JULIUS W. JACKSON, APPELLANT,
v.
STATE OF FLORIDA, APPELLEE

Fla. 4th DCA | 1975-08-29
No. 74-472
OWEN and MAGER, JJ., concur.
317 So. 2d 454 Florida District Court of Appeal, Fourth District (1975) Positive Treatment
Cited by 10 cases

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Holding

A trial court must provide complete jury instructions on excusable and justifiable homicide when reinstructing on manslaughter, even if the jury indicates it only wants limited information.


Headnotes

[1] A trial court errs by failing to reinstruct a jury on excusable and justifiable homicide when providing a written description of homicide degrees at the jury's request, e…

[2] When a jury requests a written description of homicide degrees, the court must provide a complete instruction on the subject, including excusable and justifiable homicide…

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Facts & Procedural History

The appellant was charged with second-degree murder. The jury requested written descriptions of homicide degrees. The trial court provided these but, …

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Opinion of the Court
DOWNEY, Judge.

DOWNEY, Judge.

Once again we have for review the failure of the trial court in reinstructing the jury on the degrees of homicide to include excusable and justifiable homicide.

Appellant was charged with second degree murder. The trial court properly instructed the jury on the various degrees of unlawful homicide and on excusable and justifiable homicide. After deliberating for some time the jury requested the court furnish them with “a description of the degrees in writing that we could look at.” The court thereupon asked if they wanted him to reinstruct them on excusable and justifiable homicide, to which the foreman answered “no, sir.” The court then rein-structed the jury as they had requested and the jury retired. Counsel for the appellant immediately objected to the court’s failure to reinstruct on excusable and justifiable homicide and requested the court to do so and to re-read the entire instruction. In denying that request the trial judge stated:

“ . . . I specifically asked if they wanted to know more about the attempt and they said they did not want to know them; they did not want to know about what homicide is; they did not want to know what justifiable or excusable homicide is or any attempted and, therefore, I did exactly what they asked for and I made it within that limit and told them exactly what it was and no more.”

The appellee relies upon Hysler v. State, 85 Fla. 153, 95 So. 573 (1923), to support the trial court’s action, but we feel that reliance is misplaced. Hysler held that when the jury requests that certain portions of the court’s charge be re-read to them it is not necessary that the court re-read the entire charge to the jury. That rule was reaffirmed by the Supreme Court in Hedges v. State, Fla.1965, 172 So. 2d 824. But in reaffirming the rule the Hedges court pointed out: “However, the repeated charge should be complete on the subject involved.” 172 So. 2d at 826. That opinion makes it crystal clear that failure to reinstruct on excusable and justifiable homicide leaves the jury with an incomplete and potentially misleading instruction. Numerous convictions of late have been reversed for failure to follow that rule.

As usual every new case seems to have a “new wrinkle” and this one is no exception. Sub judice the trial judge asked the jury if they wanted to be rein-structed on excusable and justifiable homicide and they declined. Which seems to bring us to the question: can the trial court reinstruct the jury inadequately on a subject because the jury indicates an interest in only some limited phase of the subject in question ? We think not. The entire subject of jury instructions is difficult at best. Some seriously question their efficacy in any event. Be that as it may, the jury is hardly in a position to discern many of the fine distinctions involved in the law to be applied without guidance from the court. Thus, great care must be exercised in giving jury instructions so the jury may obtain the whole picture of a particular subject. Therefore, in instructing and in reinstructing on manslaughter, it is essential to instruct on excusable and justifiable homicide to enable the jury to understand the definition of manslaughter. Hedges v. State, supra; Halfrich v. State, 122 Fla. 375, 165 So. 285 (1936).

It is distasteful to us to fault a trial judge for doing precisely what the jury requested of him, but under the law as it exists we see no other alternative. It is of no little significance that the appellant’s defense in the trial court was that the homicide was either excusable or justifiable.

Since a new trial of this case is required we deem it advisable to mention several of appellant’s other points on appeal.

Appellant assigns as error the failure of the trial court to exclude the taped telephone call made by appellant to the police station to report that he had killed his wife. But this was a noncustodial conversation expressly excluded from the Miranda rule by the Miranda case itself:

“The fundamental import of the privilege while an individual is in custody is not whether he is allowed to talk to the police without benefit of warnings and counsel, but whether he can be interrogated. There is no requirement that police stop a person who enters a police station and states that he wishes to confess a crime, or a person who calls the police to offer a confession or any other statement he desires to make.” Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 478, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 1630, 16 L.Ed.2d 694, 726 (1966).

Combining appellant’s other two points for the sake of brevity, suffice it to say that neither demonstrates error. Reversed and remanded for a new trial.

OWEN and MAGER, JJ., concur.


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Citator

Cited By

  • Robinson v. State, 338 So. 2d 1309 (Fla. 4th DCA 1976)
    …ssarily ensures. The result is that in order to supply a complete definition of manslaughter as a degree of unlawful homicide it is necessary to include also a definition of the exclusions.” In a similar vein, this court stated in Jackson v. State, 317 So. 2d 454, 455 (Fla.4th DCA 1975): “Thus, great care must be exercised in giving jury instructions so the jury may obtain the whole picture of a particular subject. Therefore, in instructing and in reinstructing on manslaughter, it is essential to instruct o…
  • Crapps v. Murchek, 330 So. 2d 173 (Fla. 4th DCA 1976)
    …and remanding this cause for a new trial. It is so ordered. REVERSED and REMANDED. CROSS and MAGER, JJ., concur. . The trial court’s failure to complete the instruction, though at the request of the jury, was nonetheless error, Jackson v. State, 317 So. 2d 454 (4th DCA Fla.1975), but not the basis for reversal in this case in view of the lack of objection to such omission.…
  • Wingert v. State, 353 So. 2d 643 (Fla. 3d DCA 1977)
    …runk at the time to understand his rights. We hold that error does not appear for two reasons. First, there is no error because it appears that this was a voluntary statement made prior to arrest. See Miranda v. Arizona, supra; and Jackson v. State, 317 So. 2d 454 (Fla.4th DCA 1975). Secondly, there is no error because of the reason given by the judge, that such objections must be made prior to trial where the matters forming the basis of the constitutional attack are available to defense counsel in sufficien…

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