State v. Warner

• Decision Date: 23 December 1977
• Docket Number: No. 6092,6092
• Citation: 573 P.2d 959,58 Haw. 492
• Parties: STATE of Hawaii, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Melvin Louis WARNER, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: Hawaii Supreme Court

Page 959

573 P.2d 959

58 Haw. 492

STATE of Hawaii, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Melvin Louis WARNER, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 6092.

Supreme Court of Hawai'i.

Dec. 23, 1977.

Syllabus by the Court

1. Duty of the trial court is to instruct the jury on every defense or theory of defense having any support in the evidence.

2. When there is any evidence, no matter how weak and inconclusive it may appear to the trial court, which raises the issue of whether the offense is murder or manslaughter, the trial court is bound to submit that issue to the jury for its determination.

3. By ruling that evidence in this case did not present any question regarding manslaughter, trial court decided what would normally be a question of fact, and thus invaded the province of the jury.

4. So long as testimony itself fairly raises the issue of manslaughter, it is irrelevant that manslaughter was not explicitly raised as a theory of defense at trial, and trial court is bound to instruct the jury on manslaughter.

5. In all murder prosecutions hereafter tried in this State, where the evidence necessitates the giving of jury instructions on self-defense, the trial court must fully instruct on manslaughter as well. However, this rule is subject to the exception that if the defendant objects to the giving of the instructions on manslaughter on the basis that the record does not reflect any evidence on this issue, and the trial court agrees with the defendant, no such manslaughter instructions shall be given.

Marie N. Milks, Deputy Public Defender, Honolulu, for defendant-appellant.

Archibald C. K. Kaolulo, Deputy Pros. Atty., City and County of Honolulu, Honolulu (Winston K. Q. Wong, Deputy Pros. Atty., on the brief), for plaintiff-appellee.

Before RICHARDSON, C. J., and KOBAYASHI, OGATA, MENOR and KIDWELL, JJ.

OGATA, Justice.

Defendant-appellant Melvin Louis Warner (hereinafter referred to as appellant) was found guilty by a jury of murder. ¹ He was thereafter sentenced by the trial court to serve a prison term of twenty years. The single question presented on this appeal is whether the trial court erred in refusing to give appellant's requested instructions on the offense of manslaughter. We conclude that the trial court's refusal to give the requested instructions on manslaughter was erroneous, and we reverse the judgment and sentence of the court below.

It is unnecessary to set forth all the evidence elicited at trial. We focus mainly on the extent to which evidence relating to the manslaughter issue was presented. The evidence produced by the State, if taken alone, tended to establish a clear case of appellant's intentionally or knowingly causing the death of the victim by shooting him with a firearm. ² It was uncontradicted that appellant shot the victim, Thomas Boykin, at close range with a revolver, and that Boykin died as a direct result of the gunshots.

Appellant, on the other hand, maintained that he shot the victim in self-defense. However, he also testified that he felt "frustrated" and "was under a lot of strain and lot of stress" at the time of the shooting. The evidence, as reflected in appellant's testimony, revealed the following circumstances. Appellant had originally been living in Waikiki together with a female companion named Helen Crawley. After some time, Thomas Boykin, who had been a good friend of appellant, began to live in the same apartment with appellant and Crawley. Appellant testified that for the next year-and-a-half, he furnished both Crawley and Boykin, who were unemployed, with food, clothing, and other necessities of life. ³ In January of 1975, appellant left for the mainland to be discharged from the military. Before leaving Hawaii, however, he told Crawley that he would be back in a "couple of months", and he asked Boykin to "take care" of Crawley for him while he was gone. As of that time, Boykin and Crawley were not involved romantically with each other. However, when appellant returned to Hawaii some four months later, he found that Crawley and Boykin had become lovers and had moved to another apartment. Appellant testified that various personal belongings which he had left behind, such as a stereo, television set, blankets, pots and pans, and dishes, as well as some clothing, were still in the possession of, and were being used by, Boykin and Crawley. Appellant, however, moved in with Crawley and Boykin, and Crawley resumed her relationship with appellant. After several days, Crawley decided to return to Boykin instead of remaining with appellant, and this caused considerable friction between Crawley, Boykin, and appellant.

