Opinion ID: 1189762
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Order of Deliberation

Text: The trial court instructed the jury concerning three alternatives under criminal homicide: second degree murder, manslaughter, and negligent homicide. Jury instruction 6 stated in part: If you do not find the defendant guilty of Criminal Homicide, Murder in the Second Degree, a First Degree Felony, you should consider whether he is guilty of the lesser-included offense of Criminal Homicide, Manslaughter. Jury instruction 7 stated in part: If you do not find the defendant guilty of Criminal Homicide, Murder in the Second Degree, a First Degree Felony, or the lesser-included offense of Criminal Homicide, Manslaughter, you should consider whether he is guilty of a further lesser-included offense of Criminal Homicide, Negligent Homicide. In addition, the trial judge orally instructed the jury concerning the special verdict form he gave them and the manner in which they should proceed to deliberate. The court stated in part: If you find him not guilty [of Murder in the Second Degree,] however, then we go down to the next step. If you find the defendant not guilty of Criminal Homicide, Murder in the Second Degree, you should find if the defendant is blank [sic] guilty of the lesser included offense of Criminal Homicide, Manslaughter. That is a lesser included offense to the one of Murder in the Second Degree. If you unanimously find the defendant guilty of this lesser included offense, then you would check that. If you find the defendant is not guilty of this lesser included charge, then you would check the blank between the parenthesis here, the brackets not guilty of the lesser included offense of Criminal Homicide, Manslaughter. If you check that not guilty then you will go on down to the next set of lesser included offense. This reads if you find the defendant not guilty of the lesser included offense of Criminal Homicide, Manslaughter, you should find and then the block [sic] here is guilty of the lesser included offense of Criminal Homicide [sic] Negligent Homicide or not guilty of the lesser included offense of Criminal Homicide, Negligent Homicide. Powell contends that with these instructions, the trial court trespassed on the province of the jury and improperly mandated a specific order of deliberation. We dealt with this same issue in State v. Gardner, 789 P.2d 273 (Utah 1989), cert. denied, 494 U.S. 1090, 110 S.Ct. 1837, 108 L.Ed.2d 965 (1990). We held that the trial court is not to mandate a specific order of deliberation to the jury concerning lesser included offenses; rather, such instruction should be given by way of suggestion and recommendation. Id. 789 P.2d at 284. Specifically, we determined that a trial court is to avoid instructing the jury [t]hat they must find the defendant not guilty of the charged offense before they may consider lesser included offenses. Instead, they may be instructed that they should consider the lesser included offenses if they do not find the defendant guilty of the charged offense. While the difference in wording is subtle, it avoids any possible misunderstanding that the jury must, by a unanimous vote, acquit the defendant on the charged offense before it may consider the lesser included offenses. Id. (emphasis added). In the present case, both the written and the oral instructions concerning the order of deliberation complied with Gardner. Each instruction employed the word should rather than must. The trial court did not specifically direct the jury to acquit on the charged crime before proceeding to the lesser included crimes. We do not believe that a juror would have felt compelled to acquit as to the second degree murder charge before considering the lesser included offenses. Read as a whole, we construe these instructions as suggesting to the jury a logical approach to the three criminal homicide alternatives rather than as commanding an absolute progression through the possible options.