Opinion ID: 2282838
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: third countrobbery

Text: In its specific instructions on the crime of robbery in the first degree the trial court properly explained the element of intent applicable to that crime but offered no explanation to the jury on how to ascertain this intent. It did not repeat the offending language of the general instruction or expressly incorporate it. Such repetition or express incorporation would have rendered the specific instructions invalid as indicated in our discussion of the instruction on intent to commit attempted murder. The intent instruction on the third count, robbery, is similar in one respect to the one given on the second count, kidnapping, which we upheld; neither one repeated or expressly incorporated the erroneous instructions. The general instructions in the two counts differ in that the kidnapping instruction contained highly permissive and ultimately curative language but the robbery instruction contained no such language. In the absence of such additional instructions on the third count, the question for us to decide is whether the robbery instructions implicitly incorporated the erroneous general instructions or retained the curative effect of the intent language contained in the immediately preceding instructions on the second count, kidnapping. As a practical matter, the curative effect of the preceding instructions would probably be more important in the jury's consideration than the earlier erroneous instruction; however, we cannot assume this to be the case. In State v. Arroyo, supra, 177-80, for example, this court approved the trial court's instruction on the first count, even though cast in terms of a presumption of intent from consequences, because of additional curative language, but held invalid the same language in instructions on a lesser included offense because of the absence of the additional language. We concluded that it cannot be assumed that the court's instructions on intent as an element of murder would have been applied to such an extent that the jury unquestionably would have considered them in conjunction with the court's instructions on intent as an element of manslaughter. Id., 181. Similarly, in State v. Truppi, supra, 461-63, this court upheld one of three counts affected by an erroneous general instruction because of additional curative language in the instructions on that count, but would not assume that this curative language was considered on the other counts where it did not appear. Therefore, because we cannot assume the curative language of the instructions on the second count carried over to the instructions on the third, we must assume the taint of the erroneous general instructions remained. Because it is reasonably possible that the jury based its conclusion on intent to commit robbery on the erroneous general instructions, the conviction on this count must be reversed.
The impact of the erroneous general instruction on the defendant's conviction on the charge of sexual assault in the first degree must be analyzed in a way much different from our analysis of its impact on the first three counts. While each of those counts involved specific intent crimes, sexual assault in the first degree is a general intent crime with no element of specific intent. State v. Truppi, supra, 454-55, 455n. The trial court's instruction on this count, therefore, did not mention intent as an element and did not incorporate the erroneous general instructions. [1] Thus, there is no Sandstrom error in the conviction on this count. Id.; State v. Perez, supra, 315-16. [2]