State v. Irons
| Decision Date | 17 July 2000 |
| Docket Number | No. 43259-1-I.,43259-1-I. |
| Citation | 4 P.3d 174,101 Wash.App. 544 |
| Court | Washington Court of Appeals |
| Parties | STATE of Washington, Respondent, v. Armon LePage IRONS, a.k.a. Armon LePage Souza, Appellant. |
Nielsen, Broman & Associates, P.L.L.C., Seattle, Catherine E. Glinski, Manchester, and James R. Dixon, for Appellant.
Norm Maleng, Prosecuting Attorney, and Andrew J. Ries, Deputy, Seattle, for Respondent.
A self-defense instruction that requires the jury to find that the defendant reasonably believed that the victim (rather than the victim and those whom the defendant reasonably believed were acting in concert with the victim) intended to inflict death or great personal injury precludes the jury from considering the defendant's right to act upon reasonable appearances in a multiple assailant attack, thereby failing to make the relevant legal standard manifestly apparent to the average juror. The trial court in this case erred by giving such an instruction and the error was not harmless. Accordingly, we reverse Armon LePage Irons's first degree manslaughter conviction and remand for a new trial.1
On November 15, 1997, around 9 p.m., Mike Jenkins, Daniel Clay, Raul Medina, Teddy Morris, and Ed Olson purchased 22-ounce bottles of malt liquor for each of them and then pulled their car into a QFC parking lot. Morris got out of the car to use a pay telephone to arrange a marijuana purchase. The others waited in the car, drinking their beers. Morris, Medina, and Olson were former members of the Northwest Crips Posse gang. Jenkins was a former member of the Black Gangster Disciples gang. Armon LePage Irons and his friend, Chris Townsend, walked through the same QFC parking lot. Irons and Townsend were both members of the Native Son Bloods gang. The Native Son Bloods and the Northwest Crips Posse were rival gangs. A week earlier, Olson had been attacked and robbed of his beer by members of the Native Son Bloods gang, and he believed that Irons and Townsend were two of the people who had attacked him. He had told his friends about the incident earlier in the evening. Medina spotted Irons and Townsend, and challenged Olson to confront them. Olson refused. Medina got out of the car and, holding his beer bottle aloft, confronted Irons and Townsend. He used words and gestures that would be recognized by gang members as challenging and hostile. Irons responded in kind, and the men approached each other. Clay and Jenkins got out of the car, intending to help Medina, and Morris joined them. Olson remained in the car. Clay chased Townsend away and then joined the group in confronting Irons. Medina noticed that Irons was holding a knife, and began to back away. Jenkins punched Irons in the face. Dodging a second blow, Irons stabbed Jenkins with the knife, then ran. Morris and Jenkins chased Irons for a short distance; then Jenkins, who had been stabbed in the heart, fell in the parking lot.
A woman who worked at the QFC was outside the store when the confrontation occurred. She testified that she saw Irons walking toward the store when a group of people tried to surround him, saw one of the men get in Irons's face, and saw Irons push him away and then run off. She did not see the knife and did not see any beer bottles. After Jenkins fell down, she called the police.
Jenkins bled to death in the parking lot. The police found a broken beer bottle in the parking lot. Armed with a search warrant, they later found the knife, wrapped in a towel, under a sofa in Irons's living room.
While awaiting the arrival of the police and trying to stop Jenkins's bleeding, Medina, Clay, Morris, and Olson decided to tell the police that Jenkins had been on his way into the store when Irons attacked him out of the blue. When the police arrived, each of them told that story. But within a few days, each gave taped statements to the police, admitting that Medina had started the altercation and that Jenkins had hit Irons before Irons stabbed him. Each also testified at trial, contradicting various of his earlier statements to the police and also contradicting each other's testimony with respect to various details about the altercation—most notably, as to whether Medina was still holding his beer bottle when he challenged Irons to fight, and whether Medina broke the beer bottle before or after the stabbing. Olson testified that he saw Irons put a red rag into his back pocket—a gang signal that he wanted to fight. He also testified that Jenkins was carrying a black rag, which was also a gang signal. Medina testified that he tried to stop Jenkins's bleeding with a black rag he took from Jenkins's pocket—and that he had lied to the police about where he got the rag because he did not want them to think the fight was gang-related.
The State charged Irons with second degree murder. At the end of trial, the trial court instructed the jury that homicide is justifiable when committed in the lawful defense of the defendant when he "reasonably believed that the victim intended to commit a felony and inflict death or great personal injury[.]" Clerk's Papers at 64. Irons objected to this instruction, arguing that it misstated the law under the facts of this case:
Report of Proceedings at 530-31. The trial judge declined to modify this instruction, ruling: "The fact of the matter is that it is Michael Jenkins who was the victim in this case who was fatally stabbed, and I believe that the instructions accurately reflect the charges and the law." Id. at 534. The jury convicted Irons of the lesser-included offense of first degree manslaughter. Irons appeals.
Irons contends that the trial court erred by giving the jury a justifiable homicide instruction that required the jury to find that the defendant reasonably believed that the victim intended to commit a felony and inflict death or great personal injury, and refusing to instruct the jury that a homicide is also justifiable if the defendant reasonably believed that a group or a member of the group intended to commit a felony and inflict death or great personal injury.
Jury instructions are sufficient if they are supported by substantial evidence, allow the parties to argue their theories of the case, and when read as a whole properly inform the jury of the applicable law. State v. McLoyd, 87 Wash.App. 66, 71, 939 P.2d 1255 (1997), aff'd sub nom. State v. Studd, 137 Wash.2d 533, 973 P.2d 1049 (1999). "Each side is entitled to have the jury instructed on its theory of the case if there is evidence to support that theory." State v. Williams, 132 Wash.2d 248, 259, 937 P.2d 1052 (1997). "Failure to give such instructions is prejudicial error." State v. Riley, 137 Wash.2d 904, 908 n. 1, 976 P.2d 624 (1999). "To be entitled to a jury instruction on self-defense, the defendant must produce some evidence demonstrating self-defense; however, once the defendant produces some evidence, the burden shifts to the prosecution to prove the absence of self-defense beyond a reasonable doubt." State v. Walden, 131 Wash.2d 469, 473, 932 P.2d 1237 (1997). "Evidence of self-defense is evaluated `from the standpoint of the reasonably prudent person, knowing all the defendant knows and seeing all the defendant sees.'" Id. at 474, 932 P.2d 1237 (quoting State v. Janes, 121 Wash.2d 220, 238, 850 P.2d 495, 22 A.L.R.5th 921 (1993)).
Our Supreme Court has set forth a high threshold for clarity of jury instructions: "The standard for clarity in a jury instruction is higher than for a statute; while we have been able to resolve the ambiguous wording of [a statute] via statutory construction, a jury lacks such interpretive tools and thus requires a manifestly clear instruction." State v. LeFaber, 128 Wash.2d 896, 902, 913 P.2d 369 (1996). And where, as here, self-defense jury instructions are at issue, the court has stated that the "instructions, read as a whole, must make the relevant legal standard `manifestly apparent to the average juror.'" Id. at 900, 913 P.2d 369 (citations and internal quotation marks omitted). Indeed, a "`jury instruction misstating the law of self-defense amounts to an error of constitutional magnitude and is presumed prejudicial.'" Walden, 131 Wash.2d at 473, 932 P.2d 1237 (quoting LeFaber, 128 Wash.2d at 900, 913 P.2d 369).
In this case, Irons was entitled to jury instructions on self-defense because he produced some evidence demonstrating self-defense. The trial court, therefore, gave the jury the following instruction:
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