People v. Williams

• Decision Date: 23 August 2001
• Docket Number: No. S076262.,S076262.
• Citation: 111 Cal.Rptr.2d 114,29 P.3d 197,26 Cal.4th 779
• Court: California Supreme Court
• Parties: The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Lebarron Keith WILLIAMS, Defendant and Appellant.

111 Cal.Rptr.2d 114

26 Cal.4th 779

29 P.3d 197

The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Lebarron Keith WILLIAMS, Defendant and Appellant.

No. S076262.

Supreme Court of California.

August 23, 2001.

Rehearing Denied September 26, 2001.

Madeline McDowell, under appointment by the Supreme Court, Sacramento; and Arthur L. Bowie, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, Antelope, for Defendant and Appellant.

Daniel E. Lungren and Bill Lockyer, Attorneys General, George Williamson and David P. Druliner, Chief Assistant Attorneys General, Robert R. Anderson, Assistant Attorney General, W. Scott Thorpe and David A. Rhodes, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.

BROWN, J.

Thirty years ago, we examined the mental state for assault and concluded assault requires only a general criminal intent and not a specific intent to cause injury. People v. Rocha (1971) 3 Cal.3d 893, 899, 92 Cal.Rptr. 172, 479 P.2d 372 (Rocha).

) Seven years ago, we reaffirmed Rocha and reiterated that assault was a general intent crime. (People v. Colantuono (1994) 7 Cal.4th 206, 215-216, 26 Cal.Rptr.2d 908, 865 P.2d 704 (Colantuono).) We further explained that the "mens rea [for assault] is established upon proof the defendant willfully committed an act that by its nature will probably and directly result in injury to another, i.e., a battery." (Id. at p. 214, 26 Cal.Rptr.2d 908,

865 P.2d 704.) Today, we once again clarify the mental state for assault and hold that assault requires actual knowledge of the facts sufficient to establish that the defendant's act by its nature will probably and directly result in injury to another. In light of this clarification, any technical error in the instructions given was harmless.

Facts

Gregory King and Deborah Nicholson married in 1989. Their marriage lasted only about two weeks, but they continued to have sexual relations. In 1992, Nicholson became romantically involved with defendant Lebarron Keith Williams. Nicholson had a son in November 1994, but did not know which of the two men had fathered the child. After the child's birth, defendant and King continued to compete for Nicholson's affections. Their rivalry resulted in several confrontations culminating in this case.

Prior to the confrontation at issue here, King repeatedly telephoned Nicholson, trying to persuade her to accompany him and his two teenage sons on an outing. When Nicholson disconnected her phone, King drove to Nicholson's home with his sons and parked his compact pickup truck at the front curb. Defendant's pickup truck was in the driveway. King walked up to Nicholson's front door and put a note on the door. He then knocked and returned to his truck, hoping Nicholson would come out and talk to him.

Defendant opened the door and told King to stay away from Nicholson. Defendant then walked to his own truck and removed a shotgun, which he loaded with two 12 gauge shotgun rounds. Defendant walked back toward the house and fired, in his words, a "warning shot" directly into the rear passenger side wheel well of King's truck. Defendant testified that, at the time he fired the shot, King's truck was parked between him and King, and that he saw King crouched approximately a foot and a half away from the rear fender well of the truck. Defendant further testified that he never saw King's sons before he fired and only noticed them afterwards standing on a curb outside the immediate vicinity of King's truck. King, however, testified that both of his sons were getting into the truck when defendant fired.

Although defendant did not hit King or King's sons, he did hit the rear tire of King's truck. The shotgun pellets also left marks on the truck's rear wheel well, its undercarriage, and its gas tank.

Defendant was charged with one count of shooting at an occupied motor vehicle (Pen.Code, § 246)¹, and three counts of assault with a firearm (§ 245, subd. (a)(2)), one count each for King and his two sons. Each count carried an allegation of personal firearm use. (§ 12022.5, subd. (a)(1).) The trial court gave the standard jury instruction on assault. (Former CALJIC No. 9.00 (1994 rev.) (5th ed.1995 supp.).) That instruction provides in pertinent part that the crime of assault requires proof of these elements: "1. A person willfully and unlawfully committed an act that by its nature would probably and directly result in the application of physical force on another person; and [¶] 2. At the time the act was committed, such person had the present ability to apply physical force to the person of another." (Ibid.) The jury convicted defendant of assaulting King with a firearm, but deadlocked on the remaining counts. The trial court later dismissed the deadlocked counts in the interests of justice.

