State v. Ellison

• Docket Number: 21-0657
• Decision Date: 03 February 2023
• Citation: 985 N.W.2d 473
• Parties: STATE of Iowa, Appellee, v. Deonte WB ELLISON, Appellant.
• Court: Iowa Supreme Court

985 N.W.2d 473

STATE of Iowa, Appellee,

v.Deonte WB ELLISON, Appellant.

No. 21-0657

Supreme Court of Iowa.

Submitted September 15, 2022

Filed February 3, 2023

Martha J. Lucey, State Appellate Defender, and Shellie L. Knipfer (argued), Assistant Appellate Defender, for appellant.

Brenna Bird, Attorney General, and Darrel Mullins (argued), Assistant Attorney General, for appellee.

McDermott, J., delivered the opinion of the court in which all justices joined.

McDERMOTT, Justice.

The State charged Deonte Ellison with first-degree murder after he shot and killed Curtis Smothers in the midst of a fistfight they were having on a city street in Dubuque. At trial, Ellison argued that he was justified in shooting Smothers to put a stop to Smothers's ongoing attack. The jury ultimately acquitted Ellison of the murder charge but found him guilty of the lesser included offense of voluntary manslaughter.

Ellison argues in this appeal that the district court erroneously instructed the jury on a "stand your ground" defense. Because he never actually raised a stand-your-ground defense in the case, Ellison argues that the instruction confused the jury about his actual justification defense. Ellison also argues that another jury instruction—one that prevents a justification defense if the jury finds that the defendant concealed or disguised physical evidence—in effect compelled him to reveal evidence in violation of his constitutional right against self-incrimination.

I. Facts and Procedural History.

The altercation between Ellison and Smothers was captured by a traffic camera on July 2, 2020. The camera was positioned on a traffic signal pole above a city street in Dubuque. The video, which was entered into evidence and played for the jury, shows a car (driven by Ellison) pulling into a parallel parking spot along the street around 6:00 p.m. A second car (driven by Ellison's wife, Vanessa Ellison) pulls into the spot behind Ellison's car soon after. Several children accompany Vanessa. The oldest of them, a daughter of about elementary school age, was borne of a prior relationship between Vanessa and Curtis Smothers. Ellison and Vanessa have two younger children together.

About a minute after Ellison parks his car, a white SUV containing Smothers and two other men drives down the street, heading in the same direction as Ellison and his wife had been before they parked. Vanessa and her daughter had exited her car by this point, but Ellison remained in his car. The white vehicle drives past the parked cars, but as it approaches an intersection just past the cars, it pulls over too. One of the men in the vehicle testified that Smothers recognized his daughter on the sidewalk and asked the driver to pull over so he could get out and talk to her. After Smothers exits the vehicle, he moves quickly down the sidewalk toward his daughter and then lifts her in the air as they meet for an extended embrace.

A no-contact order, based on Smothers's prior physical abuse of Vanessa, prohibited Smothers from making any contact with Vanessa or her family. Vanessa testified that she'd not seen Smothers in perhaps a year before he appeared on the sidewalk. Ellison was aware of Smothers's past physical abuse of Vanessa.

Ellison, meanwhile, remains seated in the driver's seat of his car, talking to a man standing in the street who has appeared at his open car door. While Smothers and the daughter continue their embrace, Ellison's wife opens the passenger doors of her car, removing bags and a child in a car seat.

When Smothers ends his embrace with his daughter, he remains on the sidewalk and appears to give a fist-bump greeting to one of the other children. Ellison, now out of his car, walks toward the sidewalk between his and Vanessa's parked cars. Witnesses testified that, at this point, Ellison and Smothers started what would quickly turn into a heated exchange of words. Smothers, still situated on the sidewalk, kicks off his sandals, appearing ready to fight. Ellison, now also on the sidewalk, pushes Smothers away. The jawing continues. About twelve seconds later, Ellison punches Smothers, Smothers punches back, and fists fly.

Over the next twenty seconds, Ellison and Smothers move around the sidewalk in a full-on fistfight. According to one of the men with Smothers, at some point during the fight, Ellison displayed (or even fired a warning shot from) a handgun he'd pulled from his waistband, prompting Smothers to ask Ellison, "Are you going to shoot me in front of my daughter?"

