State v. Lee
| Decision Date | 03 November 1975 |
| Docket Number | No. 56244,56244 |
| Citation | 331 So.2d 455 |
| Parties | STATE of Louisiana, Appellee, v. Sammy K. LEE, Appellant. |
| Court | Louisiana Supreme Court |
James A. Hobbs, Jones, Blackwell, Chambliss, Hobbs & Henry, West Monroe, for defendant-appellant.
William J. Guste, Jr., Atty. Gen., Barbara Rutledge, Asst. Atty. Gen., J. Carl Parkerson, Dist. Atty., John R. Harrison, Asst. Dist. Atty., for plaintiff-appellee.
The defendant Lee was convicted of second degree murder, La.R.S. 14:30.1 (1973), and sentenced to life imprisonment at hard labor. We must reverse. We find that the trial court erred in refusing to receive testimony as to the decedent's dangerous character in support of the accused's plea of self-defense, after the defendant had laid the requisite foundation by producing appreciable evidence that the decedent had made a hostile overt act against the accused. (Assignments of Error Numbers 1 through 5).
The defendant Lee and the victim Etchieson were part of a group of transient blacktop roof repairers, who with their families had moved from Mississippi to a mobile trailer park near Monroe, Louisiana, about a week before the offense charged. For the most part, they were related to one another by blood or marriage and moved from job-site to job-site over several southern states.
On the Sunday morning of the incident, Etchieson's daughter and Lee's son, both five years of age, had gotten into a fight while they waited near the road for the Sunday school bus. Etchieson came out of his trailer in anger and headed toward the children.
Lee's son ran towards his father, who was nearby standing with three other men preparing to go squirrel hunting. Lee had with him a 12-gauge shotgun.
Lee testified that Etchieson sprang at him and cut him with a knife and shouted, 'I'm going to cut off your head.' (The three state witnesses, the decedent's wife chiefly, testified Etchieson had no knife. 1) Lee shot Etchieson, causing his almost immediate death. He immediately turned himself in to the police, who found a small reddened slashmark (scratch) on his left chest beneath a ripped shirt.
The decedent was a big man, over six feet in height, weighing about 210 pounds. The accused was a much smaller man.
The defense upon which the accused relied was that he shot the decedent in self defense, in the reasonable belief that his own life was in danger. The defendant Lee was permitted to describe his own difficulties with the decedent Etchieson and to testify to a violent act he had seen him commit; but state objections were sustained to questions asked of him and of another defense witness which prevented him from attempting to establish the decedent's dangerous and violent character. For reasons to be set forth, these objections erroneously hampered to a substantial degree the evidence he tendered for his plea of self-defense.
In direct contradiction to the state's three eyewitnesses, the first defense witness testified that she had seen the victim make two or three jumps toward defendant and swing at him with 'something'. After he was shot, the victim staggered back and dropped a knife.
The second defense witness testified that immediately after the shooting, she saw a knife laying on the ground beside the victim.
The defense counsel then attempted to elicit testimony from this witness as to the victim's dangerous character and reputation. 2 The trial court sustained the state's objection to the introduction of this testimony. Similarly, when the defendant took the stand and attempted to respond to questions concerning his own knowledge of the victim's dangerous history, 3 the trial judge refused to admit such testimony.
The evidence was sought in support of a plea of self-defense, authorized by La.R.S. 14:20: 'A homicide is justifiable: (1) When committed in self-defense by one who reasonably believes that he is in imminent danger of losing his life or receiving great bodily harm and that the killing is necessary to save himself from that danger * * *.'
Evidence of the decedent's dangerous character or of his threats against the accused may be admissible in support of this plea of self-defense, provided that the accused first produces evidence that the decedent had made a hostile demonstration or overt act against the accused at the time of the incident. See La.R.S. 15:482 (quoted below).
As explained in State v. Brown, 172 La. 121, 133 So. 383, 386 (1931), summarizing the well-settled principle:
As amended by Act 239 of 1952, La.R.S. 15:482 provides: 'In the absence of Evidence of hostile demonstration or of overt act on the part of the person slain or injured, evidence of his dangerous character or of his threats against accused is not admissible.' (Italics ours.) The 1952 amendment specifically permitted dangerous character evidence, if 'evidence' instead of 'proof' (the pre-1952 wording) was made of the overt act or hostile demonstration. See 13 La.L.Rev. 64 (1952).
