State v. Chaffin

• Court: Idaho Supreme Court
• Writing for the Court: McQUADE; SMITH
• Citation: State v. Chaffin, 448 P.2d 243, 92 Idaho 629 (Idaho 1968)
• Decision Date: 02 December 1968
• Docket Number: No. 10128,10128
• Parties: STATE of Idaho, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. LaVar CHAFFIN, Defentant-Appellant.

Page 243

448 P.2d 243

92 Idaho 629

STATE of Idaho, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. LaVar CHAFFIN, Defentant-Appellant.

No. 10128.

Supreme Court of Idaho.

Dec. 2, 1968.

Whittier & McDougall, Pocatello, for defendant-appellant.

Allan G. Shepard, Atty. Gen., and Roger B. Wright, Deputy Atty. Gen., Boise, Dean Williams, then Pros. Atty., Bingham County, Blackfoot, for plaintiff-respondent.

McQUADE, Justice.

On May 2, 1966, appellant LaVar Chaffin was convicted of the crime of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to serve an indeterminate term not to exceed five years in the Idaho State Penitentiary.

The evidence produced at the trial before a jury established the following facts. For some time prior to August 8, 1965, LaVar Chaffin and his wife, Carol, the victim of the shooting in this case, had been separated. During the week before the shooting they apparently came together again the order to attempt a reconciliation, despite the fact that Carol Chaffin on August 9, 1965, filed a complaint for divorce against her husband. Numerous witnesses testified without contradiction that on August 10, 1965, appellant and his wife went on a fishing trip to Dell, Montana, and returned to their apartment at 245 Northwest Main Street in Blackfoot, Idaho, on the morning of Friday, August 13, 1965.

At 11:00 a. m. on the day of the shooting, August 15, 1965, LaVar Chaffin visited the apartment of one Carol Whiting in order to contact one Doyle Grimmett about going hunting later that day. After a few minutes, Chaffin left with Carol Whiting and dropped her off at her place of employment, which was on the way to Chaffin's apartment. Grimmett and one Phillip Dance followed Chaffin to his apartment with a small box of Chaffin's clothing from Carol Whiting's apartment. There was testimony that Chaffin had been going with Carol Whiting during his separating from his wife.

At the Chaffin apartment, LaVar Chaffin, his wife, Grimmett and Dance talked and had a beer during the fifteen minutes they were there. The Chaffins were parents of a baby boy who had been taken earlier that morning to Shelley, Idaho, by appellant's mother. The four of them then went to Grimmett's sister's house for forty-five minutes to repair a car, during which time Carol Chaffin remained in the car in which they had arrived. They drove back to the Chaffin apartment and let LaVar Chaffin out to wait for his mother to return the child, while Carol Chaffin, Grimmett and Dance made an unsuccessful trip to the Silver Spur Bar for more beer. Having returned to pick up LaVar Chaffin, all four then went to a so-called Bartender's Picnic at which all apparently were welcome because the men had worked part-time at the Darby Club in Blackfoot. All of them drank beer at the picnic.

Just before 3:00 p. m. the four returned to the Chaffin apartment. Grimmett lay down on a bed in a bedroom and went into a very deep sleep from which he was awakened only by the vigorous shaking of Detective Merritt after the shooting had occurred. When Dance left the apartment, saying he would return to go hunting but not intending to do so, Carol Chaffin was looking in the real portion of the apartment for shotgun shells to take hunting and appellant was in the living room at the front of the apartment. There was testimony that appellant and his wife were yelling at each other at this time.

The landlady at the New Tourist Hotel lived in the apartment next to Carol and LaVar Chaffin's apartment. She testified that at about 3:00 p. m. she heard the Chaffin screen door slam and went to her window to look our on the street. She saw that appellant had just opened the door of his pickup truck and was doing something there. The landlady testified that she turned around and took about ten steps to her kitchen when the shot rang out. Momentarily appellant came to her apartment to call an ambulance. An upstairs resident of the hotel heard the shot, came down, and met appellant, who took him to his apartment. The body of Carol Chaffin was seated in an overstuffed armchair (against the wall of the small living room) nearly opposite the front door of the apartment. Officer Shiosaki responded to a radio call at 3:15 p. m. and was dispatched to the Chaffin apartment. Chaffin wanted to take his wife to the hospital in the patrol car but was told to wait for the ambulance. Carol Chaffin appeared to be dead at that time and was pronounced dead upon arrival at the hospital.

