Opinion ID: 2566966
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: utah's reasonable doubt instruction

Text: ¶ 11 No person accused in the United States may be convicted of a crime unless each element of the offense has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt. In re Winship, 397 U.S. 358, 362, 90 S.Ct. 1068, 25 L.Ed.2d 368 (1970). The Supreme Court has assigned this standard of proof constitutional status, linking it to both the Fifth Amendment right to due process of law and the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial. Sullivan v. Louisiana, 508 U.S. 275, 278, 113 S.Ct. 2078, 124 L.Ed.2d 182 (1993); Winship, 397 U.S. at 362, 364, 90 S.Ct. 1068. The degree of certainty of guilt that we insist be held by those entrusted with judging the fate of persons charged with crimes before we will permit the State to wield its power to punish is not only a measure of evidence, but also in a more fundamental sense a gauge of our nation's conscience. The measure of certainty the law demands before finding guilt reflects the balance we are willing to strike between ensuring that all of the guilty are brought to justice and preventing the conviction and punishment of the innocent. Blackstone set an enduring benchmark for the measure of certainty required to convict in a civilized society when he stated that the law holds that it is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer. 4 William Blackstone, Commentaries, , quoted in Coffin v. United States, 156 U.S. 432, 456, 15 S.Ct. 394, 39 L.Ed. 481 (1895). ¶ 12 Although Blackstone expresses a moral ideal of justice which claims few detractors, his terse pronouncement on the State's burden of proof still leaves unanswered the question of what degree of satisfaction a juror must have with the quality and quantity of evidence before finding a defendant guilty. That we have settled on beyond a reasonable doubt as an answer does not fully relieve the unease courts have felt over the imprecision of this time-honored standard. The nagging sense that the law can and should do better than merely instruct jurors that they must find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt accounts for a long quest to formulate a clearer, more concise, and more understandable reasonable doubt jury instruction. For the most part, the role of this court, like that of most appellate courts, has been as a critic of reasonable doubt instructions. In keeping with the responsibilities of an appellate court, our contributions to the attainment of an ideal beyond a reasonable doubt instruction have appeared in the form of periodic piecemeal pronouncements approving or rejecting words, phrases, or concepts that litigants have chosen to bring to us on appeal. As the court of appeals's struggle with Robertson aptly confirms, this process has not produced a track record of steady or swift evolutionary progress. ¶ 13 The United States Supreme Court has followed an approach similar to ours. Although having granted the standard of beyond a reasonable doubt a constitutional pedigree, the Supreme Court has done little to provide direction for its integration into the day-to-day operation of the criminal justice system. As Victor v. Nebraska, 511 U.S. 1, 114 S.Ct. 1239, 127 L.Ed.2d 583 (1994), makes clear, the Court has instead elected to sanction great flexibility in the manner in which the concept of beyond a reasonable doubt is communicated to juries. See id. at 5, 114 S.Ct. 1239 (So long as the court instructs the jury on the necessity that the defendant's guilt be proved beyond a reasonable doubt ... the Constitution does not require that any particular form of words be used in advising the jury of the government's burden of proof.). ¶ 14 Because it provides useful context for our discussion of the beyond a reasonable doubt and sets out the standard of review that we apply in place of Robertson, we take a closer look at Victor. Victor came to the Supreme Court as a consolidated review of two challenges to the content of beyond a reasonable doubt jury instructions, one from California and one from Nebraska. Id. at 6, 114 S.Ct. 1239. The Court affirmed the constitutionality of both instructions. Id. The majority was persuaded that, when the instructions were considered as a whole, there was not a reasonable likelihood that the jury applied the instructions in a manner resulting in a finding of guilt based on a lesser standard than beyond a reasonable doubt. Id. at 14-17, 21-22, 114 S.Ct. 1239. ¶ 15 The Supreme Court had previously extended to the states its declaration that the beyond a reasonable doubt standard is a necessary element of federal due process. Sullivan, 508 U.S. at 278, 113 S.Ct. 2078. Still, citing its lack of supervisory authority over state courts, the Victor Court stopped short of announcing a definitive reasonable doubt instruction for use in state courts. 511 U.S. at 6, 114 S.Ct. 1239. Rather, it reiterated that the demands of due process are met when, 'taken as a whole, the instructions correctly conve[y] the concept of reasonable doubt to the jury.' Id. (quoting Holland v. United States, 348 U.S. 121, 140, 75 S.Ct. 127, 99 L.Ed. 150 (1954)). The concept of reasonable doubt can be communicated in many ways as the Constitution neither prohibits trial courts from defining reasonable doubt nor requires them to do so as a matter of course. Id. at 5, 114 S.Ct. 1239 (citations omitted).
