Title: State v. McClanahan
Citation: 212 Kan. 208, 510 P.2d 153
Docket Number: 46,963, 47,012
State: Kansas
Issuer: Kansas Supreme Court
Date: May 12, 1973

212 Kan. 208 (1973)
510 P.2d 153
STATE OF KANSAS, Appellant,
v.
CARROLL WILLIAM McCLANAHAN, Appellee. STATE OF KANSAS, Appellant,
v.
LARRY DEAN TORRENCE, Appellee.
Nos. 47,012, 46,963

Supreme Court of Kansas.
Opinion filed May 12, 1973.
J.J.B. Wigglesworth, assistant district attorney, argued the cause, and Vern Miller, attorney general, and Margaret Jordan, district attorney, were with him on the briefs for the appellant.
Howard S. Levitan, of Prairie Village, argued the cause, and John W. Gilliford, also of Prairie Village, was with him on the brief for Carroll William McClanahan, appellee, and Bernis G. Terry, of Olathe, was on the brief for Larry Dean Torrence, appellee.
The opinion of the court was delivered by
FROMME, J.:
The present appeals were perfected by the state upon questions reserved relating to an identical instruction given in two separate criminal cases.
Carroll William McClanahan was acquitted by a jury of the offense of grand theft as defined in K.S.A. 1972 Supp. 21-3701 (a). Larry Dean Torrence was acquitted by a jury of the offense of burglary as defined in K.S.A. 1972 Supp. 21-3715. Separate appeals *209 were filed in this court and then consolidated on a stipulation by the parties that the questions are identical, and a decision in one case will control the other. Regardless of our decision here the defendants cannot again be placed in jeopardy. We believe an answer to the question is of general importance to the administration of criminal justice in this state.
The instructions which were offensive to the state are identical in wording in both cases. The instruction appears to have been copied verbatim from pattern jury instructions for use in criminal proceedings prepared by a committee sponsored by the Judicial Council of Kansas. (See PIK Criminal 51.03.) Instruction No. 1 as given reads as follows:
When the instruction was proposed to be given to the juries by the trial court, the defendants by their attorneys stated in open court they had no objection.
The state objected to the instruction and argued it was highly prejudicial. The state made the following specific objections:
*210 On appeal the state contends this instruction, and more specifically the last three paragraphs of the instruction, is contrary to Kansas law and deprives the state of a fair and impartial trial by jury by directing the jury to act upon its own conscientious feeling about what is a fair result regardless of the rules of law stated in the other instructions. In other words the instruction directs the jury that it may nullify the rules of law given by the court if it believes justice requires such a result.
In examining the question presented we must keep in mind that instructions to a jury are to be considered as a whole and in their entirety, and each instruction is to be considered in connection with all other instructions given in the case. Portions of the instructions should not be taken out of context if as a whole they appear to adequately cover the law of the case. (Schroeder v. Richardson, 196 Kan. 363, 411 P.2d 670; Thompson v. Norman, 198 Kan. 436, 424 P.2d 593; State v. Jerrel, 200 Kan. 415, 421, 436 P.2d 973.)
The traditional concept that the jury is required to abide by the instructions given by the court, even though it might believe the instructions inappropriate in the particular case, is embodied in the instruction set forth in PIK Criminal 51.02; it has generally been given in this state. The usual instruction which has been given reads as follows:
Kansas has long recognized the diverse functions of the court and the jury, and in the early history of the criminal law of this state this court said:
This conception of the diverse functions of court and jury appears in the Kansas code of criminal procedure, effective July 1, 1970, in K.S.A. 1972 Supp. 22-3403 (3) which provides: "When the *211 trial is to a jury, questions of law shall be decided by the court and issues of fact shall be determined by the jury."
