## Facts

- Five white Marine lieutenants entered a Washington, D.C. hamburger shop where Gordon Alexander and Benjamin Murdock, both Black men, were present.
- A confrontation developed between Lieutenant Ellsworth Kramer and Alexander, including repeated racial slurs directed at Alexander.
- Alexander and Murdock drew revolvers; gunfire followed.
- Two Marine lieutenants were killed, and others were injured.
- Murdock’s trial was bifurcated, separating the determination of whether he committed the charged acts from the insanity/criminal responsibility phase.
- During the responsibility phase, a psychiatrist testified about Murdock’s background, psychological traits, and how racial epithets could trigger an “irresistible urge” to attack perceived oppressors.
- The trial court instructed the jury to consider this psychiatric and social-history evidence only for criminal responsibility (mental disease or defect), not as general justification for the shootings.
- Both defendants were convicted in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia of homicide- and assault-related offenses, including second-degree murder and assault.

## Issues

1. Whether the district court committed reversible error in admitting and limiting psychiatric and social-history testimony offered to support Murdock’s insanity/criminal responsibility defense.
2. Whether the district court’s jury instructions on criminal responsibility in Murdock’s bifurcated proceeding were legally sufficient under then-governing D.C. Circuit standards.
3. Whether Alexander could lawfully be convicted and sentenced on multiple assault counts arising from the same episode, or whether some counts and sentences required vacatur to prevent multiple punishment.
4. Whether other asserted evidentiary, instructional, and sentencing errors required reversal.

## Decision

- The court affirmed Murdock’s convictions.
- The court affirmed Alexander’s convictions except as to assault: three of Alexander’s four assault convictions were vacated.
- The sentence on Alexander’s remaining assault count was vacated, and the case was remanded for resentencing on that single remaining assault count.
- The court rejected the remaining claims of trial error as insufficient to require reversal.

## Legal Principles

- Psychiatric and social-history evidence may be received to the extent it bears on whether a defendant suffered from a mental disease or defect affecting criminal responsibility.
- A trial court may give a limiting instruction directing that such evidence be used only for the responsibility determination and not as a general excuse or justification for violent conduct.
- Multiple convictions and sentences for separate assault counts arising from the same criminal episode may require vacatur of duplicative counts and resentencing to avoid multiple punishment for the same conduct.
- Appellate relief for asserted evidentiary, instructional, or sentencing errors requires a showing of reversible error affecting the validity of the verdict or lawful punishment.

## Conclusion

The D.C. Circuit largely left the jury verdicts intact, holding that the handling of psychiatric testimony and responsibility instructions in Murdock’s bifurcated trial did not warrant reversal, while granting Alexander limited relief by vacating duplicative assault convictions and remanding for resentencing on a single remaining assault count.


United States v. Alexander, 471 F.2d 923 (D.C. Cir. 1972)