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IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF THE STATE OF IDAHO

Docket No. 44963

STATE OF IDAHO,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

JAY RAY BRIGHT,

Defendant-Respondent.

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2018 Unpublished Opinion No. 375

Filed: February 28, 2018

Karel A. Lehrman, Clerk

THIS IS AN UNPUBLISHED

OPINION AND SHALL NOT

BE CITED AS AUTHORITY

Appeal from the District Court of the First Judicial District, State of Idaho, 

Kootenai County. Hon. Lansing L. Haynes, District Judge. Hon. Timothy L. Van 

Valin, Magistrate.

Order of the district court, on intermediate appeal, vacating convictions and 

remanding case to magistrate court, reversed and case remanded.

Hon. Lawrence G. Wasden, Attorney General; Russell J. Spencer, Deputy 

Attorney General, Boise, for appellant. 

Anne Taylor, Kootenai County Public Defender; Jay Logsdon, Deputy Public

Defender, Coeur d’Alene, for respondent. 

________________________________________________

GRATTON, Chief Judge 

The State appeals from the district court’s decision on intermediate appeal reversing Jay 

Ray Bright’s convictions for driving under the influence and possession of paraphernalia. We 

reverse and remand for further proceedings. 

I.

FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

The State charged Bright with driving under the influence of alcohol, drugs, or any other 

intoxicating substances, second offense, Idaho Code §§ 18-8004(1)(a), 18-8005(4) and 

possession of drug paraphernalia, I.C. § 37-2734A. Bright pled not guilty and proceeded to trial. 
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In its pretrial opening remarks to the jury, the magistrate read Idaho Criminal Jury 

Instruction 103 (ICJI 103), an instruction about the State’s burden to prove the alleged crimes 

beyond a reasonable doubt: 

Under our law and system of justice, the defendant is presumed to be 

innocent. The presumption of innocence means two things. First, the State has 

the burden of proving the defendant guilty. The State has that burden throughout 

the trial. The defendant is never required to prove his or her innocence, nor does 

the defendant ever have to produce any evidence at all.

Second, the State must prove the alleged crime beyond a reasonable doubt. 

A reasonable doubt is not a mere possible or imaginary doubt. It is a doubt based 

on reason and common sense.

The court then interjected, “And, as I said yesterday, you didn’t check your common sense at the 

door. Okay. You’ve all broke[n] up fights and arguments, you know how to do this.” The court 

then finished reading ICJI 103: 

It may arise from a careful and impartial consideration of all the evidence, 

or from a lack of evidence. If after considering all the evidence you have a 

reasonable doubt about the defendant’s guilt, you must find the defendant not 

guilty.

Bright’s trial counsel did not contemporaneously object to either the jury instruction or the 

court’s interjected comment. 

Ultimately, the jury returned guilty verdicts on both counts. The magistrate entered

judgment of conviction against Bright and sentenced him to 365 days in jail with 335 days 

suspended. Bright appealed his conviction to the district court. 

On intermediate appeal to the district court, Bright argued that the magistrate had reduced

the State’s burden of proof by failing to properly instruct the jury on reasonable doubt. The 

district court agreed and concluded that the trial court had erred. The district court vacated the 

magistrate court’s judgment and remanded for further proceedings. The State timely appeals. 

II.

ANALYSIS

On appeal, the State asserts that the district court erred on intermediate appeal when it 

determined that the jury instructions reduced the State’s burden of proof.

A. Standard of Review

For an appeal from the district court, sitting in its appellate capacity over a case from the 

magistrate division, this Court’s standard of review is the same as expressed by the Idaho 

Supreme Court. The Supreme Court reviews the magistrate record to determine whether there is 
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substantial and competent evidence to support the magistrate’s findings of fact and whether the 

magistrate’s conclusions of law follow from those findings. State v. Korn, 148 Idaho 413, 415, 

224 P.3d 480, 482 (2009). If those findings are so supported and the conclusions follow 

therefrom, and if the district court affirmed the magistrate’s decision, we affirm the district 

court’s decision as a matter of procedure. Id. Thus, the appellate courts do not review the 

decision of the magistrate. State v. Trusdall, 155 Idaho 965, 968, 318 P.3d 955, 958 (Ct. App. 

2014). Rather, we are procedurally bound to affirm or reverse the decision of the district court. 

Id. 

B. Fundamental and Structural Error

As a preliminary matter, the parties disagree about whether the error Bright asserted on 

intermediate appeal should be reviewed by this Court under a fundamental error or structural 

error standard. The State argues the fundamental error standard applies because all unobjectedto error should be reviewed under the fundamental error standard, and here Bright failed to 

contemporaneously object to the jury instruction before the jury retired to consider its verdict. 

According to Bright, however, either the trial court erred in giving the reasonable doubt 

instruction, in which case that error unquestionably qualifies as structural error which is always 

fundamental error and requires automatic reversal on appeal, or no error occurred.

Before determining whether an alleged constitutional error is harmless, fundamental, or

structural, the Court necessarily conducts an initial inquiry to determine whether an error 

occurred at all. See State v. Anderson, 144 Idaho 743, 748, 170 P.3d 886, 891 (2007) (“[I]t first 

must be determined whether the [trial] court even committed an error.”); see also State v. Perry, 

150 Idaho 209, 227, 245 P.3d 961, 979 (2010). Here, the preliminary inquiry about whether the 

alleged error in the reasonable doubt instruction occurred at all is dispositive. Consequently, we 

need not address the parties’ arguments regarding whether the fundamental error or structural 

error standard applies in this case. 

