Opinion ID: 1163470
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Pre-Hawai`i Penal Code case law (Cuevas)

Text: This court appears initially to have addressed the third ground in State v. Cuevas, 53 Haw. 110, 488 P.2d 322 (1971). Following a jury trial, Cuevas appealed his conviction of second degree murder under a statute, now repealed, that required the prosecution to prove that he had killed the victim with malice aforethought and without authority, justification, or extenuation by law. Cuevas, 53 Haw. at 111, 488 P.2d at 323. The trial court, tracking the language of a related statute, had instructed the jury that [w]hen the act of killing another is proved, malice aforethought shall be presumed, and the burden shall rest upon the party who committed the killing to show that it did not exist, or a legal justification or extenuation therefor. Id. At issue was the constitutionality of the statute upon which the jury instruction was based. Holding the statute unconstitutional and therefore reversing Cuevas's conviction, this court engaged in the following analysis: Under the language of the statute, the burden imposed upon the accused is not merely a burden of going forward with the evidence or of raising a reasonable doubt, but is a burden of persuasion of the non-existence of an essential element of the crime.... . . . . We hold that the statute is invalid. Under our legal system, the burden is always upon the prosecution to establish every element of crime by proof beyond a reasonable doubt, never upon the accused to disprove the existence of any necessary element. [7] Thus, it is stated in Davis v. United States, 160 U.S. 469, 487 [16 S.Ct. 353, 358, 40 L.Ed. 499] ... (1895), that the burden of proof, as those words are understood in criminal law, is never upon the accused to establish his innocence, or to disprove the facts necessary to establish the crime for which he is indicted. It is on the prosecution from the beginning to the end of the trial, and applies to every element necessary to constitute the crime. A similar statement appears in Christoffel v. United States, 338 U.S. 84, 89 [69 S.Ct. 1447, 1450, 93 L.Ed. 1826] ... (1949). . . . . The right of an accused to be convicted only upon proof by the prosecution of all of the elements of the crime charged against him beyond a reasonable doubt is a constitutionally protected right. It is stated in In re Winship, 397 U.S. 358, 364 [90 S.Ct. 1068, 1073, 25 L.Ed.2d 368] ... (1970): Lest there remain any doubt about the constitutional stature of the reasonable-doubt standard, we explicitly hold that the Due Process Clause protects the accused against conviction except upon proof beyond a reasonable doubt of every fact necessary to constitute the crime with which he is charged. The statute being constitutionally invalid, the circuit court erred in instructing the jury in the statutory language. But the question remains whether such error calls for automatic reversal of the judgment. The prosecution contends that the instruction was harmless in the context of the entire charge to the jury, which included an instruction regarding the presumption of innocence of the accused and an instruction regarding the burden of proof resting upon the prosecution. . . . . We do not think that an instruction to the jury ... couched in the language of the statute in question can ever be harmless. The error is neither unimportant nor insignificant; it infringes upon a basic right of the accused; it raises a reasonable possibility that it might have contributed to the conviction; and we cannot say that it was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. Id. at 112-16, 488 P.2d at 324-25. See also State v. Bumanglag, 63 Haw. 596, 617-18, 634 P.2d 80, 94 (1981).