On appeal, the Court of Appeal found the assault instruction erroneous because the instruction incorrectly stated the mental state required for the offense. After finding the instructional error prejudicial, the court reversed defendant's assault conviction.

We granted review to clarify the mental state for assault.

Discussion

I

The trial court instructed the jury that defendant was guilty of assault only if he "willfully and unlawfully committed an act that by its nature would probably and directly result in the application of physical force being applied to the person of another." (See former CALJIC No. 9.00, supra.) The Court of Appeal found this instruction erroneous because it described a mental state of negligence and allowed the jury to find defendant guilty if "under an objective view of the facts . . . an application of physical force on another person was reasonably foreseeable." Concluding that the instruction misstated the mental state for assault, the court held that assault requires either a desire to cause an application of physical force or substantial certainty that such an application would result. (See People v. Smith (1997) 57 Cal.App.4th 1470, 67 Cal.Rptr.2d 604 (Smith).

)

The People urge us to reverse. They contend assault only requires general criminal intent, and the Court of Appeal improperly transformed assault into a specific intent crime by injecting the concepts of purpose and knowledge. As explained below, we agree that the Court of Appeal's description of the mental state for assault is erroneous and that assault is a general intent crime. We further conclude that assault requires actual knowledge of those facts sufficient to establish that the offending act by its nature would probably and directly result in physical force being applied to another.

Section 240-unchanged since its initial enactment in 1872-defines assault as "an unlawful attempt, coupled with a present ability, to commit a violent injury on the person of another." Over the decades, we have struggled to fit this 1872 definition of assault into our constantly evolving framework of criminal mental states. We first recognized this struggle in People v. Hood (1969) 1 Cal.3d 444, 452-459, 82 Cal.Rptr. 618, 462 P.2d 370 (Hood), where we held that a jury may not consider voluntary intoxication when determining whether a defendant committed assault. In Hood, we noted that the concepts of general and specific intent "were not yet terms of art" in 1872, and acknowledged that courts had struggled to fit the historic definition of assault into the modern framework of general and specific intent. (Id. at pp. 457-458, 82 Cal.Rptr. 618, 462 P.2d 370.) Nonetheless, we declined to classify assault as a general or specific intent offense, because the "distinction between specific and general intent" did not resolve the issue of whether voluntary intoxication should be a defense to assault. (Id. at p. 458, 82 Cal.Rptr. 618, 462 P.2d 370.)

Approximately one year later, we confronted the issue of the mental state for assault head-on. In Rocha, supra, 3 Cal.3d at page 899, 92 Cal.Rptr. 172, 479 P.2d 372, we held that assault does not require the specific "intent to cause any particular injury [citation], to severely injure another, or to injure in the sense of inflicting bodily harm. . . . [Fns. omitted.]" Rather, assault required "the general intent to willfully commit an act the direct, natural and probable consequences of which if successfully completed would be the injury to another." (Ibid.)

Twenty-three years later, we once again attempted to decipher "the requisite intent for assault and assault with a deadly weapon. . . ." (Colantuono, supra, 7 Cal.4th at p. 213, 26 Cal.Rptr.2d 908, 865 P.2d 704.) In Colantuono, we noted that "Rocha accurately focused on the violent-injury-producing nature of the defendant's acts, rather than on a separate and independent intention to cause such injury" but may have left a "measure of understandable analytical uncertainty." (Colantuono, at p. 215, 26 Cal.Rptr.2d 908, 865 P.2d 704.) Hoping to resolve this uncertainty, we reaffirmed that assault "is a general intent crime"—and not a specific intent crime. (Id. at p. 216, 26 Cal.Rptr.2d 908, 865 P.2d 704, fn. omitted.) "The pivotal question is whether the defendant intended to commit an act likely to result in such physical force, not whether he or she intended a specific harm." (Id. at p. 218, 26 Cal.Rptr.2d 908, 865 P.2d 704, fn. omitted.) We also reiterated that "`[r]eckless conduct alone does not constitute a sufficient basis for assault or for battery even if the assault results in an injury to another.'" (Id. at p. 219, 26 Cal.Rptr.2d 908, 865 P.2d 704, quoting People v. Lathus (1973) 35 Cal.App.3d 466, 469, 110 Cal.Rptr. 921; see also People v. Carmen (1951) 36 Cal.2d 768, 776, 228 P.2d 281.)

Although we conclusively classified assault as a general intent crime in Colantuono, we have recently recognized that such a classification, by itself, may not fully describe the requisite mental state for every criminal offense. (See 1 Witkin & Epstein, Cal.Criminal Law (3d ed. 2000) Elements, § 2, pp. 199-201 [despite "universal acceptance of the principle that...