A two-second murder trial: Legally, how should the jury find?

Factual Questions
1

A wacky, zany judge decides to skip opening statements and jump right into things. The defendant takes the stand.

The prosecutor’s first words are “You killed that guy! You shot him dead!”
The defendant replies “Yes, I did. But it was in self-defense.”

The prosecution rests. The defense rests. The judge and the lawyers go play golf.

So the prosecution got a confession to killing. They did not present any evidence whatsoever that it wasn’t self-defense while the defendant didn’t present any evidence that it was. Legally, how should the jury find? Who has the burdon of proof after murder has been proven? Forget what people would actually do in real life, as that’s not important here. Forget what the moral thing to do is.

My coworker asserts that self-defense is an affirmative defense and the defendant will go to jail, provided the jury is acting appropriately. I’ve said that the prosecution needs to first prove murder, not just a killing, and they haven’t done so.

2

Onus is on the prosecution. They have to prove it wasn’t self-defense; the defendant does not have to prove it was. Not guilty.

3

By not even attempting to rebut the self-defence claim, are the prosecution also implicitly conceding that it was self-defence?

4

IANAL, but I would say Not Guilty of murder, at least. The prosecution has not established criminal intent on the part of the defendant, not even depraved indifference.

Regards,
Shodan

5

FTR, this was a Martin/Zimmerman debate. The coworker’s claim was that the Florida law removes the self-defense burden of proof for the defendant, whereas elsewhere the defendant must prove his case.

6

I don’t think this is an accurate summation of the law in Florida or elsewhere.

7

IIRC,IANAL, etc. - the Florida law does not say anything about burden of proof, it simply says that deadly force is an allowed response to serious threat of bodily harm. Before the law, the implication was that you had to do whatever you could to prevent the need for deadly force, i.e. retreat, hence the “Stand Your Ground” name for these sorts of laws.

A confession is not necessarily enough. You need to show that the person knew their act was going to kill for it to be murder, you need to show they were actually present and capable, etc. This is why murder trials tend to go on for weeks - to cover every angle. They could be confessing to cover for someone else. As for self-defence, you must prove beyond reasonable doubt that the response was inappropriate for the situation.

A more interesting issue would be if the two got into a verbal altercaton, that became quite heated and one pulls out a gun - then claims “he was about to hit me”. Is reasonable fear for your well-being justified before the first punch is thrown, based on words or relative size?

I suppose the real question is… is self-dfense an affimative defence? Any lawyers in the room?

8

The answer to that question will vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. In Canada, the onus is on the accused to raise what is called the evidential burden: to point to sufficient evidence before the court to show that self-defence is a plausible possibility. The accused does not have to prove it. Once the accused meets this evidential burden, the onus shifts to the Crown to disprove self-defence beyond a reasonable doubt.

The Supreme Court has held that requiring an accused to prove a defence, even on the standard of balance of probabilities, infringes the accused’s Charter right to be presumed innocent.

9

It isn’t in my jurisdiction. By contrast, insanity and duress are affirmative defenses, meaning that to asset the defense the defendant must prove that he was acting while insane or under duress by a preponderance of the evidence. Self defense, if adequately raised by the evidence, must be disproved by the state, but the key is what consititutes adequate evidence to get the self defense question to the jury.

Self defense isn’t an affrimative defense here, but the law here is similar to what Northern Piper states. The defendant has the initial burden of producing some evidence to justify submission of a self-defense instruction, and the State must then persuade the jury beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant did not act in self-defense. Tidmore v. State,976 S.W.2d 724, 729 (Tex.App.–Tyler,1998, pet. ref’d). A bare bones claim that one used deadly force “in self defense” will not likely rise to the level that a self defense instruction should be given to the jury. A defendant merely claiming that they beleived that they were under attack is not enough to warrant the instruction; there has to be some evidence of each of the statutory conditions justifying deadly force. Halbert v. State, 881 S.W.2d 121, 125-26 (Tex.App.–Hous. [1 Dist.],1994, pet. ref’d) Tex.Penal Code Ann. § 9.32 (Vernon Supp.1994). The “some evidence” requirement can conisist solely of the the testimony of the defendant (Id. at 124), but that testimony has to show that if believed it would qualify as a legal justification for the use of deadly force in self defense - merely claiming “it was self defense” won’t cut it.

That’s not to say that the state should automatically win in the hypo, though; for one thing, they havn’t even proven that the death happened within the court’s jurisdiction, and the defendant definitely has a claim for ineffective assitance. If the defendant is taking the stand he’s doing so in the defense’s case in chief, and the fact that the state apparently rested without putting on any evidence means the case should have been unproven had the defendant not testified. The hypo raises some interesting questions about self defense and burdens of proof, but as it stands the only thing we can say for sure that a higher court would do is refer everyone involved to the bar to have their licenses yanked.

10

Can the prosecution even call the defendant to the stand in a criminal trial? I thought only defense could initially question the defendant, then prosecution gets a chance for rebuttal.

