Opinion ID: 2454804
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Failure to Define Mitigating

Text: The next issue involves an unusual incident that occurred during the jury's deliberations. The jury sent a note to the trial court asking, What is the legal definition of mitigating (as in mitigation circumstances)? Instruction 8. The trial court replied, Any legal terms in the instructions that have a `legal' meaning would have been defined for you. Therefore, any terms that you have not had defined for you should be given their ordinary meaning. The jury followed up with a note inquiring Can we have a dictionary? The trial court informed the jury, No, I'm not permitted to give you one. Deck contends that this apparent confusion on a legal issue obligated the trial court to provide the requested definition and that the failure to do so compounded the error concerning the omitted paragraphs from Instructions No. 8 and No. 13. Significantly, Deck did not raise this issue at trial. When the jury posed the questions, Deck did not request that the term mitigating be defined, nor did he object to the trial court's responses. In the absence of an objection, Deck asks for plain error review under the manifest injustice standard of Rule 30.20. Despite the fact that one or more jurors may have been confused, the trial court gave the correct responses to the questions. The first question was a request for the legal definition of mitigating, but this word is not defined in the MAI-CR 3d instructions. See MAI-CR 3d 313.44A (10-1-94); MAI-CR 3d 333.00 (1-1-87). This Court has held that [w]hen MAI notes on use do not provide for a definition, the court must not give one. State v. Feltrop, 803 S.W.2d 1, 14 (Mo. banc 1991). In State v. Wise, 879 S.W.2d 494, 518 (Mo. banc 1994), a case particularly on point, the defendant claimed the trial court erred in refusing the defendant's tender of an instruction defining the term mitigation. In upholding the trial court's ruling, this Court stated, MAI instructions do not define `mitigation'; therefore, the court properly refused the proposed definition. Id. Consistent with Feltrop and Wise , the notes on use to the MAI-CR 3d instruction on definitions provides: A definition of a term, word, or group of words shall not be given unless permitted by paragraphs A, B, C, D, or E above, [not applicable in this case] even if requested by counsel or the jury. If the jury, while deliberating, requests the definition of a term whose definition is not permitted by paragraphs A, B, C, D, or E above, the following response is suggested: I am not permitted to define the word(s) ____ for you. (Except for those terms for which you have been supplied definitions, each) (Each) word used in the instruction has its common and generally understood meaning. MAI-CR 3d 333.00 (1-1-87), Note on Use 2. As noted, the trial court followed this instruction to the letter. No error was committed. Additionally, the trial court was correct in refusing to provide a dictionary for the jury. All courts view the use of a dictionary as highly improper because the jury should rely solely upon the evidence and the court's instructions. State v. Suschank, 595 S.W.2d 295, 297-98 (Mo.App. 1979). The impropriety of permitting jurors to search a dictionary is that it allows them to select at will definitive language that might misrepresent the court's instructions. State v. Taylor, 581 S.W.2d 127, 129 (Mo.App.1979). In view of these cases, Deck's position that the judge may supplement an instruction with a dictionary definition is not persuasive. The essence of Deck's argument is that the penalty phase instructions, and the mitigating circumstances instructions in particular, are too easily misunderstood. At the hearing on the motion for new trial, Deck called Dr. Richard Weiner, a psychologist, who testified that Missouri penalty phase instructions are poorly understood. Dr. Weiner explained that he came to that conclusion as a result of a study he conducted that also showed that jurors have the most difficulty with the concept of mitigation. Dr. Weiner's study, however, must be discounted because the people interviewed for the study did not act as jurors. They were given hypothetical facts that were different than the facts in this case, and they did not hear the testimony of witnesses, observe physical evidence or deliberate with eleven other jurors. More importantly, in the context of the instructions as a whole, the term mitigating is always contrasted with the term aggravating so that no reasonable person could fail to understand that mitigating is the opposite of aggravating. That contrast, for instance, is highlighted in Instructions No. 9 and No. 14, which were based on MAI-CR 3d 313.465A and which stated in pertinent part, you are not compelled to fix death as the punishment even if you do not find the existence of facts and circumstances in mitigation of punishment sufficient to outweigh the facts and circumstances in aggravation of punishment.... Finally, Deck's suggestion that the jury's confusion about the word mitigating was due in large part to the omission of the concluding paragraphs to Instructions No. 8 and No. 13 likewise has no merit. Those omitted paragraphs do not even purport to define mitigation for the jury. Moreover, Deck's notion that the jury questions reveal that some jurors thought they were prohibited from considering certain facts or circumstances as `mitigating' and therefore in violation of Mills v. Maryland , rests on pure speculation and does not logically follow from the content of the questions. For these reasons, this Court concludes that the trial court committed no error in refusing to define the term mitigating or to provide the jury with a dictionary.