Smothers appears to pursue Ellison toward the street, with Ellison moving backwards into the space between the parallel-parked cars. Ellison stops and pushes Smothers away. Smothers responds with another punch. Ellison then draws a handgun from his waistband and fires. Smothers stumbles onto the sidewalk and collapses, motionless. Everyone present quickly scatters, with the exception of the two men who had arrived with Smothers in the white SUV. Ellison and several of the others run across the street into a nearby house. One of the men with Smothers calls 911 from his cell phone, and police officers arrive within about a minute.

Everything just described—from the moment Ellison parked his car to the moment police arrived—spanned less than five minutes. Smothers died of a single gunshot wound to the chest.

Several hours later, police executed a search warrant on the home across the street that Ellison went into after the shooting. In the intervening period, Ellison broke out a back window and left the area. Investigators pinged Ellison's cell phone, which lead to his apprehension on July 14 in Kalamazoo, Michigan (the city in which Ellison resided). At trial, the jury was informed that surveillance footage in Kalamazoo showed Ellison with a shaved head. The jury was also informed through the testimony of multiple witnesses that police never recovered the gun used in the shooting.

Ellison was charged with first-degree murder (a class "A" felony), Iowa Code § 707.2 (2020), and felon in possession of a firearm (a class "D" felony), id. § 724.26(1). He pleaded guilty to the felon-in-possession charge. After a trial, the jury rejected the State's first-degree murder charge and instead found Ellison guilty of the lesser included offense of voluntary manslaughter (a class "C" felony), id. § 707.4.

II. Analysis of the Arguments.

A. Did the district court err in giving an instruction on a stand-your-ground defense?

A person is justified in using "reasonable force" against another if "the person reasonably believes that such force is necessary to defend oneself or another from any actual or imminent use of unlawful force." Iowa Code § 704.3. "Reasonable force," in turn, is defined as "that force and no more which a reasonable person, in like circumstances, would judge to be necessary to prevent an injury or loss." Id. § 704.1(1). Deadly force is reasonable if the person reasonably believes that deadly force "is necessary to avoid injury or risk to one's life or safety or the life or safety of another." Id.

The justification defense—the notion that one is justified and thus shouldn't be held criminally liable in using force in response to impending harm—comes with several important caveats. As relevant here, the use of force generally is not justified when the person knows that he can avoid the need to use it with complete safety by retreating or taking an alternate course. See, e.g. , State v. Lorenzo Baltazar , 935 N.W.2d 862, 870 (Iowa 2019). But in 2017, the legislature added a caveat to this caveat with a new subsection stating that "[a] person who is not engaged in illegal activity has no duty to retreat from any place where the person is lawfully present before using force." 2017 Iowa Acts ch. 69, § 37 (codified at Iowa Code § 704.1(3) (2018)). The new subsection, providing what's colloquially referred to as the right to "stand your ground," modified the usual requirement that a person in the face of a threat must retreat if possible before resorting to force. The amended statute makes clear that people need not retreat from a place where they are lawfully present and not "engaged in illegal activity" before they resort to force. State v. Williams , 929 N.W.2d 621, 637 (Iowa 2019).

In light of the changes to the statute, the district court used a new jury instruction. This Jury Instruction (Instruction 29)—which Ellison objected to—stated:

If any of the following is true, the defendant's use of force was not justified:

1. The defendant did not have a reasonable belief that it was necessary to use force to prevent an injury or loss.

2. The defendant used unreasonable force under the circumstances.

3. The defendant was engaged in illegal activity in the place where he used force, he made no effort to retreat, and retreat was a reasonable alternative to using force.

If the State has proved any of these beyond a reasonable doubt, the defendant's use of force was not justified.

Subsection 3 of this instruction repackages the language in section 704.1(3) in its negative form, instructing that the jury could not find that Ellison was justified in using force if he was engaged in illegal activity and made no effort to make a retreat when reasonable. See Iowa Code § 704.1(3).

Ellison argues that this formulation confused the jury because it suggested that his justification defense involved a claim to "stand his ground" without retreating when in fact Ellison's justification defense involved no such claim. Ellison urges that the stand-your-ground defense isn't pertinent to every case in which a claim of justification arises and that the court's instruction, framed as it was, caused the jury to reject his defense merely because he couldn't establish the inapplicable elements of the stand-your-ground exception.

In State v. Lorenzo Baltazar , we observed that after the 2017 amendments, a person lawfully present and not engaged in illegal activity had no duty to retreat before using force. 935 N.W.2d at 870. But ...