¶ 16 According to the State, this court has lost touch with the reasonable doubt directives of the United States Supreme Court. In the State's view, we have strayed from fidelity to constitutional principles by forsaking the linguistic latitude in the formulation of reasonable doubt instructions approved by the Supreme Court in favor of what the State characterizes as the mechanical and unworkable Robertson test. ¶ 17 In this case, the court of appeals found that the trial court's reasonable doubt instructions failed the Robertson test and rejected them. Reyes, 2004 UT App 8 at ¶ 22, 84 P.3d 841. The State does not fault the court of appeals for this holding, noting that it took pains to distance itself from the outcome when it stated that, [a]lthough [the Robertson ] test may be constitutionally flawed, it is not within our power to overrule it. Id. ¶ 18 The Robertson test would not be constitutionally flawed were it merely to impose restrictions on permissible language that could be used to define beyond a reasonable doubt, as Victor expressly recognized that countless constitutionally permissible beyond a reasonable doubt formulations could be crafted. Victor, 511 U.S. at 5-6, 114 S.Ct. 1239. Victor also expressly approved the bare charge that the jury find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, unadorned by any supplemental definition at all. Id. Thus, the Robertson test could be constitutionally defective only if one or more of its three elements required Utah courts to incorporate language in their beyond a reasonable doubt instructions that were at odds with Victor's injunction that instructions not create a reasonable likelihood that ' a reasonable juror could have interpreted the instruction to allow a finding of guilt based on a degree of proof below that required by the Due Process Clause.' Id. at 6, 114 S.Ct. 1239 (quoting Cage v. Louisiana, 498 U.S. 39, 41, 111 S.Ct. 328, 112 L.Ed.2d 339 (1990)). ¶ 19 Mr. Reyes has challenged the reasonable doubt instruction in his case under the United States Constitution. He has not raised claims under the Utah Constitution. Thus, we, like the court of appeals, restrict our inquiry to the federal constitution. This limitation, however, is of little consequence here, inasmuch as none of our decisions that address the beyond a reasonable doubt standard have turned on an interpretation of the Utah Constitution. We readily concede that neither Robertson nor its predecessors draw upon, account for, or explain their relationship to the body of United States Supreme Court law on the subject of reasonable doubt. Implicit in our beyond a reasonable doubt cases, however, is the understanding that they are to be properly measured against the standards established by the Supreme Court. ¶ 20 This is not to say that Victor, or any other Supreme Court case addressing reasonable doubt for that matter, contains clear directions to those charged with drafting beyond a reasonable doubt jury instructions. As the State acknowledges, the themes of Supreme Court reasonable doubt jurisprudence are broadly stated and include a reluctance to impose upon state courts a script for a national reasonable doubt instruction; an acknowledgment that the English language enjoys sufficient richness and variety in its storehouse of words to permit many formulations for proof beyond a reasonable doubt that correctly convey its meaning; and a conviction that even words that in isolation might be constitutionally offensive may be rehabilitated when considered in their context. See id. at 5-6, 8-15, 114 S.Ct. 1239. ¶ 21 Given the structure and rationale of the Supreme Court's beyond a reasonable doubt jurisprudence, its constraints on this court are few. We are, of course, forbidden to approve reasonable doubt language that the Supreme Court has categorically rejected. Yet only once has the Supreme Court held a reasonable doubt instruction to violate the Due Process Clause, and that case highlights the difficulties associated with keeping faith with the Court's guidelines. See Cage, 498 U.S. at 40-41, 111 S.Ct. 328. In Cage, the Court held that the words substantial and grave, when used to describe the degree of doubt necessary to require acquittal, unconstitutionally diminished the State's burden by overstating the quantum of uncertainty that substantial and grave created a reasonable doubt. Id. ¶ 22 Following Cage, a court may have reasonably concluded it deployed either substantial or grave into a reasonable doubt instruction at its peril. This did not, however, prove to be the case. Victor redeemed substantial. 511 U.S. at 19-21, 114 S.Ct. 1239. Writing for six justices, Justice O'Connor conducted a detailed contextual parsing of Mr. Victor's jury instruction, which contained the term substantial doubt, and concluded that when it was used to distinguish a form of doubt from mere fanciful conjecture, id. at 20, 114 S.Ct. 1239, it was sufficiently clear that the intended meaning of substantial was not seeming or imaginary, and not the offending that specified to a large degree meaning found in Cage, id. at 9, 114 S.Ct. 1239. As the fate of the word substantial illustrates, the work of gauging the constitutionality of a reasonable doubt jury instruction is highly context-dependent. For this reason, it is unproductive to cull from an instruction certain words and phrases and make claims either for or against the constitutionality of a jury instruction based on the Supreme Court's response to their use in a challenged instruction. ¶ 23 The Supreme Court's approval of providing no definition of beyond a reasonable doubt further complicates the task of identifying and applying federal constitutional standards to reasonable doubt instructions. That a jury may return a constitutionally-sanctioned verdict either unaided by any instruction defining reasonable doubt whatsoever, or one guided by instructions constructed in diverse ways, seems to suggest that the Supreme Court is engaging in a form of legal agnosticism  conceding that an ideal definition of reasonable doubt may exist, but despairing that any one will ever know what it looks like.
