Opinion ID: 2124940
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Refused Instruction on Defendant's Failure to Testify

Text: As we have earlier indicated, Defendant Oswald exercised his right not to testify at his DWI trial. His counsel proposed a jury instruction, compiled from our pattern instructions, on that point and the trial judge refused it. The privilege against self-incrimination is both constitutional and statutory in this state. SDCL 23-44-1 provides: In the trial of all indictments, informations, complaints, and other proceedings against persons charged with the commission of any crime, before any court or committing magistrate, the person charged shall, at his own request, but not otherwise, be a competent witness, and his failure to make such request shall not create any presumption against him. In interpreting this statute this Court has stated: We think it is clear that a defendant's failure to testify in his own behalf, to deny or explain charges made against him, when the jury know he is present, hears the charges, and could testify, would raise in the minds of nearly all jurors a presumption of his guilt, or at least a prejudicial presumption of something damaging to defendant that he wishes to conceal.       We think the defendant had the right to have this presumption of law in his favor, coupled with the fact that he did not testify, given to the jury in a proper instruction substantially as the law had coupled it in section 4879 (now SDCL 23-44-1), and that the charge as given did not substantially cover the charge requested. State v. Wimpsett, 1922, 46 S.D. 6, 189 N.W. 983. In State v. Wells, 1928, 53 S.D. 446, 221 N.W. 56, we again dealt with an instruction on self-incrimination similar in substance to the one before us now and there we held again that refusal to give such an instruction which had been requested by the defendant was reversible error. This has been our law and it continues to be so. A defendant has both a federal and a state constitutional privilege against self-incrimination and the state privilege has in South Dakota also been made statutory. The exercise of this privilege, however, is not without peril and counsel act prudently in seeking from the court jury instructions which attempt to negate in the minds of the jury members any unfavorable inferences which failure to take the stand may arouse. When the instruction is a correct statement of the law and when it has a bearing on the case before the jury the defendant has a right to have the instruction properly requested given to the jury, unless, of course, the sense of the instruction is sufficiently covered in another instruction. Failure to honor such a request is, as we have held in Wimpsett, supra, reversible error.