him at the time whose homicide?A.No, sir, we did not.'The forbidden question, 'Did he ask you who was murdered?', was not asked.

During the prosecutor's cross-examination of the defendant the following occurred: ¹⁰ 'Q.They wanted to talk to you, but they did not tell you that you were under arrest?

'A.No, sir, he did not.

'Q.And you didn't ask them why?

'A.I asked them what was the trouble.

'Q.What was the answer that you got?

'A.They said that they wanted to talk to me downtown.* * *

'Q.But it is your testimony that they did not tell you that you were under arrest?

'A.That's correct.

'Q.They did not tell you what for?

'A.That is correct.

'Q.Did you ask them?

'A.Yes I did.

'Q.Did they tell you then?

'A.They did not.'

The police officer was then recalled by the prosecutor to the stand:

'Q.After you said this to him did the defendant say anything to you?

'A.The only thing he said is, 'I haven't done anything wrong, I don't even owe a traffic ticket.'

'Q.Did you further elaborate when you used the word homicide?

'A.No, sir, I did not.

'Q.Did you say who was killed--did he ask you?'

The defendant's objection was sustained.But the prosecutor continued:

'Q.Did you notify the defendant that he was under arrest?

'A.Yes, I did.

'Q.Did he say anything about this?

'A.No, sir.

'Q.Was there any further conversation between you and the defendant before you got to the automobile to go to Detroit?

'A.Nothing regarding his arrest, no.'

Although the prohibited question had not been directly answered, in his closing argument to the jury the prosecutor argued,...