Opinion ID: 2272236
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Instructions on Lesser-Included Offense

Text: Appellant's last argument is that he was entitled to a jury instruction on the lesser-included offense of theft by unlawful taking. Again, this Court disagrees. The failure to grant a request for a lesser-included offense instruction is reversible error if on the given evidence a reasonable juror could entertain reasonable doubt of the defendant's guilt of the greater charge, but believe beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant is guilty of the lesser offense. White v. Commonwealth, 178 S.W.3d 470, 490 (Ky.2006) (quotation omitted); accord Houston v. Commonwealth, 975 S.W.2d 925, 929 (Ky. 1998). That is, a court may refuse to give a lesser-included offense instruction only if there is no room for any possible theory except that he is guilty [of the greater offense] or he is innocent. Commonwealth v. Wolford, 4 S.W.3d 534, 538-39 (Ky.1999); accord Davis v. United States, 165 U.S. 373, 376-77, 17 S.Ct. 360, 41 L.Ed. 750 (1897). Theft by unlawful taking is a lesser-included offense of both first- and second-degree robbery. Robbery is ordinarily thought of as a theft combined with an assault. Specifically, second-degree robbery is theft plus us[ing] or threaten[ing] the immediate use of physical force to accomplish the theft, KRS 514.030(1)(a), and first-degree robbery is second-degree robbery plus one of three possible aggravating factors, KRS 515.020(l)(a). [2] Consequently, Appellant would be entitled to the instruction only if the jury could reasonably conclude that he committed theft without any physical force, as the use of force would elevate the crime to at least second-degree robbery. Compare KRS 514.030(1)(a), with KRS 515.020(1)(a) and KRS KRS 515.030(1). Appellant contends that the jury could have reasonably made this conclusion because they could have believed Kustes's injuries were caused by her movement... with her shoulder, which caused her to hit the driver's seat, ... caused her arm to go numb and [caused her] ... to drop her purse. In other words, Appellant contends that the jury could reasonably conclude Kustes injured herself in reacting to the theft while getting out of her car, but that Appellant did not himself use any force against her. The problem with this argument, as the Commonwealth points out, is that there was absolutely no evidence presented at the trial to support the theory that Kustes's injuries were self-inflicted. And it would not have been a reasonable inference, either. The only evidence presented to the jury was Kustes's testimony that Appellant forcibly extracted the purse from her clutches by hitting her on the neck. The defense strategy was to attack Kustes's credibility and reliability and to ask her whether she was trying to sell Appellant her Lortab. The defense did not put forth an alternative account of the events in which Kustes injured herself during the theft. Assuming the theft happened, the use of force was not put into reasonable doubt. Although it can certainly be proper to believe one part of a witness' testimony but not another, see, e.g., Gillispie v. Commonwealth, 212 Ky. 472, 279 S.W. 671, 672 (1926), the jury must have some reasonable basis for doing so. This Court has previously said that [t]he decision as to whose story to believe is, of course, an issue for the jury to decide. Webb v. Commonwealth, 904 S.W.2d 226, 229 (Ky. 1995). But here there was no competing story in which Kustes injured herself; her story was that Appellant used force to take her purse, and his story was that she was mistaken or lying that he did so. [A] lesser-included offense instruction is available only when supported by the evidence, and [t]he jury is required to decide a criminal case on the evidence as presented or reasonably deducible therefrom, not on imaginary scenarios. White, 178 S.W.3d at 491. There was no evidence supporting the theory that Kustes injured herself, and so this theory amounted to nothing more than an imaginary scenario that the jury could not reasonably believe. There are only three reasonable conclusions based on the evidence: (1) someone else robbed Kustes with force, and Appellant is a victim of a false identification, and so an acquittal was required; (2) no crime occurred at all because Kustes fabricated the incident, and so again an acquittal was required; or (3) Appellant robbed Kustes with force, and so he was guilty of some degree of robbery. The evidence demanded either an acquittal or a conviction for the charged offenses. Cf. Davis, 165 U.S. at 376-77, 17 S.Ct. 360; Wolford, 4 S.W.3d at 538-39. If a lesser-included offense instruction were necessary here, it would be necessary in every robbery case, as the ability of the jury to disregard uncontroverted evidence about the use of force, without a reasonable basis to do so, would turn any robbery into a theft. Therefore, the trial court correctly denied Appellant's request to instruct the jury on the lesser-included offense of theft by unlawful taking.