Background
Cleveland Maxwell was charged with attempted murder after he fired his gun at least five times at a victim while the victim and the victim’s infant child were sitting in a car. The bullets struck the driver’s side door; neither the victim nor the child was injured. At trial in Allendale County, Maxwell asked the trial court to instruct the jury on second-degree assault and battery as a lesser-included offense of attempted murder under S.C. Code Ann. § 16-3-600(D)(3) (2015). The trial court refused. The jury convicted Maxwell of first-degree assault and battery (the court had apparently given that lesser-included instruction), and Maxwell received a ten-year sentence. Maxwell did not appeal separate convictions for domestic violence of a high and aggravated nature and for discharging a weapon into an occupied vehicle. On appeal, he argued the trial court abused its discretion in refusing to instruct the jury on second-degree assault and battery.
The Court’s Holding
The Court of Appeals affirmed under Rule 220(b), SCACR.
A trial court must give a lesser-included offense instruction when “the evidence presented [allows] a rational inference the defendant was guilty only of the lesser offense.” State v. Geiger, 370 S.C. 600, 607 (Ct. App. 2006). The court views the facts in the light most favorable to the defendant in making that determination. State v. Williams, 427 S.C. 148, 156 (2019). But if the evidence is such that no rational jury could conclude the defendant committed only the lesser offense, the instruction is properly refused.
Second-degree assault and battery under S.C. Code Ann. § 16-3-600(D)(1)(a) requires an unlawful attempt to injure another person with the present ability to do so, where moderate bodily injury could have resulted. The court held that Maxwell’s conduct—firing at least five shots at an occupied vehicle—was not susceptible to the inference that he intended only to injure, rather than to kill. Firing repeatedly into a car occupied by a person and an infant is conduct that, under South Carolina precedent, can only be construed as an attempt to kill. See State v. Shank, Op. No. 28328 (S.C. Sup. Ct. filed May 6, 2026) (refusing lesser-included instruction where no evidence supported “a rational inference that the defendant committed only the lesser offense”); State v. Middleton, 407 S.C. 312, 319 (2014) (no rational inference of lesser intent when defendant approached a stopped car and repeatedly fired into it). The trial court therefore did not abuse its discretion in refusing to submit second-degree assault and battery to the jury.
Key Takeaways
- A lesser-included offense instruction is required only when the evidence would permit a rational jury to find the defendant guilty of the lesser offense and not the greater; if the evidence, viewed in the light most favorable to the defendant, supports only the intent element of the greater offense, the lesser-included instruction may be refused.
- Repeatedly firing a gun at an occupied vehicle is conduct that South Carolina courts consistently interpret as evidence of intent to kill, not merely to injure; such evidence does not support a rational inference of only second-degree assault and battery, and the lesser-included instruction on that offense is properly withheld.
- The standard is not whether the jury could theoretically acquit on the greater offense but whether any rational inference supports conviction on the lesser offense exclusively—a distinction that limits lesser-included instructions to cases where the evidence is genuinely mixed on the key element distinguishing the offenses.
Why It Matters
Lesser-included offense instructions in violent-crime cases are frequently contested because they give the jury an alternative path to conviction when the evidence may not fully support the charged offense. Maxwell reinforces the principle that the availability of a lesser-included instruction turns entirely on whether the evidence in the particular case supports “a rational inference” of guilt on only the lesser offense—not on whether the lesser offense is legally a subset of the greater.
The case is also notable for its reliance on State v. Shank, an opinion issued by the South Carolina Supreme Court just two months before this decision, and on the older Middleton precedent. Together, they establish a consistent line: when the defendant fires multiple shots into an occupied vehicle, the evidence points in only one direction on the question of intent. Counsel defending against attempted-murder charges who hope to obtain a second-degree assault and battery instruction must point to some evidence—perhaps testimony about the defendant’s stated purpose, the trajectory of the shots, or other circumstances—creating a genuine jury question about whether the defendant intended only to injure, not to kill.