State v. Freeman, 83-28-A
| Decision Date | 20 March 1984 |
| Docket Number | No. 83-28-A,83-28-A |
| Citation | 473 A.2d 1149 |
| Parties | STATE v. Norman FREEMAN. ppeal. |
| Court | Rhode Island Supreme Court |
The defendant, Norman Freeman, is appealing from a conviction for voluntary manslaughter. He was tried by a Superior Court jury in April 1982 pursuant to an indictment charging him with the murder of Arthur Almeida. At the close of the state's case, the trial justice granted the defendant's motion for a judgment of acquittal in respect to the charge of murder in the first degree but denied the motion for acquittal of murder in the second degree. The jury returned a verdict of guilty of voluntary manslaughter; and the trial judge, after denying a motion for a new trial, sentenced the defendant to a twelve-year prison term, with seven years to serve, five years suspended, and five years' probation.
The defendant raises two issues in support of his appeal. First, he asserts that the trial justice violated his constitutional rights under the confrontation clause of the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution and also under article I, section 10, of the Rhode Island Constitution by refusing to allow defense counsel to cross-examine the prosecution's key witness on the issue of bias or motive. Second, he argues that the failure of the trial justice to give the jury a requested instruction on the defense of accident was erroneous and renders his conviction invalid. Although we consider the confrontation issue dispositive of this appeal, we shall first consider the propriety of the instructions of the trial justice since a new trial will be necessary in this case. However, the focus of our holding today is defendant's claim that he was denied his constitutional right to probe the issue of bias of the prosecution's key witness. We sustain defendant's appeal on this ground and remand the case for a new trial.
The testimony at trial established the following facts. The victim, Arthur "Sonny" Almeida, was a friend of defendant and had at one time lived with defendant and defendant's wife and two children. On the morning of August 6, 1981, Sonny and defendant began drinking beer together, consuming about a case of beer during the course of the day. In the afternoon, they left for Sonny's apartment where later, at around 5 p.m., an altercation erupted between them outside the apartment building. Both men appeared drunk. The defendant struck Sonny several times. As a result Sonny fell, hit his head on a manhole cover, and then began to vomit. Upon the arrival of a Providence rescue unit, Sonny refused medical treatment. Thereafter, the two men returned to defendant's apartment where they ate dinner and continued to drink beer. It is at this juncture that the facts leading to the death of Sonny become less clear. The sole witness to the events that followed (not including a two-year-old and a three-year-old who were also present) was Bernice Anderson, defendant's wife, whose testimony consists of two conflicting accounts of what happened in her home that evening.
At trial, Bernice testified that after dinner, defendant questioned Sonny about the identity of another man who had been present earlier in Sonny's apartment. Each time that Sonny responded that he did not know who the man was, defendant struck Sonny with an "open hand." She testified that defendant hit Sonny about four or five times, that two or three times the blows caused Sonny to fall backward from a seated position on a bed and hit his head on the footboard, and that at no time did Sonny defend himself. A final blow caused Sonny to fall backward from a standing position, hit a refrigerator, and then fall to the floor. She stated that Sonny began to vomit and gag and that defendant turned him over onto his stomach. She related that defendant would not allow her to call for a rescue unit, telling her that "Sonny's always like that when he gets drunk." Unable to lift Sonny onto a bed, they left him on the floor and retired. Hours later, at around 12:30 a.m., now August 7, 1981, defendant woke her to tell her that Sonny was not breathing. The defendant called a rescue unit but instructed Bernice to report only that Sonny had fallen and not to say that defendant had hit him.
Complying, Bernice gave a statement to the police that Sonny had fallen in a drunken stupor, hitting his head on the refrigerator. The medical examiner ruled Sonny's death to be a homicide, and police arrested defendant on the same night, August 7, 1981, pursuant to a warrant which had been obtained earlier, and questioned him about Sonny's murder. Bernice, also present at the police station, gave a second statement repudiating her first account to the police and relating that Sonny had fallen and hit his head on the refrigerator after defendant had struck him several times.
The defendant contends that the trial justice committed prejudicial error in refusing to charge the jury as follows:
"However, if in this case you find that the death of Arthur Almeida resulted from an accident, you must find the defendant not guilty."
The defendant cites in support of this construction State v. Crough, 89 R.I. 338, 152 A.2d 644 (1959). In Crough the trial justice did instruct that if the death of a child occurred by accident, the defendant was entitled to an acquittal. The court held that the charge as a whole was "correct and applied to the evidence." Id. at 353, 152 A.2d at 652-53. 1
In the case at bar the trial justice defined manslaughter in the following terms:
Following its deliberations, the jury returned the verdict "guilty of voluntary manslaughter."
We are of the opinion that defendant's contentions concerning the failure of the trial justice to give the requested instruction in this case are without merit. The trial justice's definition of voluntary manslaughter required an intentional killing "in the heat of passion as a result of adequate provocation." Such an instruction completely precludes a nonculpable, accidental homicide. Further, the trial justice's definition of involuntary manslaughter also precluded an accidental death unless it was brought about by "an unlawful act not amounting to a felony" or "in the performance of a lawful act with criminal negligence." We believe that the trial justice's instructions in this case were as adequate in excluding accident without criminal culpability as the instruction that was approved in State v. Crough, 89 R.I. at 353, 152 A.2d at 652-53. The term "accident" is a most indefinite term indeed. A death may well be brought about by unintentional means that could be termed "accidental," but in the event that such death is the result of criminal negligence or an unlawful act not amounting to a felony, such homicide may well constitute manslaughter. Consequently, the instruction requested by defendant was highly susceptible of misleading the jury. This illustrates the danger of taking phrases from an appellate opinion without qualification as a basis for a charge to a jury. Appellate opinions are addressed to judges and lawyers and are not always appropriate for use in the communication of legal concepts to lay jurors.
The verdict of voluntary manslaughter required a finding that the death was brought about by intentional means and that the homicide was reduced from the crime of murder only by the finding of adequate provocation or heat of passion. In any event, the trial justice's instructions on voluntary manslaughter and involuntary manslaughter of necessity negated an accidental death not brought about by culpable conduct on the part of the accused, either deliberate or criminally negligent.
It is well settled that a trial justice need not adopt the language suggested by a defendant so long as those instructions reasonably set forth all of the propositions of law that relate to material issues of fact which the evidence tends to support. State v. Manning, R.I., 447 A.2d 393, 394 (1982); State v. Ahmadjian, R.I., 438 A.2d 1070, 1086 (1981); State v. Verdone, 114 R.I. 613, 619, 337 A.2d 804, 809 (1975). We conclude that in the case at bar the trial justice carried out his obligation and correctly framed the legal issues for the jury's consideration.
At the trial, the direct examination of Bernice by the prosecutor included the following:
Defense counsel twice attempted to elicit testimony to show that Bernice was taken to the police station under arrest--first, on cross-examination of Bernice and, second, on cross-examination of the arresting officer. The cross-examination of Bernice included the following:
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