State v. Rothacher
| Decision Date | 07 September 1995 |
| Docket Number | No. 94-369,94-369 |
| Citation | 272 Mont. 303,901 P.2d 82 |
| Parties | STATE of Montana, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Chad ROTHACHER, Defendant and Appellant. |
| Court | Montana Supreme Court |
Charles F. Moses, Moses Law Firm, Billings, for appellant.
Joseph P. Mazurek, Atty. Gen., Cregg W. Coughlin, Asst. Atty. Gen., Helena, Thomas J. Esch, Kalispell, for respondent.
The defendant, Chad Rothacher, was charged in the District Court for the Eleventh Judicial District in Flathead County with deliberate homicide, in violation of § 45-5-102, MCA. Following a trial by jury, Rothacher was convicted of mitigated deliberate homicide in violation of § 45-5-103, MCA. Rothacher appeals from his conviction. We affirm the judgment of the District Court.
Rothacher raises the following issues on appeal:
1. Did the District Court err when it instructed the jury that it was not necessary for the State to prove that Rothacher intended to cause the death of the victim?
2. Was Rothacher's conviction of mitigated deliberate homicide supported by substantial evidence?
On February 10, 1993, Rothacher was charged by information with deliberate homicide. He denied that he was guilty of the crime charged, and therefore, proceeded to trial on February 15, 1994.
At trial, Michael LeClere, an employee and friend of the victim, Ron Raper, testified to the events that occurred on the evening of Raper's death. He stated that on December 11, 1992, he went with Raper and Susan Michael to the Palace Bar in Whitefish. LeClere and Raper played pool with Rothacher and Rothacher's friend. Raper and Rothacher began arguing about the pool game. As the argument escalated, Raper and Rothacher agreed to go outside. As LeClere joined them outside, he saw Rothacher hit Raper in the side of the head and then hit Raper in the nose. After he was hit with the second punch, Raper fell on his back and hit his head hard on the ice. LeClere testified that Raper's head hit the ice with such an impact that it sounded like a bowling ball falling off of a table onto a hard floor. As Raper began to pick himself up from the ground, Rothacher kicked him in the head. Rothacher was then restrained by his friends and together they left the scene. Raper was taken to Kalispell Regional Hospital, where he was treated by Dr. James Mahnke, a neurosurgeon.
Dr. Mahnke testified that when he first saw Raper, he was comatose. A CT-scan revealed extensive bruising on his brain, and Dr. Mahnke determined that this was a serious injury. He performed surgery to remove portions of Raper's skull and relieve pressure on the brain. However, Raper's injuries were so great that the surgical procedure was unsuccessful. When asked if, in his opinion, Rothacher's kick to Raper's head caused his death, Dr. Mahnke replied, "I think that it most likely did." The defendant did not object to Mahnke's opinion regarding the cause of Raper's death.
Dr. Gary Dale, the State Medical Examiner, and a forensic pathologist, performed a post-mortem examination of Raper at the request of the Flathead County Coroner. It was his opinion, as expressed at trial, that Raper died because of complications from blunt impact injuries to the head.
Witnesses called by the defendant did not deny that Raper was hit in the head by Rothacher, that as a result, he fell to the ground and struck his head, nor that Raper was subsequently kicked in the head by Rothacher.
The jury found Rothacher guilty of mitigated deliberate homicide. His motions for judgment notwithstanding the verdict and for a new trial were denied.
The District Court sentenced Rothacher to 16 years in the Montana State Prison, with all but six years suspended. Rothacher appeals from the judgment of the District Court.
Did the District Court err when it instructed the jury that it was not necessary for the State to prove that Rothacher intended to cause the death of the victim?
The standard of review of jury instructions in criminal cases is "[w]hether the instructions, as a whole, fully and fairly instruct the jury on the law applicable to the case." State v. Brandon (1994), 264 Mont. 231, 237, 870 P.2d 734, 737 (citing State v. Lundblade (1981), 191 Mont. 526, 529-30, 625 P.2d 545, 548).
