State of Vermont v. Wayne E. Delisle

Summary

The court reversed defendant's second-degree murder conviction because the trial court improperly conditioned a manslaughter instruction on waiver of the statute of limitations and rejected defendant's alternative request for an instruction requiring acquittal if the jury found only manslaughter. The court held that a defendant must be allowed either to forego the time-barred lesser-offense instruction or to receive it with an explanation that a manslaughter finding requires acquittal. The court rejected defendant's plea-agreement, sufficiency, lost-evidence, and preindictment-delay claims. Justice Johnson, joined by Justice Dooley, concurred in the reversal but rejected the majority's time-barred-lesser-offense instruction scheme and would have applied the statutes without informing the jury about the limitations bar.