This same conception is inherent throughout our statutory procedural law. Enforcement of the rules of law is generally considered to be for the protection of an accused. Questions arising during a trial on materiality, relevance and competency of evidence are questions of law to be determined by the court (K.S.A. 60-401 et seq., as amended, K.S.A. 1972 Supp. 22-3415). The court must determine whether confessions, admissions and seized evidence are to be suppressed or admitted as evidence (K.S.A. 1972 Supp. 22-3215, 22-3216). K.S.A. 1972 Supp. 22-3414 (3) relating to instructions provides:
Clearly this statute acknowledges that the function of the trial court is to determine the applicable law of the case and to preserve a record thereof for appellate review. With the diverse functions of the court and jury so firmly entrenched in the law of this state, what can be the purpose of this proposed alternative instruction published as PIK Criminal 51.03? The footnotes on use by the committee on pattern instructions shed some light on this question. Following PIK Criminal 51.03 it is said:
Our attention is immediately drawn to the statement by the committee that the instruction should not be given over the objection of the defendant for the reason that to do so could result in a defendant being convicted without the statutory elements of the crime being proven. Assuming this is correct the defendant would have nothing to lose by consenting to the instruction. If the instruction was given and he was acquitted he would be free of the charge. If he was convicted he could promptly appeal and show that certain of the statutory elements of the crime had not been established. Jeopardy would have attached and he would be free of the charge. A fair and impartial trial demands that standards of fairness and impartiality be applied equally to the rights of the accused and of the state.
In State v. Doyle, 201 Kan. 469, 441 P.2d 846, this court set aside a conviction of murder when proof of the crime was lacking. At page 484 and 485 of the reported opinion it was said:
Our whole system of criminal law is based upon rules of law for the protection of the accused and especially should this be true when the charge is a heinous crime. Without restraints being placed upon a jury by our system of jurisprudence the conscience of a jury in a case which causes public outrage might well reflect a lack of rationality rather than a proper display of community conscience. In such cases the rule of law becomes imperative if the accused is to receive a fair trial. The state criminal law should be equally enforced throughout the state. Criminal punishment cannot depend upon "community conscience" or "community standards".
In Doyle this court, in speculating on the jury's verdict of guilt in the absence of proof of the crime of murder, said:
The committee notes on use of this instruction mention that Maryland recognizes in criminal trials the jury is the judge of both the facts and the law. This practice results from constitutional mandate. Only three states have such a provision in their constitutions, Georgia, Indiana and Maryland. See Ga. Const., Art. 1, § 2-201; Md. Const., Art. XV, § 5; and Ind. Const., Art. 1, § 19. We have no similar provision in the Constitution of the State of Kansas. Kansas has in the past recognized a limited exception to the traditional function of a jury in libel actions. (See K.S.A. 21-2406.) The exception no longer exists for the statute was repealed in 1969.
It is argued that in any state, the jury may acquit in complete disregard of the instructions and that the "do what you think is fair" instruction is thus perhaps a more honest statement as to the binding effect of instructions than the conventional instruction, PIK Criminal 51.02. We do not agree.
The argument erroneously equates the jury's raw physical power to disregard the law as laid down in the instructions of the court with the jury's proper function and legal duty to accept the law as given to it by the court. The physical power of a jury to acquit an accused in the face of what appears to be overwhelming evidence of guilt has not been seriously questioned since 1670 when the jurymen who heard the case against William Penn and William Mead flatly refused to return a verdict of guilty for preaching to an unlawful assembly in Gracechurch Street. It is recorded that all jurors in that celebrated case were fined and jailed. Several of them spent months in prison until the case was reviewed on a writ of habeas corpus and the English court delivered the opinion which first recognized and established the raw physical power of English juries to render a verdict of acquittal. (Bushell's Case, 6 Howell's State Trials, 999 [1670].) More recently this raw physical power of a jury was recognized in State v. Osburn, 211 Kan. 248, 505 P.2d 742, when this court determined that special questions may not be submitted to a jury in Kansas in a criminal case. In Osburn it was said:
However, power is one thing and proper function and legal duty is another. The jury's legal duty to act "according to the law" is clearly set forth in the statutory oath administered to every juror. The statute, K.S.A. 1972 Supp. 60-247 (c), provides:
It is a jury's legal duty and proper function to accept the law as given in the instructions. In each of the cases now before this court the instructions which were given following Instruction No. 1 set forth rules of law to guide the jurors in their deliberations. They were advised that during the trial the court had ruled upon the admissibility of evidence and the jurors must not concern themselves with these rulings, that the rulings should not indicate to them any opinion of the court as to the facts or the ultimate verdict; that the statements of counsel were intended to help them in understanding the evidence so they might apply the law, but such statements of counsel are not evidence. They were advised to determine the weight and credit to be given the testimony of witnesses. The necessary elements of each crime were set forth in detail, and they were instructed that each of the elements must be proved to establish the charges. The jurors were advised that the burden of proof was upon the state and the law required them to assume the defendant was innocent until they were convinced otherwise. They were advised to evaluate the evidence and determine the innocence or guilt of each defendant entirely in accordance with the instructions. Various other rules of law were given with instructions that they be applied to arrive at a proper verdict.
