Speed v. United States

KERN, Senior Judge:

The issue in this appeal is whether the trial court properly instructed the jurors before they found appellant guilty, as charged, of simple assault upon the complainant, 1 a Metro Transit police officer. We hold that the instruction the court gave did not fully instruct the jury either on appellant’s right of self-defense against this particular complainant or on the government’s burden to disprove his self-defense beyond a reasonable doubt. The omissions from the court’s instruction are not harmless, and so we must reverse.

I

The prosecution presented evidence at trial that…