Police officers requested that Chaffin make a report on the facts of the shooting at a time when he was neither under arrest nor charged with any crime. Detective Merritt and Chief Wrenn testified as to Chaffin's statement. Chaffin told them that after Dance left, he got out the sixteen gauge shotgun and sat on the couch which was next to the chair in which his wife was sitting. He said he turned the gun upside down on his lap and began putting shells into the magazine. When he had filled it, he jacked the action back and it went off. The contents of the shell hit his wife in the face as she sat in a normally erect position in the chair.

Because of certain inconsistencies the police believed they had found, LaVar Chaffin was later charged with first degree murder. The State attempted to show that it would have been impossible for Chaffin to return to the couch from his pickup truck outside and begin loading the shotgun in the short interval between the time when the landlady saw him at his truck and the time she heard the shot. The State also showed by means of hypothetical questions that if the shooting had occurred as Chaffin described it, then the trajectory of the missiles within the victim's head would have been on an upward path, while in fact the x-rays showed that they traveled a downward path. Moreover, a gunsmith testified that the trigger mechanism of the shotgun was in no way defective. At the close of the State's case, however, the court granted appellant's motion for a directed verdict of acquittal on the first degree murder charge. The jury then found appellant guilty of involuntary manslaughter.

Appellant makes numerous assignments of error, which will be somewhat consolidated for purposes of this opinion. Appellant first contends that the court erred in allowing two of the State's witnesses, Chief Charles Wrenn and Dr. Maurice Heneger, to testify in answer to a hypothetical question as to the bullet's probable trajectory. This Court has set out certain requirements for the use of hypothetical questions in a number of cases. ¹ A hypothetical question must be fairly framed to reflect facts which are admitted or proved. It must assume all the facts which are material to the proposition intended to be established by the answer. The facts assumed must tend to be shown by the evidence, but the jury may accept or reject those facts and therefore may still accept or reject the answer to the hypothetical question. The ultimate test for the validity of a hypothetical question as to both form and content is fairness, a matter largely for the trial court's sound discretion.

Judged by this standard, the question propounded to both Chief Wrenn and Dr. Heneger was not objectionable. The question was substantially as follows:

'* * * from this set of facts a person the size you see the defendant to be is in a seated position on a sofa loading a 16 gauge shotgun which is in his hands across his knees, he's inserting shells in the gun and jacks the gun, the gun discharges and strikes a person seated in a reclining style overstuffed chair with arms, which chair is in an upright position, the chair is 14 inches from the floor to the top of the seat cushion, the person seated in the chair is seated in an upright position and is from the crest of her * * * hip * * * to her mouth one foot six and a half inches tall and the depth of the thigh is seven inches, with this set of facts what would have been the angle of penetration of the pellets from the lap in the person who is seated in the chair?'

To this question both Chief Wrenn and Dr. Heneger answered that the trajectory of the pellets would have been on an upward angle. Appellant contends that this question either omits material facts or assumes facts not tended to be shown by the evidence. Appellant argues that there was no evidence to show the position of Carol Chaffin's body when the shell struck her. However, Chief Wrenn did testify that LaVar Chaffin said, in his description of the shooting, that his wife was sitting erectly in the chair just the way Chief Wrenn was sitting as he asked the questions. Appellant's counsel on cross-examination made it amply clear to the jury that one of the assumptions of the question was that Carol Chaffin was erect when the shot hit her. It was open to the jury to disbelieve the testimony of Chief Wrenn and find instead that Carol Chaffin could have been leaning a great deal forward in the chair so that the shell would have raveled a downward course through her head as the x-ray showed.

Appellant also contends that the question was unfair becauses the exact height of the sofa was omitted, but this exact height would not be material to the answer so long as the leave of the lap of a man seated on the couch was below the level of the mouth of a victim seated in the chair, and this was shown to be true by the protographic exhibits admitted into evidence. The exact position of appellant's hands as the gun discharged is also immaterial to the answer so long as the evidence tended to show that the gun was basically across appellant's lap. Moreover, the question was favorable to appellant in that it omitted any assumption based on testimony to the effect that the shotgun was upside down on appellant's lap as well.

This hypothetical question was not unfairly framed. As it is stated in Zimberg v. United States, ² it is hardly ever reversible error to admit opinion evidence since its foundation is left to cross-examination. Powdrill v. State ³ and...