Opinion ID: 2173725
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Instruction on Meaning of Recklessly

Text: As his third point on appeal defendant asserts that the trial justice erred in refusing to give defendant's proffered instruction on the definition of recklessly, the state of mind necessary for a conviction under 17-A M.R.S.A. § 208(1)(B). Defendant sought to have the jury instructed that negligence or even grossly negligent conduct does not constitute recklessness for the purposes of proving aggravated assault, and that if you [the jury] believe Victor Mahar was shot by accident, you must find the defendant not guilty. The presiding justice, however, refused to give that charge and instead instructed the jury that: A person is guilty of aggravated assault if he intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly causes bodily injury to another with use of a dangerous weapon. . . . . . [R]ecklessly is defined as being: A person acts recklessly with respect to a result of his conduct when he consciously disregards a risk that his conduct will cause such a result. And the disregard of the risk, when viewed in light of the nature and purpose of the person's conduct and the circumstances known to him, must involve a gross deviation from the standard of conduct that a reasonable and prudent person would exercise would observe in the same situation. The justice thus defined recklessly in the verbatim terms of the Code, 17-A M.R.S.A. § 10(3) (Supp.1977). [7] He committed no error by following the Code language in his charge to the jury. Similarly, the presiding justice committed no error in refusing to give defendant's proffered instructions, for they did not make an entirely accurate or complete statement of the applicable law, and they were likely to confuse or mislead the jury. See State v. Melvin, Me., 341 A.2d 376, 378 (1975); Glassman, Maine Practice § 30.2 (1967). For example, accident in the requested instruction could be taken to imply merely an absence of an intent to shoot Mahar; such an interpretation of accident would not exclude recklessness. Even though technically the trial justice's instruction, following the statute verbatim, cannot be faulted, defendant argues that the instruction was so confusing as to render it susceptible of misunderstanding by the jury. He would have the trial justice explain the legal terms to the jury to an extent going beyond the definitional language of section 10(3) of the Code. Specifically, defendant argues that the jury was unaware that it had to find that he consciously disregarded the risk of injury to Mahar in order to return a guilty verdict. Although defense counsel made a timely objection to the instruction defining recklessness, he made no objection before the trial court to the effect that merely reading the statutory definition of recklessly was confusing to the jury. In fact, defense counsel even failed to brief this contention on appeal and waited until oral argument before this court to raise it for the first time. Given these circumstances, our review is limited to the question of whether the instruction was so inadequate and misleading as to leave the jury without judicial guidance essential to its task, thereby constituting manifest error. See Rule 52(b), M.R.Crim.P. We think not. Statutory language may of course be so incomplete or so unclear to laymen that [n]o jury could reasonably be expected to be made aware of the legal principles involved in the controversy it was called upon to decide from a mere reading of the statute. See Wing v. Morse, Me., 300 A.2d 491, 502 (1973) (comparative negligence statute). The Code definition of recklessly, however, does not fall into any such category of incompleteness or obscurity. We cannot say that any manifest injustice occurred in the case at bar that would justify reversal of defendant's conviction.