Opinion ID: 877415
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Sandstrom Instructions

Text: The petitioner contends that he was denied due process in that (1) the trial court's instructions to the jury directed the jury to find elements of the offenses charged by the use of presumptions and inferences which shifted the burden of persuasion to the defendant and allowed the jury to adopt inferences which did not follow beyond a reasonable doubt from the facts on which they were based; (2) that the instructions contained numerous erroneous examples which (3) were designed to lead the jury to the inescapable conclusion of petitioner's guilt. In brief, petitioner contends that he has been treated inconsistently with our decision in State v. Wogamon (1980), - Mon t . , 610 P.2d 1161, 1165, 37 St.Rep. 840, 846. (a) In McKenzie 111, 608 P.2d at 456, et seq., this Court fully reviewed petitioner's contentions that his conviction and sentence should be set aside in the light of Sandstrom v. Montana (1979), 442 U.S. 510, 99 S.Ct. 2450, 61 L.Ed.2d 39. The matter has been fully considered, litigated and decided by this Court. (b) Petitioner's contentions that the instructions contained erroneous examples and were designed to lead inescapably to defendant's guilt were part and parcel of our consideration under the Sandstrom case and McKenzie 111. Petitioner has not attempted to show in any way how the examples led the jury inescapably to his guilt and we find no such design, intentional or otherwise. (c) We do not agree that the holding in McKenzie I11 is inconsistent with our holding in Wogamon. In Wogamon, we pointed out that the United States Supreme Court decision in Sandstrom had resulted in a spate of appeals to this Court claiming instructional error. We further showed in Wogamon that in all of the cases brought to us, except for the original Sandstrom decision and Wogamon, we had found no reason to set aside the convictions in those several cases on the basis of the Sandstrom instruction. Wogamon, 610 P.2d at 1164. Nor can it be said that we have given petitioner a different kind of legal treatment than we provided Wogamon. In Wogamon, we applied the principles declared by the United States Supreme Court in- In Re Winship (1970), 397 U.S. 358, 90 S.Ct. 1068, 25 L.Ed.2d 368, and in Mullaney v. Wilbur (1975), 421 U.S. 684, 95 S.Ct. 1881, 44 L.Ed.2d 508. We also declared that in finding harmless error in a Sandstrom instruction, we must be able to agree as a Court that the offensive instruction could not reasonably have contributed to the jury's verdict. Wogamon, 610 P.2d at 1165. In the petitioner's case, in McKenzie 111, we found that the evidence of McKenzie's guilt was so overwhelming that the Sandstrom instructions could not possibly have contributed to petitioner's convictbn and that therefore the instructions were harmless error. The position of this Court in McKenzie I11 was not disturbed when the United States Supreme Court refused certiorari from the decision in McKenzie 111 (1980), 449 U.S. 1050, 101 S.Ct. 626, 66 L.Ed.2d 507. True, two United States Supreme Court justices disagreed in a dissenting opinion. Nonetheless the majority of the Supreme Court found no reason when certiorari was sought with respect to McKenzie 111 to disturb the reliance of this Court on Milton v. Wainwright (1972), 407 U.S. 371, 92 S.Ct. 2174, 33 L.Ed.2d 1, to the effect that the constitutional infirmity is excluded where overwhelming evidence supports the conviction. Therefore, the District Court did not err in denying the petitioner's contentions under the Sandstrom instructions.