Savoy v. State

• Citation: 420 Md. 232,22 A.3d 845
• Decision Date: 23 June 2011
• Docket Number: No. 120,Sept. Term,2009.,120
• Parties: Ricky SAVOYv.STATE of Maryland.
• Court: Maryland Court of Appeals

420 Md. 232

22 A.3d 845

Ricky SAVOY

v.STATE of Maryland.

No. 120

Sept. Term

2009.

Court of Appeals of Maryland.

June 23, 2011.

Austin K. Brown, Assigned Public Defender, Washington, D.C., for petitioner.James E. Williams, Asst. Atty. Gen. (Douglas F. Gansler, Atty. Gen. of Maryland, Baltimore, MD), on brief, for respondent.Argued before BELL, C.J., HARRELL, BATTAGLIA, GREENE, ADKINS, BARBERA and JOHN C. ELDRIDGE (Retired, specially assigned), JJ.BARBERA, J.

Petitioner Ricky Savoy was tried before a jury in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City and convicted of involuntary manslaughter, use of a handgun in the commission of a crime of violence, and carrying a handgun. Petitioner contends that the trial court's instruction to the jury on the standard of proof violated due process by reducing the State's burden of proof to below the constitutionally-required standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Petitioner, having made no objection to the instruction at trial, argued on appeal to the Court of Special Appeals that the erroneous instruction was a structural error that is per se reversible, even in the absence of a contemporaneous objection. He argued, alternatively, that the Court of Special Appeals should take cognizance of “plain error,” as permitted by Maryland Rule 4–325(e), and reverse the judgments on that basis. The Court of Special Appeals affirmed the judgments of conviction. The court held that the jury instruction, viewed in its entirety, did not constitute constitutional error, much less constitutional error that is structural in nature, and there was no cause to exercise the court's discretion to review the claim under the guise of “plain error.”

We granted Petitioner's request to review the judgment of the Court of Special Appeals. For the following reasons, we hold that the instruction contained error of constitutional dimension and was structural in nature; the error is worthy of the exercise of our discretion to take cognizance of the error as “plain”; and Petitioner is entitled to a new trial as a result.

I.

In light of the legal question before us, we need not undertake a detailed account of the evidence offered at trial. It suffices for our purposes to understand that the State presented legally sufficient evidence that, on May 28, 1993, Petitioner shot and killed Marvin Watts during an altercation between the two.

Petitioner's three-day jury trial commenced on May 9, 1994. At the close of all the evidence, the court gave the following jury instruction on the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard of proof required for conviction:

[T]he defendant is presumed innocent of the charges until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty. He comes into court clothed with this presumption of innocence, which remains with him from the beginning to the end of the trial as though it were testified to and supported by evidence that the defendant is innocent.

The burden of proving the defendant guilty is upon the prosecution from the beginning to the end of the trial for every element of the crime charged. The defendant has no burden to sustain and does not have to prove his innocence.

The charges against the defendant are not evidence of guilt. They are merely complaints to let you and the defendant know what the charges are.

After the jury has fairly and carefully reviewed all the evidence in this case, if you feel that the prosecution has failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty all of the evidence necessary to convict, then you must acquit the defendant.

The test of reasonable doubt is that the evidence that the State has produced must be so convincing that it would enable you to act on an important piece of business in your every day life. The words “to a moral certainty” do not mean an absolute or mathematical certainty but a certainty based upon convincing grounds of probability. The phrase “beyond a reasonable doubt” does not mean beyond any doubt or all possible doubt. But as the words indicate, beyond a doubt that is reasonable.

You are further instructed that the burden is on the State to prove beyond a reasonable doubt not only that the offenses were committed, but that the defendant is the person who committed them.

(Emphases added.)

Petitioner did not object to the instruction. The jury convicted him of involuntary manslaughter, use of a handgun in the commission of a felony or crime of violence, and carrying a handgun upon his person. The court imposed a total of 33 years' imprisonment, which included separate sentences for the two handgun-related convictions.