Rothacher contends that based on historical and commonly accepted notions of criminal jurisprudence, and on the plain language of this State's penal code, the crime of intentional homicide requires a "specific intent" to cause another's death and that the District Court erred when it instructed the jury otherwise. The specific instruction to which Rothacher objects is the court's Instruction No. 14 by which the jury was advised as follows:
In order to convict the defendant of Deliberate Homicide, it is not necessary for the State to prove that the defendant intended to cause [the] death of [the] victim. Death may not be the intended result, but, if the act which causes the death is done purposely, and no circumstances of mitigation, excuse or justification appear, deliberate homicide is committed unless the result is too remote or accidental to have a bearing on the offender[']s liability or on the gravity of the offense.
(Emphasis added.)
"It is no longer necessary to prove specific intent as an element of the crime unless the statute defining the offense requires as an element thereof specific purpose." State v. Van Dyken (1990), 242 Mont. 415, 434, 791 P.2d 1350, 1362, cert. denied (1990), 498 U.S. 920, 111 S.Ct. 297, 112 L.Ed.2d 251 (citing State v. Starr (1983), 204 Mont. 210, 218, 664 P.2d 893, 897). Section 45-5-102, MCA, provides in relevant part that: "(1) A person commits the offense of deliberate homicide if: (a) he purposely or knowingly causes the death of another human being...."
To prove that a person acts knowingly with regard to a result of his conduct does not require that he intended the specific result, but only that he be aware of a high probability that the result will be caused by his conduct. Section 45-2-101(33), MCA. A person acts purposely with respect to a result when it is his or her conscious object to cause that result. Section 45-2-101(58), MCA. However, the statutory meaning of both states of mind must be read in combination with § 45-2-201, MCA, which provides in relevant part that:
(2) If purposely or knowingly causing a result is an element of an offense and the result is not within the contemplation or purpose of the offender, either element can nevertheless be established if:
....
(b) the result involves the same kind of harm or injury as contemplated but the precise harm or injury was different or occurred in a different way, unless the actual result is too remote or accidental to have a bearing on the offender's liability or on the gravity of the offense.
For these reasons, we held in Van Dyken that:
[A] defendant can properly be convicted of deliberate homicide even though he may not have intended that the death result from the act where he contemplated the same kind of harm or injury to the victim.
Van Dyken, 791 P.2d at 1362 (citing State v. Sigler (1984), 210 Mont. 248, 265, 688 P.2d 749, 757).
Therefore, while our statutory law does not require proof that Rothacher intended the specific result of his act, it does at least require that he intended a similar kind of harm. It is not sufficient, as indicated in Instruction No. 14, that the act which caused the harm be done purposely without regard to whether any harm was intended. Instruction No. 14 is, however, a correct reflection of our prior decisions on this subject.
Our seminal case, which we conclude has been misapplied in subsequent cases, was Sigler. In that case, the defendant was charged with and convicted of deliberate homicide for causing the death of a 19-month-old child who was left in his care. The child died as a result of blunt force trauma to the abdomen which perforated the small bowel in two places and caused peritonitis. The evidence was that the most likely source for the trauma was a blow from a fist or foot. On appeal, the defendant argued that the district court's instructions erroneously permitted the jury to convict him simply for purposely engaging in the conduct of striking the child, without requiring the jury to find that he intended the child's death. After discussing the purposeful and knowing requirement of the deliberate homicide statute in relation to causation, as explained in § 45-5-201(b), MCA, we held that:
Applying § 45-2-201 to this case, the proof is beyond any doubt that the conduct which brought about the perforations to the child's bowels caused the death of the child, and that without such conduct, the death would not have occurred. In addition, the result involves the same kind of harm or injury as contemplated by the conduct even though the precise harm, the death, was different or occurred in a different way. In other words, if Sigler voluntarily, as the jury found, punched with his fist or kicked with his foot the stomach of the child, even though he may not have intended that death result from the act, he contemplated "the same kind of harm or injury" to the child, that is, harm or injury to the abdominal area of the child.
On that basis, we held that it was not necessary for the district court to have instructed the jury in that case that the defendant had a specific intent to cause the child's death. We cited with approval our prior decision in State v. Starr (1983), 204 Mont. 210, 218, 664 P.2d 893, 897, where we held that:
We do not agree with Starr, however, on his contention that it was the duty of the State to prove Starr's specific intent to transfer a dangerous substance then or at a subsequent time. Since Montana revamped its criminal statutes in 1973 by adopting in essence the Model Penal Code, specific intent is not an elemental concept,...
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