Title: State v. Vinigas

State: hawaii

Issuer: Hawaii Supreme Court

Document:

LAW LIBRARY

 

iss Non FOR PUBLICATION 10 WEST'S HAWAI'I REFORTS AND PACIFIC REPORTER
Wo. 26499

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF HAWAI'T

 

STATE OF HAWAT'T, Plaintiff-Appellee,  &) 3
RUDY VINIGAS, Defendant-Appellent. gS
bee 8
APPEAL FROM THE FIRST CIRCUIT COURT |”
(Crim, No. 03-1-0328) a 8

‘Levinson, Nakayama, and Duffy, J.,
and Acoba, J., dissenting)

 

(By: Moon, C.

‘The defendant-appellant Rudy Vinigas appeals from the
March 9, 2004 judgment of the circuit court of the first circuit,
the Honorable Sandra A. Simms presiding, convicting him of and
sentencing him for assault in the first degree in violation of
Hawai'i Revised Statutes (HRS) § 707-710(1) (1993) [2 lesser
included offense within the original charge, which was attempted
murder in the second degree in violation of HRS §§ 705-500 and
707-701.5(1) (19930).

on appeal, Vinigas contends that the circuit court
erred in: (1) advising the jury, in response to its
communication during deliberation, that it could not find him
guilty of assault in the third degree in conjunction with
“serious bodily injury”; and (2) refusing his proposed jury
instructions regarding (a) the lesser included offense of assault
in the second degree and (b) the defense of “protective force.”

upon carefully reviewing the record and the briefs and
having given due consideration to the arguments advanced and the

issues raised, we affirm the circuit court's March 9, 2004
 

+4 NOT FOR PUBLICATION IN MEST’S HAMAI'T REPORTS AND PACIFIC REFORTER +

 

judgment for the following reasons
(2) We detect no legally significant difference between
the two versions of the self-defense instruction.
Notwithstanding the fact that it nearly tracks the language of
HRS § 703-304(3) (Supp. 2001), the struck language (“A person
employing protective force may estimate the necessity thereof
under the circumstances as he reasonably believed them to be when
the force is used without retreating.”) mezely echoes the
principle that the jury must gauge the necessity of protective
force from the point of view of a reasonable person under the
instant circumstances, which was already conveyed to the jury
through the earlier admonition that “(t]he reasonableness of the
defendant’s belief . . . shall be determined from. . . the
defendant’s position under the circumstances.” The repetition
for which Vinigas campaigned might have imparted a trace of
additional clarity; nevertheless, we believe that the instruction
given was not “prejudicially insufficient, erroneous,
inconsistent, or misleading,” gee State v. Gonsalves, 108 Hawai'i
289, 292, 119 P.3d 597, 600 (2005) (internal quotation signals
omitted), and we must presume that the jurors heeded all
instructions, e.d., State v. Haanio, 94 Hawai'i 405, 415, 16 P.3d
246, 256 (2001), and accorded all of the instructions equal
emphasis regardless of the number of times they were repeated,
Seg Court's General Instruction No. 1 ("Do not give greater
emphasis to any . . . sentence . . . simply because it is

repeated in these instructions.”).
 

\No? FOR PUBLICATION IN WEST'S HAMAI'T REPORTS AND PACIFIC REPORTER

 

(2) Inasmuch as the jury convicted Vinigas of the

greater offense of

 

jault in the first degree, any error by the

circuit court in refusing instructions regarding lesser included

offenses -- which we need not reach in the present matter -- was
harmless. See Haanio, 94 Hawai'i at 415-16, 16 P.3d at 256-87
(quoting State vs Holbron, 80 Hawai'i 27, 47, 904 P.2d 912, 932

(1995)). Therefore,
I7 18 HEREBY ORDERED that the judgment from which the
appeal is taken is affirmed.

DATED: Honolulu, Hawai", November 28, 2006.

on the briefs:

ctenen ruthie, Gtr

Salina Kanai Althof,

Deputy Public Defender, PaO aan
for the defendant-appeilant
Rudy Vinigas

 

Caren &. DiGi +