In considering the instructions as a whole and in their entirety the conflict between Instruction No. 1 and the balance of the instructions becomes apparent. Instruction No. 1 advises the jurors that their guiding principle must be their personal conscientious feelings about what is a fair result in the case and that the judge's statements of the law are secondary aids to be considered or disregarded so long as they arrive at a conscientious determination of a fair result in the case. However, the balance of the instructions *215 informs the jurors that they must follow rules of law, determine the sufficiency of the evidence to support the elements of the crime, and that their "verdict must be founded entirely upon the evidence admitted and the law as given in these instructions." We believe this conflict in the instructions will result in confusion and injustice in this state if PIK Criminal 51.03 is approved.
Much has been written concerning the present question. See Howe, Juries as Judges of Criminal Law, 52 Harv. L. Rev., p. 582; Bodle, Criminal Law  Indiana Juries in Criminal Cases as Judges of Law Under Constitutional Relic, 24 Notre Dame L. Rev., p. 365; Van Dyke, The Jury as a Political Institution, 16 The Catholic Lawyer, p. 224; Scheflin, Jury Nullification: The Right to Say No, 45 S. Cal. L. Rev., p. 168.
It is universally accepted in this country, with the exception of Georgia, Indiana and Maryland, which are under constitutional mandate, that it is not the proper function or legal right of a jury to determine the law applicable to the case they are hearing. The cases are collected in Sparf and Hansen v. United States, 156 U.S. 51, 39 L. Ed. 343, 15 S. Ct. 273, where it is stated:
Mr. Justice Harlan in delivering the opinion in Sparf stated that as to federal criminal trials the jurors "were the exclusive judges of the facts, and that they were to determine  applying to the facts the principles of law announced by the court  whether the evidence established the guilt or innocence of the defendants of the charge set out in the indictment." (Sparf, supra, p. 106. Emphasis added.) So the function of the jury in a federal case is the same as that universally accepted and applied in state courts absent constitutional mandate to the contrary.
The so-called "do what you think is fair" instruction set forth in PIK Criminal 51.03 is disapproved for use in Kansas. The administration of criminal justice in this state would not be served by approving either the theory or form of such an instruction. The tenor of the instruction militates against our generally accepted law as to the diverse functions of court and jury. The instructions *216 to the jury should fairly and impartially set forth the law to govern the jury in its deliberations. The giving of an instruction by a court should not depend upon the approval or objection of one party. The instruction which we disapprove stresses the conscience of the jury as a basis for acquittal but fails to properly consider the effect of the instruction as to a conviction. The injustice which could result from adopting such an instruction when an accused is charged with a heinous crime is apparent. The administration of justice cannot be left to community standards or community conscience but must depend upon the protections afforded by the rule of law. The jury must be directed to apply the rules of law to the evidence even though it must do so in the face of public outcry and indignation. Disregard for the principles of established law creates anarchy and destroys the very protections which the law affords an accused. Finally, to permit a jury to disregard the principles of law laid down by a trial court is contrary to the statutory law of this state. (K.S.A. 1972 Supp. 22-3403 [3].)
In disapproving the instruction for use in this state we are in accord with the statements of Mr. Justice Storey who long ago was faced with the present contention. He stated:
Although it must be conceded that the jurors in a criminal case have the raw physical power to disregard both the rules of law and the evidence in order to acquit a defendant, it is the proper function and duty of a jury to accept the rules of law given to it in the instructions by the court, apply those rules of law in determining what facts are proven and render a verdict based thereon.
The appeals by the state are sustained.