On the night of the shooting, the three parties had several arguments. During one of the arguments, appellant expressed a desire to move out of the apartment and take all his belongings with him. According to appellant, Boykin refused to allow appellant to take his belongings back without a fight. After a short shoving match between appellant and Boykin, appellant obtained an empty revolver from a neighbor's apartment. He confronted Boykin with the empty revolver and told him that he wanted to retrieve his belongings. Boykin continued to argue and reached for the revolver, whereupon appellant retreated from the scene and left the apartment building. Subsequently, when appellant returned to the building, Boykin yelled down to appellant to "come on up here . . . . We got to get this settled once and for all." According to appellant, as he reached the top of the stairway leading to the apartment, Boykin appeared and told appellant, "I'm going to settle this once and for all. I'm going to kick your ass. You're not going to get nothing of it." Boykin then began to move toward appellant. Appellant stated that he stepped back, but Boykin "kept coming" and started to swing at appellant. When Boykin kept swinging, appellant feared that he would be knocked down the stairway. ⁴ Appellant stated that he then "panicked" and pulled the revolver from his back pocket and shot Boykin. ⁵ Appellant testified on direct examination that he was "under a lot of strain" at that time, which stemmed in part from his concern over finding another place to live, as well as the manner in which he, Boykin and Crawley had been quarrelling so much with each other.

On cross-examination, appellant responded that the only reason he shot Boykin was self-defense. However, on redirect, appellant testified that at the time he pulled the trigger, he was feeling "kind of frustrated", because after all that he had done to provide for Boykin and Crawley, Boykin was now trying to "jump on" him. Appellant further indicated that at the moment he shot Boykin, appellant's thoughts went to why, after all the financial support that he had given to Boykin and Crawley, "they would do this to me, and now they don't want me to have the things that belong to me."

At the close of all the evidence at trial, the trial court agreed to give appellant's proffered jury instructions on self-defense. However, the trial court refused to give appellant's requested instructions on manslaughter. ⁶ The jury thereupon found appellant guilty as charged. Appellant contends that although the jury did not believe that he was justified in killing in self-defense, there was sufficient evidence to require the giving of instructions on manslaughter to the jury. We agree.

I

It was long ago held that in a prosecution for murder, where there is some substantial evidence, however weak and inconclusive it may appear to the trial court, that would tend to mitigate the homicide to manslaughter, it is error for the court to refuse to instruct the jury concerning manslaughter. Territory v. Alcantara, 24 Haw. 197 (1918). In Territory v. Alcantara, the trial court in a first degree murder prosecution refused to give to the jury the defendant's requested instruction covering the offense of manslaughter. The defendant's testimony in Alcantara was to the effect that he went out to find the victim (who was a female acquaintance of the defendant) who the defendant believed was in the company of another male. When the defendant found the victim and the male, the victim refused to talk to the defendant, and the male told the defendant that if the defendant did not leave the premises, he would kill the defendant. The male then attempted to stab the defendant, who took a knife himself and tried to stab the male. At that instant, the victim ran between the defendant and the male and was accidentally stabbed by the defendant. upon these facts, as set out by the defendant in his testimony, this court held that the requested instruction on manslaughter should have been given, and it reversed the conviction for first degree murder.

While Alcantara has continued to be the leading case in this jurisdiction, its requirement that there be "substantial evidence" in order to justify the giving of instructions on manslaughter has been relaxed by subsequent decisions. See State v. Irvin, 53 Haw. 119, 121, 488 P.2d 327, 328 (1971), and State v. Santiago, 53 Haw. 254, 271-72, 492 P.2d 657, 667-68 (1971) (both cases deciding the necessity of jury instructions on self-defense). Currently, Hawaii adheres to the "any-evidence" standard, under which it is the duty of the trial court to instruct the jury on every defense or theory of defense having any support in the evidence. State v. Chang, 46 Haw. 22, 46-47, 374 P.2d 5, 18 (1962). Additionally, we note that the Alcantara decision was grounded largely upon the pronouncements of the United States Supreme Court in Stevenson v. United States, 162 U.S. 313, 16 S.Ct. 839, 40 L.Ed. 980 (1896). The Stevenson case itself held the following:

The evidence as to manslaughter need not be uncontradicted or in any way conclusive upon the question; so long as there is some evidence upon the subject, the proper weight to be given it is for the jury to determine. If there were any evidence which tended to show such a state of...