Opinion ID: 2282838
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: second countkidnapping

Text: In its specific instruction on the crime of kidnapping in the second degree, the trial court properly explained the element of intent applicable to that crime and told the jury that a person acts intentionally with respect to a result or to conduct described by a statute defining an offense when his conscious objective is to cause such result or to engage in such conduct. At this point the trial court stated that I have already instructed you that what a man's intention has been is necessarily very largely a matter of inference. Again, no witness can be expected to come here and testify that he looked into another man's mind and saw therein a certain intention. The only way in which you can determine in a case such as this what a man's intention was at any given time is by determining what his conduct was and what the circumstances were surrounding that conduct and from those infer what his intention was. As stated before, to draw such an inference is not only the privilege but also the duty of a juror provided, of course, the inference to draw is a reasonable inference. (Emphasis added.) The trial court's instruction on the second count neither used the offending language of the general instruction nor expressly incorporated it. In fact, these specific instructions were cast solely in properly permissive language. In the absence of the phrase conclusively presumed, the highly permissive language of this instruction, expressed in terms of inference rather than presumption, had a significant curative effect. State v. Vasquez, supra, 249; State v. Arroyo, supra, 178-80. The Sandstrom error of the court's general instruction was cured by the specific instruction given by the court. In considering the defendant's guilt on the second count the jury would have applied the permissive inferences described to them in the specific instructions on that count rather than the improper presumption described in general terms earlier. Therefore, there was no error in the trial court's instructions on this count.