State v. Miller
Annotate this CaseAfter a jury trial, Xavier Miller was convicted of intentional second-degree murder. The court of appeals affirmed Miller's conviction. At issue on review was whether the district court clearly erred when it appropriately instructed the jury that it should simultaneously consider the lesser-included offenses of second-degree murder and voluntary manslaughter, but then erroneously gave a contradictory instruction directing the jury to consider the offense of voluntary manslaughter only if it could not agree on the offense of second-degree murder. The Supreme Court reversed Miller's conviction and remanded for a new trial, holding that there was a real possibility the jury would have rendered a different verdict had it not received the inappropriate and contradictory instruction to consider the lesser-included offenses sequentially rather than simultaneously.
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