11

Wait, explain to this non-lawyer why the defendant couldn’t be a witness in the prosecution’s case? (I understand the defendant could decline to incriminate themselves, but in the OP he appears to have not exercised this right).

12

The Fifth Amendment says

which is a fancy way of saying that the prosecution can not call the defendant as a witness. The defendant may choose to testify on his own behalf, in which case the prosecutor may cross-examine him, however.

13

Well yeah, but he’s not being compelled to testify. He just is. And it so happens that his testimony works out for the prosecution, thus providing their evidence. So can you explain what the “If he’d never testified at all” thing is about?

14

The prosecutor simply doesn’t have the right to call the defendant in its case in chief. If the prosecutor calls the defendant anyway and forces him to invoke his right to self incrimination in front of the jury, the defense has grounds for a mistrial. I suppose a defendant could waive their right against self incrimination and agree to testify in the prosecutor’s case in chief in a jury trial, but I can’t think of a situation where you’d ever want to do so, or where advising a defendant to do so wouldn’t be malpractice. A good prosecutor wouldn’t do it even if the defendant agreed because they wouldn’t want the defendant to have an ineffective assistance claim down the road, and the judge may not even allow it even if the prosecution and defense agreed for the same reason.

The sole purpose of the prosecution’s case in chief is to elicit testimony that shows that the defendant is guilty; if the defendant testifies in the prosecution’s case in chief, he’s participating in that. It could lead to situations like that described in the OP, where the case wouldn’t have been proven had it not been for the defendant’s own testimony. The far, far better practice is to wait until the prosecution concludes its case in chief before making the decision to testify on one’s own behalf or not. In the hypo described in the OP, if the prosecution rests after putting on no evidence whatsoever, hoping to prove its case when the defendant testifies, the defense nixes that by simply putting on no evidence, either, and the state’s case is completely unproven.

15

Under English law the burden of proof is on the prosecution to disprove self-defense beyond reasonable doubt. If the defendant raises it and the prosecution doesn’t respond, the jury is required to find the defendant not guilty. (By English law I mean in England itself).

16

However this sounds completely wrong to me. I don’t know the specifics of the “Stand Your Ground” law in Florida but from what I hear it precludes police and prosecutors from even arresting or charging the suspect if the self-defense story seems to hold up. That’s got nothing to do with shifting the burden of proof away from a defendant, because there’s no defendant yet. There’s no charge yet, let alone trial. The gist of the outrage about the Trayvon Martin/Zimmerman case is that the circumstances of the killing look mighty suspicious yet Zimmerman was never forced to raise his case for self-defense in front of a jury of his peers and have it argued in court, regardless of who has the burden of proof for it.

17

After the prosecution rests, wouldn’t the defense simply move to dismiss on the grounds that the prosecution did not prove its case?

18

Your co-worker is right-ish. Even in this simplified scenario, there’s a lot of “it depends” issues coming up. Without getting too much into it: how believable is the defendant? He did admit to killing the guy, so can be reasonably found guilty, but was his excuse in any way believable? We may want to believe that juries only look at the words that are said, but they don’t.

Edit: just to clarify, at least in most US jurisdictions, the prosecution does not have to “disprove” a claim of self-defense. Note that I said that they don’t have to. You always do your best to win a case, so you sure as heck better try to disprove it. :smiley:

19

Yes, absolutely. After the state rests without having proven its case, the defense would make a motion to dismiss for insufficiency of the evidence, or motion for directed verdict or instructed verdict or whatever it’s called in that jurisdiction. The defense can forego the motion and put on evidence if it wants to, but if the state hasn’t proved its case there’s no reason to do so.

20

Okay, here’s my notions on this.

IANAL (and never regretted it), etc.

The hypothetical case as stated in the OP doesn’t even present any criminal charges against the so-called “defendant”, so there isn’t even anything for defendant to defend.

There are a variety of different crimes that involve one person killing another: Murder in various degrees, many variations of manslaughter, negligent homicide, etc. The most generic word for one person killing another is “homicide”, which occurs WHENEVER one person kills another. This, in itself, is not a crime. It becomes a crime when any additional criminal circumstance is alleged (e.g., malice aforethought, or gross negligence, or vehicular manslaughter while DUI, etc.)

If the prosecutor simply said: “You killed someone” then that in itself isn’t an accusation of any crime. The defendant’s hypothetical response “That’s true, I did” (even without the claim of self-defense) is, in itself, not an admission of any crime.

Given that and nothing more, the jury’s proper verdict should be: “WTF? What are we here for? What are we being asked to decide? Why aren’t we out there playing golf too?” But since they probably have a ballot with only the choices “Guilty” and “Not Guilty” available, they should choose “Not Guilty”.

Among the responses posted above, the only really relevant one is “That is not a correct summary of the Zimmerman case”. All other comments, whatever their merits, really go beyond anything posited in the OP.

Well, that’s my take on all this anyway. My bill for legal fees will be in the mail.

Bricker, what do you say to this?