United States v. Goins

18 C.M.A. 395, 18 USCMA 395, 40 C.M.R. 107, 1969 CMA LEXIS 791, 1969 WL 6022
CourtUnited States Court of Military Appeals
DecidedJune 13, 1969
DocketNo. 21,741
StatusPublished
Cited by8 cases

This text of 18 C.M.A. 395 (United States v. Goins) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering United States Court of Military Appeals primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States v. Goins, 18 C.M.A. 395, 18 USCMA 395, 40 C.M.R. 107, 1969 CMA LEXIS 791, 1969 WL 6022 (cma 1969).

Opinions

Opinion of the Court

Darden, Judge:

This case requires a decision on whether the offenses of robbery and maiming are multiplicious for sentencing purposes because the force and violence necessary to prove a robbery charge are also the cause of the permanent damage constituting a maiming charge.

The appellant was tried on July 5, 1968, at Camp Courtney, Okinawa, by a general court-martial on a charge of robbery, in violation of Article 122, Uniform Code of Military Justice, 10 USC § 922, and a charge of maiming, in violation of Article 124, Uniform Code of Military Justice, 10 USC § 924. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to a dishonorable discharge, to forfeit all pay and allowances, to be reduced to pay grade E-l, and to be confined at hard labor for seventeen years. In compliance with a pretrial agreement, the convening authority reduced the period of confinement to ten years. A Navy board of review affirmed the findings and sentence. This Court granted the accused’s petition to review the issue of multiplicity.

According to a stipulation of facts, Sergeant Goins, the accused, and his victim, Sergeant Collier, together with a Private White, left the Enlisted Men’s Club at Camp Hauge in Collier’s sports car. Collier was in the driver’s seat, White was next to him in the front passenger seat, and Goins sat in the back. At one point during the ride Collier stopped the car to give his coat to the accused, who was feeling chilled. When the ride was resumed, Goins picked up a wrench that had been secretly placed in the car by White, struck Collier on the head with it, and instructed Collier to stop the ear. Goins then struck Collier two or three more times with the wrench and attempted to push him out of the automobile. White then took the wrench and, putting his knee on the victim’s neck, proceeded to smash his skull with it until all movement ceased. Goins and White then carried their victim to the side of the road and left him there momentarily. They proceeded north in the car, turned off on a dirt road, and discarded the wrench and some shirts with blood on them. They then returned to the place where Sergeant Collier lay. Private White removed the wallet of Sergeant Collier that contained approximately $50.00. They divided the money. Sergeant Collier was later found by the side of the road. A search of the immediate area turned up three or four pieces of human skull. When he was taken to the hospital at Camp Kue, he was found to have multiple fractures of the skull. A large mass of his brain was protruding from an open wound on the left side of his head. After three surgical operations, Sergeant Collier survived but “he had not and did not show any signs of human type behavior response or understanding.” The doctor who treated him gave this summary of his prognosis:

“Well, lack of improvement over the period of time of the last week or two that he was with me would [397]*397suggest that he had indeed sustained irreversable [sic] and severe damage to the brain and that his condition would most likely not change for the better, but over a period of time the complications of being in a vegetative state would gradually lead to his demise.”

At trial, before the board of review, and before this Court, the accused contended that the robbery charge and the maiming charge are multiplicious.

This Court has decided no case on precisely the issue this one presents. In United States v Hicks, 6 USCMA 621, 20 CMR 337, the Court concluded that to sustain a charge of maiming under Article 124 only an intent to injure and not an intent to inflict serious injury is required.1

The accused’s contention that robbery and maiming are multiplicious rests heavily on this Court’s decisions in United States v McVey, 4 USCMA 167, 16 CMR 167, and United States v Walker, 8 USCMA 640, 26 CMR 144. In McVey, robbery and aggravated assault were held multiplicious where the “force and violence” of the robbery charge were the same as for the assault charge. Two accused attempted to strangle a taxi driver with a belt. When he broke loose, they hit him over the head with a wooden club. After he continued his fight, they took his taxicab and some foreign currency left in it. The Court held that the striking with the club and the strangling with the belt were not divisible and though they constituted greater force than was necessary to support an allegation of robbery, they were nonetheless essential to the robbery specification.

In Walker, robbery and an assault in which grievous bodily harm was intentionally inflicted were held to be multiplicious. There the accused and four others took the victim to an isolated area and beat him. The victim broke loose but was recaptured and robbed. In the process, the victim lost six teeth and suffered a wound requiring ten stitches in his mouth and one requiring nine stitches on the back of his head. The Court realized that the seriousness of the physical injuries from the assault that constituted the force and violence by which the robbery was committed differentiated this case from McVey, but it still thought the acts proving the force and violence “blend [ed] with the other necessary elements to establish the crime of robbery.” United States v Walker, supra, at page 642.

Although the robbery specification in the instant case does not allege the specific means of “force and violence” used, the accused contends that from a reading of the stipulation of facts it is obvious that it was the wrench that supplied this element of the offense of robbery as well as the permanent brain damage of the maiming charge. He argues accordingly that where the acts that constitute the “force and violence” of the robbery charge are the same ones that cause the permanent injury of the maiming charge, the latter is a lesser included offense of the former and an accused can be punished only for the former. If the accused’s position were sustained, the maximum period of confinement to which he could have been sentenced was ten years for the robbery instead of seventeen years for the robbery and the maiming. Despite reduction of the sentence to confinement to ten years under a pretrial agreement, the accused insists that the sentence should be reduced further or the findings set aside.

The Government’s response is that robbery and maiming are separate of[398]*398fenses under any of the several tests that have been applied to determine multiplicity.

The first of these tests is the “gravamen” or “juristic norms” test enunciated in United States v Beene, 4 USCMA 177, 15 CMR 177. In urging separateness under this test, the Government asserts that the gravamen of robberjr is the larceny involved and that this offense primarily protects the right to peaceful ownership, possession, and enjoyment of one’s personal property. The infringement of these rights is said to be unrelated to the offense of maiming, the gravamen of which is that “the act permanently disables the person ‘to fight in defence of the king and country, and as a soldier protect himself on the field of battle.’ ” Winthrop’s Military Law and Precedents, 2d ed, 1920 Reprint, at page 676.

Statutory definitions have enlarged on the common-law offense. But it is clear that in its origins the common-law offense was particularly applicable to members of the armed forces. The juristic norm is the protection of the bodily integrity of citizens, in addition to the general interests in their not becoming wards of the state. The essence of the offense of maiming is the permanency of the injury inflicted.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
18 C.M.A. 395, 18 USCMA 395, 40 C.M.R. 107, 1969 CMA LEXIS 791, 1969 WL 6022, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-goins-cma-1969.