Prior to the 1952 amendment, this court had held that by the pre-1952 wording the 'proof' of the overt act must be established To the satisfaction of the trial judge before evidence of the decedent's dangerous character or of his threats against the accused could be received. State v. Terry, 221 La. 1109, 61 So.2d 888 (1952), 14 La.L.Rev. 226--28 (1953); State v. Tobias, 218 La. 226, 48 So.2d 905 (1950). State v. Thornhill, 188 La. 762, 178 So. 343 (1938); State v. Richardson, 175 La. 823, 144 So. 587 (1932); State v. Dreher, 166 La. 924, 118 So. 85 (1928). Chief Justice O'Niell repeatedly dissented from these rulings, strongly urging that by them the trial judge, by rejecting the credibility of defense witnesses on a merit-issue, was permitted to invade the trial jury's function of evaluating the evidence. See: 11 La.L.Rev. 231--32 (1951); Note, 2 La.L.Rev. 376 (1940).
The legislative intent reflected by the 1952 amendment was to overrule legislatively our decisions that permitted the trial judge's discretion to determine incredible the defendant's evidence of an overt act and thus, without jury evaluation of it to withhold from the jury evidence tendered by the defendant in support of his position that he was acting reasonably in self-defense. This is the explicit purport of the amendment, and the prior academic and judicial criticism of the former interpretation (unique to Louisiana) re-enforces our view that such was the legislative intent.
Despite the specific evidence by the first and second defense witnesses that the decedent had attacked the accused with a knife, the trial court did not permit the dangerous-character evidence to go to the jury, apparently upon its own credibility evaluation that the evidence was untruthful. As our trial brother stated, 'In view of the uniformity of positive evidence from state's witnesses as to what had occurred and the absence of any weapon connected with the deceased, the Court was extremely doubtful that at this point in the trial there had been Sufficient evidence to show an overt act or hostile demonstration by the deceased toward defendant at the time of the shooting.' (Italics ours.)
The trial court thus committed error in its ruling, for it ignored the effect of the 1952 amendment. By it, when appreciable evidence is in the record relevantly tending to establish the overt act, the trial court cannot exercise its discretion to infringe on the fact-determination function of the jury by disbelieving this defense testimony and thus, deny the accused a defense permitted him by law. See: State v. McMillian, 223 La. 96, 64 So.2d 856 (1953); Pugh, 14 La.L.Rev. 226--28 (1953); 13 La.L.Rev. 64 (1952).
The trial court's ruling is inconsistent with such post-1952 decisions of this court, as State v. Harding, 307 So.2d 338 (La.1975), State v. Poindexter, 231 La. 630, 92 So.2d 390 (1957), and State v. McMillian, 223 La. 96, 64 So.2d 856 (1953). (In fairness to the trial court, however, we must admit that there were a series of post-1952 rulings by this court which repeated the pre-1952 formulation by which the trial court had discretion to reject the evidence as to an overt act; which decisions overlooked without discussion the effects of the 1952 amendment. 4)
The statute and jurisprudence require that an overt act be established before the dangerous-character and threat evidence concerning the decedent may be introduced. La.R.S. 15:482. State v. Burkhalter, 319 So.2d 392 (La.1975); State v. Houston, 316 So.2d 724 (La.1975); State v. Jackson, 308 So.2d 265 (La.1975); State v. Walker, 296 So.2d 310 (La.1974); State v. Warren, 271 So.2d 527 (La.1973); State v. Rollins, 271 So.2d 519 (La.1973); State v. Robinson, 263 La. 25, 267 So.2d 182 (1972); State v. Cannon, 231 La. 877, 93 So.2d 200 (1957).
But, once the overt act is established, this type of evidence is admissible in support of a plea of self-defense in a murder prosecution for two distinct purposes: (1) to show defendant's reasonable apprehension of danger which would justify his conduct; and (2) to help determine who was the aggressor in the conflict. See: 11 La.L.Rev. 231 (1951); 1 Wigmore on Evidence, Sec. 63 (3d ed. 1940); McCormick on Evidence, Sec. 295, pp. 700--701 (2d ed. 1972).
When the evidence is introduced for the...
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