C. Reasonable Doubt Instruction

The State argues that the district court erred when it determined that the jury instructions 

reduced the State’s burden below a reasonable doubt because the jury instructions were not 

erroneous under any standard. On the contrary, Bright argues that the magistrate court’s 

instruction reduced the State’s burden to prove the charges beyond a reasonable doubt by 

equating the State’s burden with settling an everyday quarrel or a neighborhood squabble.
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The district court, on intermediate appeal, concluded that the trial court’s handling of the 

reasonable doubt instruction suggested that the burden of proof in criminal cases is only one of 

common sense and is equivalent to the standard by which each juror settles conflict in their own 

lives. Thus, the district court held that the instruction violated Bright’s due process rights. We 

disagree. 

Whether a jury has been properly instructed is a question of law over which we exercise 

free review. State v. Severson, 147 Idaho 694, 710, 215 P.3d 414, 430 (2009). When reviewing 

jury instructions, we ask whether the instructions as a whole, and not individually, fairly and 

accurately reflect applicable law. State v. Bowman, 124 Idaho 936, 942, 866 P.2d 193, 199 (Ct. 

App. 1993). Our review on appeal is whether the instruction that was given to the jury misstated 

the law or was so confusing and argumentative as to mislead the jury. State v. Harris, 136 Idaho 

484, 485, 36 P.3d 836, 837 (Ct. App. 2001). The Constitution does not dictate that any particular 

form of words be used in advising the jury of the State’s burden of proof so long as, taken as a 

whole, the instructions correctly convey the concept of reasonable doubt. Id. 

After reviewing the instructions as a whole, the reasonable doubt instruction given by the 

magistrate to the jury did not reduce the State’s burden of proof, but rather correctly conveyed

the concept of reasonable doubt to the jury. 

The first two sentences of the court’s comment are not objectionable. Immediately after 

reading the portion of ICJI 103 that defines reasonable doubt as “a doubt based on reason and 

common sense,” the court interjected, “And, as I said yesterday, you didn’t check your common 

sense at the door. Okay.” (emphasis added). This spontaneous comment was merely a tangential 

aside by which the court reminded the jurors that they had not abandoned their common sense 

upon entering the courthouse. These statements are not objectionable. 

Additionally, the final sentence of the magistrate’s interjected comment did not reduce

the State’s burden to prove the charges beyond a reasonable doubt. It bears repeating that before 

the court’s interjected commentary, the magistrate read the first two paragraphs of ICJI 103 to

instruct the jury that: (1) Bright would never be required to prove his innocence or even to 

produce any evidence at all; (2) the State has the burden of proving Bright guilty; (3) the State 

must prove Bright guilty of the charged crimes beyond a reasonable doubt; and (4) that 

reasonable doubt is based on reason and common sense. Immediately after reading the phrase 

“common sense” from the approved instructions, the court remarked that the jurors had not 
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abandoned their common sense, and then stated, “You’ve all broke[n] up fights and arguments, 

you know how to do this.” After making this comment, the court continued by instructing the 

jury that if they had a reasonable doubt about Bright’s guilt after a careful and impartial 

consideration of all the evidence, or lack of evidence, then they must find him not guilty. 

Although the magistrate made this comment in the middle of reading ICJI 103, the statement, 

taken in this context, is simply an example of common sense, which did not equate the State’s 

burden of proof to settling an everyday quarrel. 

Furthermore, the reasonable doubt instruction given to the jury did not misstate the law 

nor was it so confusing and argumentative as to mislead the jury. The Idaho Criminal Jury 

Instructions are presumptively correct. McKay v. State, 148 Idaho 567, 571 n.2, 225 P.3d 700, 

704 n.2 (2010); State v. Rossignol, 147 Idaho 818, 830-31, 215 P.3d 538, 550-51 (Ct. App. 

2009). Bright did not rebut the presumption. The magistrate correctly used ICJI 103, the 

presumptively correct reasonable doubt instruction, to instruct the jury on three separate 

occasions. First, the magistrate read ICJI 103 to instruct the jury immediately after swearing in 

the prospective jury panel at voir dire. Second, the magistrate read ICJI 103 aloud in its opening 

instructions to the jury. Finally, at the conclusion of Bright’s trial, the court gave a physical copy 

of the jury instructions to the jury for its deliberation, and both Jury Instruction No. 1 and Jury 

Instruction No. 4 included ICJI 103 verbatim. 

Moreover, the Idaho Supreme Court has never required that reasonable doubt instructions 

exactly quote ICJI 103 in order to survive a challenge on appeal. Harris, 136 Idaho at 485, 36 

P.3d at 837. Taken as a whole, including the remark, the reasonable doubt jury instructions 

fairly and accurately reflect the law. Accordingly, we conclude that the jury was properly 

instructed in regard to the State’s burden to prove the charges against Bright beyond a reasonable 

doubt and thus no error has been shown.

Finally, in reaching our conclusion, we do not endorse the magistrate’s decision to 

interject commentary while giving its reasonable doubt instruction. We take this opportunity to 

reiterate that deviations from the pattern ICJI “have created unnecessary controversies with 

nothing added by way of clarity.” State v. Sheahan, 139 Idaho 267, 273-75, 77 P.3d 956, 962-64 

(2003). Trial court judges are encouraged to use ICJI 103 verbatim to avoid unnecessary appeals 

and controversy by utilizing the instruction that has an accepted history defining the burden the 

State bears. Sheahan, 139 Idaho at 275, 77 P.3d at 964. Despite the ruling in this case, there 
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appears to be no reason to deviate from the standard instruction set forth in ICJI 103, which has 

been approved by the Supreme Court. 

III.

CONCLUSION

The district court erred on intermediate appeal when it determined that the jury 

instructions reduced the State’s burden of proof. Accordingly, we reverse the order of the 

district court vacating Bright’s convictions and remanding the case to the magistrate; we remand 

this case for further proceedings. 

Judge GUTIERREZ and Judge LORELLO CONCUR.