Opinion ID: 2002011
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Failure of the Marshalling Instruction to Require a Finding of Criminal Intent.

Text: Defendant's second assignment of error concerns the marshalling instruction in which the trial court advised the jury of the elements which the State was required to prove beyond a reasonable doubt in order for the defendant to be found guilty. Defendant asserts that this instruction erroneously omitted any requirement that the State establish that the defendant acted with criminal intent. The marshalling instruction given in the present case was as follows: INSTRUCTION NO. 8 You must find the defendant not guilty of Sexual Abuse in the Third Degree, unless the State proves by evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, each of the following elements: 1. That on or about the 18th day of October, 1981, the defendant performed a sex act, as that term is explained in Instruction No. 9, with [the victim]. 2. That the sex act was performed by force or against the will of [the victim]. 3. That the defendant was not, at the time of the sex act, living with [the victim] as husband and wife. If you find the State has proved beyond a reasonable doubt each and all of the elements, then you will find the defendant guilty of Sexual Abuse in the Third Degree; but, if you find the State has failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt one or more of the elements, then you shall find the defendant not guilty. In another instruction, the trial court advised the jury: INSTRUCTION 11A To constitute the crime charged in the Trial Information there must be the joint operation of two essential elements, an act forbidden by law and an intent to do the act. To constitute general criminal intent, it is not necessary that there should exist an intent to violate the law. When a person intentionally does that which the law declares to be a crime, he is acting with general criminal intent, even though he may not know that his act or conduct is unlawful. Intent or intentionally refers to the state of mind of the defendant and means that a person did an act voluntarily, without duress, coercion, ignorance, mistake of fact, or through accident, inadvertence or other innocent reason. In determining the intent of any person, you may, but are not required to, infer that the person intended the natural and probable consequences which ordinarily follow such voluntary acts. In his argument on appeal, defendant relies on State v. Watts, 223 N.W.2d 234, 237 (Iowa 1974), a concealed weapons prosecution where we held it was erroneous to instruct on the nature of the weapon which the statute proscribed in a separate instruction rather than in the marshalling instruction. By analogy, defendant urges that it was reversible error in the present case to fail to include in the marshalling instruction a requirement that the jury make a finding of general criminal intent in order to return a verdict of guilty. We need not reach the merits of defendant's argument concerning this alleged instructional error. No objection was lodged to the giving of the trial court's marshalling instruction on the basis that it failed to require a finding of general criminal intent. In State v. Rouse, 290 N.W.2d 911, 914-15 (Iowa 1980), we announced that in all criminal cases in which trial was commenced after the filing of that opinion, Iowa Rule of Criminal Procedure 18(7)(f) would be interpreted so as to require that objections to jury instructions must be made prior to jury arguments unless the instructions are later modified. Failure to comply with this requirement is a waiver of any right to assert instructional error as a ground of appeal. Id. at 914; State v. Beeman, 315 N.W.2d 770, 775-76 (Iowa 1982). Application of this rule precludes our consideration of defendant's claim of instructional error. Defendant urges us to hold that failure to include an essential element of the crime in the marshalling instruction constitutes reversible error even in the absence of proper objection. We declined to take this approach in State v. Ware, 271 N.W.2d 485, 486 (Iowa 1977) where an essential element of a concealed weapons charge, i.e., a finding that the accused intended to use a statutorily unspecified weapon as a weapon, was not only omitted from the marshalling instruction but was not included in any of the instructions. The primary concern in that case, as evidenced by the dissenting opinion, was the fear that a conviction of a defendant under such circumstances may be considered to be a conviction of a crime the jury did not find he committed. In spite of such concerns, a majority of the court upheld the conviction finding that the defendant failed to comply with well-established procedural rules. In the present case, the defendant does not claim that the jury was not instructed as to all elements of the crime but only that one element was the subject of a separate instruction rather than being included in the marshalling instruction. We therefore find the present case to be less compelling than Ware for excusing defendant's failure to follow well-established procedural rules. We hold the defendant failed to preserve any issue for our consideration concerning the marshalling instruction which the trial court gave the jury.