On direct appeal, Petitioner did not contest the reasonable doubt instruction. He argued, successfully, only that the handgun-related convictions should merge. His sentence was thereby reduced to 30 years' imprisonment. Petitioner thereafter pursued post-conviction relief, which resulted in his receiving a second, belated direct appeal on the ground that his counsel on direct appeal was ineffective in failing to challenge, as plainly erroneous, the reasonable doubt instruction given at trial.¹

[22 A.3d 849 , 420 Md. 238]

In 2008, the Court of Special Appeals heard the appeal. Petitioner, citing Sullivan v. Louisiana, 508 U.S. 275, 113 S.Ct. 2078, 124 L.Ed.2d 182 (1993), asserted that the reasonable doubt instruction reduced the burden of proof at his trial. That error, Petitioner argued, violated the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause and the Sixth Amendment right to trial by jury, thereby creating structural error that required reversal of the 1994 judgments of conviction, even in the absence of a contemporaneous objection at trial. Petitioner further argued that, even if the instructional error was not structural, the Court of Special Appeals should take cognizance of it as “plain error” and reverse the convictions on that ground.

The State did not contest Petitioner's premise that the reasonable doubt instruction was erroneous. Instead, the State took the position that Petitioner could not overcome the hurdles posed by the limits of “plain error” review merely by casting the error as “structural.” The State therefore argued that the Court of Special Appeals should decline Petitioner's request for automatic review. Even so, the State further argued, the error in the instruction was not of constitutional dimension, much less structural error; moreover, Petitioner made no persuasive argument suggesting the need for or desirability of the Court of Special Appeals' taking cognizance of plain error.

In an unreported opinion, the Court of Special Appeals affirmed the judgments of conviction. The Court recognized that, under Sullivan, a reasonable doubt instruction that reduces the burden of proof is constitutional error that is structural in nature. The Court of Special Appeals also recognized that, under Victor v. Nebraska, 511 U.S. 1, 114 S.Ct. 1239, 127 L.Ed.2d 583 (1994), not all errors in a reasonable doubt instruction are of constitutional magnitude. The court concluded that the error in the instruction given at Petitioner's trial was not of that magnitude. The court observed that the instruction was very similar to the instruction held to be plainly erroneous in Himple v. State, 101 Md.App. 579, 647 A.2d 1240 (1994). The court, however, found no reason to exercise its discretion to take cognizance of the error in Petitioner's case as “plain.”

We granted certiorari to answer the following questions:

(1) Did the Court of Special Appeals err when it held that the reasonable doubt instructions issued to the jury at Petitioner's trial, which defined the standard for beyond a reasonable doubt as “certainty based upon convincing grounds of probability,” did not constitute a structural error nor violate Petitioner's Sixth and Fourteenth amendment constitutional rights?

(2) Did the Court of Special Appeals abuse its discretion in refusing to recognize plain error in reasonable doubt jury instructions, which defined the standard for reasonable doubt as “certainty based upon convincing grounds of probability”?

II.

We begin our discussion by noting the two points on which the parties agree: (1) the reasonable doubt instruction given at Petitioner's trial contained erroneous language; and (2) Petitioner did not lodge a contemporaneous objection to it. The parties have diametrically opposing views, though, concerning whether Petitioner's failure to lodge a contemporaneous objection to the instruction erects procedural and substantive hurdles to obtaining appellate relief.

Looming large in the analysis is Maryland Rule 4–325(e), which provides:

No party may assign as error the giving or the failure to give an instruction unless the party objects on the record promptly after the court instructs the jury, stating distinctly the matter to which the party objects and the grounds of the objection. Upon request of any party, the court shall receive objections out of the hearing of the jury. An appellate court, on its own initiative or on the suggestion of a party, may however take cognizance of any plain error in the instructions, material to the rights of the defendant, despite a failure to object.

The State, not surprisingly, hangs its hat on that rule. The State argues that the only way Petitioner can obtain appellate relief is by persuading us either that the Court of Special Appeals abused its discretion in declining to review the instructional error under the guise of plain error or that we should exercise our discretion under that same standard. In that regard, the State points out that the nature of the error, whether labeled “ constitutional,” “structural,” or otherwise, is irrelevant to whether Petitioner preserved for appellate review his challenge to the instruction.

Petitioner disagrees that the plain error rule necessarily controls his right to appellate review of the challenged instruction. He argues, albeit in a footnote only, that preservation by...