## Facts

- Rico Rodrigus Williams, a former Air Force member living in Germany as a dependent, led a group of U.S. servicemembers known as BOS.
- BOS used a violent initiation ritual (“jump-in”) in which several members struck an initiate for about six minutes; the initiate could stop the ritual by withdrawing consent.
- BOS had conducted roughly fifteen to eighteen prior jump-ins without hospitalization or death.
- In July 2005, Army Sergeant Juwan Johnson sought to join BOS and repeatedly affirmed he wanted to proceed with the jump-in.
- Williams began the initiation by punching Johnson; additional BOS members joined and beat Johnson in the customary manner.
- Johnson appeared to have limited visible injury afterward but was found dead the next morning; medical evidence attributed death to blunt-force injuries.
- Williams was prosecuted in federal court under the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act (MEJA) and convicted by a jury of second-degree murder and witness tampering.
- On appeal, Williams challenged the murder conviction based on prosecutorial misstatement in closing argument concerning the legal relevance of Johnson’s consent; he also challenged aspects of the witness-tampering conviction.

## Issues

1. Whether the prosecutor misstated the law by telling the jury it could not consider the victim’s consent “in intent or anything else,” thereby limiting consideration of evidence relevant to malice aforethought for second-degree murder.
2. Whether the prosecutorial error substantially affected the verdict on the second-degree murder charge, requiring reversal.
3. Whether the witness-tampering conviction should be affirmed notwithstanding the error affecting the murder charge.

## Decision

- The court reversed the second-degree murder conviction and remanded for further proceedings.
- The court held the prosecutor’s closing argument was legally incorrect to the extent it barred the jury from considering consent for any purpose, including evaluating malice aforethought.
- The court concluded the error was not harmless because Williams’s mental state was central and the excluded consideration concerned “critical evidence” on malice.
- The court affirmed the witness-tampering conviction, finding sufficient evidence and no basis to disturb that verdict based on the consent-related closing argument.

## Legal Principles

- In federal second-degree murder, “malice aforethought” may be shown by intent to kill, intent to cause serious bodily injury, or extreme recklessness (“depraved heart”) toward human life.
- A victim’s consent is not a complete defense to homicide, but it may be relevant evidence bearing on the defendant’s mens rea, including whether the defendant acted with malice aforethought.
- Prosecutorial argument may not misstate the law by categorically preventing the jury from considering evidence that bears on an element of the offense; where mental state is contested and the misstatement targets key mens rea evidence, reversal may be required.
- An error affecting one count does not require reversal of other convictions unless it undermines confidence in those verdicts.

## Conclusion

The D.C. Circuit held that the government’s closing argument improperly barred the jury from considering the victim’s consent as evidence bearing on malice aforethought, requiring reversal of Williams’s second-degree murder conviction, while leaving the witness-tampering conviction intact.


United States v. Williams, 836 F.3d 1 (D.C. Cir. 2016)