U.S. v. Richards, 56 M.J. 282

Core Criminal Law Subjects: Crimes: Article 119 - Manslaughter Pre-2019 offenses

1. active participation in a beating that so incapacitated the victim and rendered him helpless against the attack is a satisfactory basis upon which a rational factfinder could have found that appellant's kicking aided and abetted another’s actual killing the felled victim at some point during this assault
2. as to appellant's intent to kill or inflict great bodily harm, active participation in a beating that so incapacitated the victim and rendered him helpless against the attack provides a legally sufficient basis upon which the members could have inferred that all of the assailants, including appellant, acted with such intent; appellant was an active, voluntary perpetrator of the assaultive kicking while the victim was on the ground for a number of minutes, and appellant voluntarily participated in a chain of events that prevented the victim’s escape
3. Article 119(a) does not require that appellant intended any particular means of inflicting death or great bodily harm but, rather, that he intended the consequence; the precise means by which the consequence of death actually was visited (a knife rather than the kicking) does not diminish appellant’s culpability for aiding and abetting a criminal assault "with an intent to kill or inflict great bodily harm."

Trial Stages: Merits: Instructions › Lesser-included offenses

1. there was no need for an instruction on involuntary manslaughter as a lesser included offense because it was not raised by the evidence; there was no evidence that appellant’s culpable negligence caused the victim’s death - the stabbing by another, not the simultaneous kicking and beating by appellant, caused the victim’s death

Trial Stages: Appeals: Standards of Review, Burdens, etc.

1. the test for legal sufficiency is whether, after viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution, any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt