Opinion ID: 2623270
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Jury Instructions Regarding Criminal Attempt Liability

Text: In his application, Rapoza argues that, in two respects, the ICA's opinion gravely errs in its analysis of the circuit court's jury instructions regarding criminal attempt liability. First, Rapoza asserts that the ICA erroneously held that the circuit court's failure to combine the strongly corroborative instruction with its instructions regarding the conduct element of attempted first degree assault, as an included offense of the offense charged in count 2, rendered the circuit court's instruction with respect to this offense misleading and confusing. Second, Rapoza asserts that the ICA erroneously held that the circuit court's failure to include the strongly corroborative instruction in its instructions regarding the offenses of attempted first and second degree assault, as included in the offense charged in count 4, did not render the circuit court's instructions prejudicially confusing.
With regard to Rapoza's argument that the strongly corroborative instruction should have been meshed with the circuit court's instruction regarding the conduct element of attempted first degree assault as an included offense of count 2, we note, as an initial matter, that the jury in the present matter was instructed that it should consider the circuit court's instructions as a whole and should not single out any single instruction, phrase, or word. The jury was generally instructed regarding criminal attempt liability, including the requirement that Rapoza's conduct, under the circumstances as he believed them to be, must strongly corroborate his criminal intent in order to constitute the substantial step requisite to an attempt offense. The jury was instructed regarding the material elements of attempted first degree assault, as an offense included within attempted second degree murder, as charged in count 2, and, immediately thereafter, the circuit court repeated the strongly corroborative instruction: A person commits the offense of Attempted Assault in the First Degree if he intentionally engaged in conduct which is a substantial step in a course of conduct intended or known to cause serious bodily injury to another person. There are two material elements of the offense of Attempted Assault in the First Degree, each of which the prosecution must prove beyond a reasonable doubt. These two elements are: 1. That, on or about February 20, 1998, in the City and County of Honolulu, State of Hawaii, the defendant Wayne Rapoza intentionally engaged in conduct; and 2. That the conduct was a substantial step in a course of conduct intended or known by the defendant to cause ... serious bodily to Manuel Galarza I'm just going to add in the first paragraph-to make it uniform with the rest, City and County of Honolulu, State of Hawaii. So just add that in. Okay. Moving on. Conduct shall not be considered a substantial step unless it is strongly corroborative of defendant's intent to commit Assault in the First Degree, which is, intentionally or knowingly causing serious bodily injury to another person. When read as a whole, rather than in isolation, the foregoing instructions adequately informed the jury that, in order to convict Rapoza of attempted first degree assault, as an included offense under count 2, the prosecution was required to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Rapoza intentionally engaged in conduct, which, under the circumstances as he believed them to be, see supra at 5, constituted a substantial step in a course of conduct that Rapoza intended or knew would result in serious bodily injury to Manuel and which strongly corroborated his intent to do so. See State v. Sawyer, 88 Hawai`i 325, 334-35, 966 P.2d 637, 646-47 (1998) (rejecting defendant's claim that separate jury instructions regarding the material elements of attempted second degree murder and HRS § 705-500 criminal attempt culpability failed to direct the jury to find that the defendant intended to cause death and did not require that the jury examine defendant's conduct under the circumstances as he believed them to be at the time of the offense). Accordingly, inasmuch as the circuit court's instructions regarding attempted first degree assault, as an included offense under count 2, were not misleading, confusing, incorrect, or erroneous, the ICA did not gravely err in rejecting Rapoza's arguments regarding the failure of the circuit court to mesh the strongly corroborative instruction with its instruction regarding the conduct element of attempted first degree assault. We, therefore, affirm the ICA's opinion regarding this point of error, subject to the foregoing clarification.
We agree with Rapoza that the circuit court instructed the jury in a confusing manner by including the strongly corroborative instruction in its instructions regarding the offenses included within the offense charged in count 2 but omitting the strongly corroborative instruction in a nearly identical set of included offense instructions given with respect to count 4. Because this inconsistency in the circuit court's jury instructions is presumptively harmful, and it does not affirmatively appear from the record as a whole that the error was not prejudicial, we further agree with Rapoza that the error, at the time it was committed, was not harmless beyond a reasonable doubt and, therefore, that the ICA erred in affirming his conviction with respect to count 4 on this ground. [7] Nevertheless, given that the ICA vacated Rapoza's conviction with respect to count 4 on other grounds, see supra note 4, the error of which Rapoza complains no longer affects his substantial rights and, thus, has, on appeal, become harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.