Opinion ID: 2566966
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The State's Challenge to the Reasonable Doubt Instruction

Text: ¶ 16 According to the State, this court has lost touch with the reasonable doubt directives of the United States Supreme Court. In the State's view, we have strayed from fidelity to constitutional principles by forsaking the linguistic latitude in the formulation of reasonable doubt instructions approved by the Supreme Court in favor of what the State characterizes as the mechanical and unworkable Robertson test. ¶ 17 In this case, the court of appeals found that the trial court's reasonable doubt instructions failed the Robertson test and rejected them. Reyes, 2004 UT App 8 at ¶ 22, 84 P.3d 841. The State does not fault the court of appeals for this holding, noting that it took pains to distance itself from the outcome when it stated that, [a]lthough [the Robertson ] test may be constitutionally flawed, it is not within our power to overrule it. Id. ¶ 18 The Robertson test would not be constitutionally flawed were it merely to impose restrictions on permissible language that could be used to define beyond a reasonable doubt, as Victor expressly recognized that countless constitutionally permissible beyond a reasonable doubt formulations could be crafted. Victor, 511 U.S. at 5-6, 114 S.Ct. 1239. Victor also expressly approved the bare charge that the jury find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, unadorned by any supplemental definition at all. Id. Thus, the Robertson test could be constitutionally defective only if one or more of its three elements required Utah courts to incorporate language in their beyond a reasonable doubt instructions that were at odds with Victor's injunction that instructions not create a reasonable likelihood that ' a reasonable juror could have interpreted the instruction to allow a finding of guilt based on a degree of proof below that required by the Due Process Clause.' Id. at 6, 114 S.Ct. 1239 (quoting Cage v. Louisiana, 498 U.S. 39, 41, 111 S.Ct. 328, 112 L.Ed.2d 339 (1990)). ¶ 19 Mr. Reyes has challenged the reasonable doubt instruction in his case under the United States Constitution. He has not raised claims under the Utah Constitution. Thus, we, like the court of appeals, restrict our inquiry to the federal constitution. This limitation, however, is of little consequence here, inasmuch as none of our decisions that address the beyond a reasonable doubt standard have turned on an interpretation of the Utah Constitution. We readily concede that neither Robertson nor its predecessors draw upon, account for, or explain their relationship to the body of United States Supreme Court law on the subject of reasonable doubt. Implicit in our beyond a reasonable doubt cases, however, is the understanding that they are to be properly measured against the standards established by the Supreme Court. ¶ 20 This is not to say that Victor, or any other Supreme Court case addressing reasonable doubt for that matter, contains clear directions to those charged with drafting beyond a reasonable doubt jury instructions. As the State acknowledges, the themes of Supreme Court reasonable doubt jurisprudence are broadly stated and include a reluctance to impose upon state courts a script for a national reasonable doubt instruction; an acknowledgment that the English language enjoys sufficient richness and variety in its storehouse of words to permit many formulations for proof beyond a reasonable doubt that correctly convey its meaning; and a conviction that even words that in isolation might be constitutionally offensive may be rehabilitated when considered in their context. See id. at 5-6, 8-15, 114 S.Ct. 1239. ¶ 21 Given the structure and rationale of the Supreme Court's beyond a reasonable doubt jurisprudence, its constraints on this court are few. We are, of course, forbidden to approve reasonable doubt language that the Supreme Court has categorically rejected. Yet only once has the Supreme Court held a reasonable doubt instruction to violate the Due Process Clause, and that case highlights the difficulties associated with keeping faith with the Court's guidelines. See Cage, 498 U.S. at 40-41, 111 S.Ct. 328. In Cage, the Court held that the words substantial and grave, when used to describe the degree of doubt necessary to require acquittal, unconstitutionally diminished the State's burden by overstating the quantum of uncertainty that substantial and grave created a reasonable doubt. Id. ¶ 22 Following Cage, a court may have reasonably concluded it deployed either substantial or grave into a reasonable doubt instruction at its peril. This did not, however, prove to be the case. Victor redeemed substantial. 511 U.S. at 19-21, 114 S.Ct. 1239. Writing for six justices, Justice O'Connor conducted a detailed contextual parsing of Mr. Victor's jury instruction, which contained the term substantial doubt, and concluded that when it was used to distinguish a form of doubt from mere fanciful conjecture, id. at 20, 114 S.Ct. 1239, it was sufficiently clear that the intended meaning of substantial was not seeming or imaginary, and not the offending that specified to a large degree meaning found in Cage, id. at 9, 114 S.Ct. 1239. As the fate of the word substantial illustrates, the work of gauging the constitutionality of a reasonable doubt jury instruction is highly context-dependent. For this reason, it is unproductive to cull from an instruction certain words and phrases and make claims either for or against the constitutionality of a jury instruction based on the Supreme Court's response to their use in a challenged instruction. ¶ 23 The Supreme Court's approval of providing no definition of beyond a reasonable doubt further complicates the task of identifying and applying federal constitutional standards to reasonable doubt instructions. That a jury may return a constitutionally-sanctioned verdict either unaided by any instruction defining reasonable doubt whatsoever, or one guided by instructions constructed in diverse ways, seems to suggest that the Supreme Court is engaging in a form of legal agnosticism  conceding that an ideal definition of reasonable doubt may exist, but despairing that any one will ever know what it looks like.