Opinion ID: 2065805
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Accident Instruction

Text: The defendant claims that the trial justice erroneously omitted a comprehensive accident instruction from his jury charge. It will be recalled that part of the state's case against defendant included the testimony of jailhouse informant William Reis, who stated that defendant described Jack's death as an accident. As a result, defendant requested that the following accident instruction be included in the jury charge: Third, the state must prove that the homicide was intentional. Every crime involves a physical elementthe doing of the actand a mental elementthe wrongful or criminal intent. If that intent does not exist, then the act is not a crime. An example would be an accidental death. Accident is the opposite of intent. If a person kills another accidentally, he or she lacks the wrongful intent, which would, if the other elements were present, make the act a murder. The trial justice, however, settled on the following instruction, in pertinent part: As to the word `willfully,' you are instructed that an act is done willfully if it is done voluntarily and intentionally and not by mistake or accident.    You should consider all of the facts and circumstances in evidence that you think are relevant in determining whether the state has proved beyond a reasonable doubt that [defendant] acted with the required intent or state of mind. The defendant objected, but the trial justice ruled that he was satisfied that [the court] [had] sufficiently instructed the jury as to the required elements of first  and second-degree murder. On appeal, defendant dwells upon the anemic reference to accident in the jury charge. However, we think the paucity of evidence admitted at trial to support the proposition that Jack's death was accidental did not oblige the trial justice to give a more comprehensive accident instruction. At oral argument before this Court, defendant admitted that accident was not a defense he pursued at trial. A review of the record confirms as much: defendant neither presented evidence in accord nor argued accident in his closing. In fact, it was the state's witness, Mr. Reis, who offered the only testimony that was in any way supportive of an argument that Jack's death was accidental. Furthermore, to support his argument, defendant has managed only to cite decisions that clearly require more than a passing reference by a witness to the word accident to trigger a trial justice's obligation to issue an accident instruction. [6] The trial justice in the present case explicitly instructed the jury that Jack's murder only could have been committed willfully if it [was] done voluntarily and intentionally and not by mistake or accident.  (Emphasis added.) Given the scant evidence of accident proffered at trial, any further mention of accident in the charge probably would have served only to confuse or mislead the jury. The trial justice committed no error. 2