Opinion ID: 4244584
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Driving to Endanger

Text: [¶34] Because Nobles did not request the competing harms instruction for the charge of driving to endanger, his argument that the instruction should have been given for that charge is unpreserved. If a defendant explicitly waives the delivery of an instruction or makes a strategic or tactical decision not to request it, we will decline to engage in appellate review, even for obvious error. See State v. Ford, 2013 ME 96, ¶¶ 15-17, 82 A.3d 75; see also 17-A M.R.S. § 101(1), (3) (2017) (stating that, with respect to statutory defenses— 19 including justifications—a trial court is not required “to instruct on an issue that has been waived by the defendant”). [¶35] Here, although Nobles did not expressly waive the instruction for the charge of driving to endanger, when he was specifically asked to identify the charges for which he sought the instruction, he did not include that charge. He first requested the instruction only with respect to the charge of operating after revocation. After some discussion about whether the evidence generated the instruction for that charge, Nobles added, “I’ll tag it on to the OUI but, you know, my client . . . he’s saying . . . he wasn’t drinking.” The court asked, “[Y]ou’re now asking for it . . . on the OUI?” and Nobles responded, “Yes, I am.” Never did Nobles identify the charge of driving to endanger as a charge for which the competing harms instruction was generated.6 Given Nobles’s explicit decision to request the competing harms instruction only for the two other charges, we do not entertain his challenge to the court’s instructions on driving to endanger. See Ford, 2013 ME 96, ¶¶ 15-17, 82 A.3d 75. The entry is: Judgment affirmed. 6 This choice is understandable; the instructions on driving to endanger required the jury to consider more broadly whether Nobles, in driving as he did on July 6, 2016, acted in “gross deviation from the standard of conduct that a reasonable and prudent person would observe in the same situation.” 17-A M.R.S. § 35(4)(C) (2017) (emphasis added); see also 29-A M.R.S. § 2413(1) (2017). 20 Tina Heather Nadeau, Esq. (orally), The Law Office of Tina Heather Nadeau, PLLC, Portland, for appellant Eric Nobles R. Christopher Almy, District Attorney, and Chris Ka Sin Chu, Asst. Dist. Atty. (orally), Prosecutorial District V, Bangor, for appellee State of Maine Penobscot County Unified Criminal Docket docket number CR-2016-2580 FOR CLERK REFERENCE ONLY