Lee v. United States

SCHWELB, Associate Judge:

A jury acquitted appellants David Lee and Reginald C. Spears, defendants below, of second degree murder while armed (SDMWA), 1 but convicted each man of voluntary manslaughter while armed (VMWA) and of several associated offenses. 2 In a post-trial order, the trial judge set aside appellants’ convictions of VMWA and substituted therefor convictions of unarmed manslaughter. He held that VMWA was not a lesser included offense (LIO) of SDMWA and that the jury therefore should not have been permitted to consider VMWA.

In a separate post-trial order, the judge denied a…