¶ 24 Against this backdrop, we turn to the instruction to which Mr. Reyes takes exception. The court of appeals felt constrained to reject the beyond a reasonable doubt instruction used in Mr. Reyes's trial because they failed to satisfy the Robertson requirements that the State must obviate all reasonable doubt and that it must avoid use of the phrase reasonable doubt cannot merely be a possibility. Reyes, 2004 UT App 8 at ¶¶ 19, 22, 84 P.3d 841. The court of appeals applied two standards of review. Id. at ¶¶ 14, 16. First, it reviewed under a nondeferential correction of error standard the question of whether the reasonable doubt jury instruction properly applied the law set out in Robertson. Id. at ¶ 14. It then assessed whether the failure to conform to the Robertson test was a structural error infringing on Mr. Reyes's guarantee of due process. Id. at ¶ 16. ¶ 25 The court of appeals found merit in Mr. Reyes's claim that the trial court erred when it failed to expressly instruct that the State's proof must obviate all reasonable doubt as mandated by Robertson. Id. at ¶ 19. The obviate all reasonable doubt test found life in Justice Stewart's dissent in State v. Ireland, 773 P.2d 1375, 1380-82 (Utah 1989) (Stewart, J., dissenting). There, Justice Stewart took issue with an instruction that equated beyond a reasonable doubt with an abiding conviction of the truth of the charge. Id. He reasoned that since the standard to be applied is beyond a reasonable doubt, it followed that any definition of the standard must reference the obstacle  reasonable doubt  to be overcome by the evidence, and must convey the principle that the State must surmount the obstacle of reasonable doubt to justify a conviction. Id. The obviate all reasonable doubt concept appears to derive from a fear that in ascertaining the conviction of the truth of a charge against a defendant, a juror might misapply the beyond a reasonable doubt standard unless she is required to search out, confront, and defeat reasonable doubt with evidence. ¶ 26 Insightful and important as Justice Stewart's image of beyond a reasonable doubt may be, his suggestion that the jury be instructed to obviate all reasonable doubt is both linguistically opaque and conceptually suspect. Not every jury will confront evidence in its deliberations sufficient to create a reasonable doubt. The notion of obviating doubt is cumbersome at best where proof is scant or lacking in credibility. In these instances, a description of beyond a reasonable doubt that asks jurors to rate the magnitude of their conviction concerning the strength of the evidence imparts a more accurate and useful concept of beyond a reasonable doubt than does a construct that requires jurors to identify doubts and assess whether the evidence overcomes them. A universal application of the notion that the State must obviate all reasonable doubt can be achieved only by tying it to the concept of the presumption of innocence. If innocence is thought of as an array of inchoate reasonable doubts that the State must overcome to attain a conviction, it follows that the State must obviate reasonable doubts in every case. We do not, however, endorse this unwieldy view of the presumption of innocence. ¶ 27 The process suggested by the obviate all reasonable doubt standard is also flawed because, contrary to its purpose, it tends to diminish the degree of proof necessary to convict and in that respect violates the Victor standard. The obviation of doubt contemplates a two-step undertaking: the identification of the doubt and a testing of the validity of the doubt against the evidence. This process suggests a back and forth disputation of a doubt's merits, all to the end of determining whether the evidence is sufficient to obviate the doubt. The beyond a reasonable doubt standard does not, however, condition a conclusion that a doubt is reasonable on an ability either to articulate the doubt or to state a reason for it. An unarticulated conviction that the State has failed to meet its burden of proof will serve as a legitimate basis to acquit. ¶ 28 To the extent that the Robertson obviate test would permit the State to argue that it need only obviate doubts that are sufficiently defined, the test works to improperly diminish the State's burden. Writing in the Notre Dame Law Review, Professor Steve Sheppard criticized the expanding prominence of the requirement that doubts be articulated. Steve Sheppard, The Metamorphoses of Reasonable Doubt: How Changes in the Burden of Proof Have Weakened the Presumption of Innocence, 78 Notre Dame L.Rev. 1165 (2003). Professor Sheppard summarized the central vice of this trend this way: A troubling conclusion that arises from the difficulties of the requirement of articulability is that it hinders the juror who has a doubt based on the belief that the totality of the evidence is insufficient. Such a doubt lacks the specificity implied in an obligation to give a reason, an obligation that appears focused on the details of the arguments. Yet this is precisely the circumstance in which the rhetoric of the law, particularly the presumption of innocence and the state burden of proof, require acquittal. Id. at 1213. ¶ 29 Central to our reconsideration of the merits of the obviate all reasonable doubt element of Robertson is our belief that the exacting demands of the beyond a reasonable doubt standard can be clearly and fairly communicated through an affirmative description of the degree of conviction that must be attained by a juror based on the evidence. We see little to be gained by including within a beyond a reasonable doubt instruction the potentially confusing concept that every defendant is entitled to a presumption of reasonable doubt, which the State's evidence must obviate. ¶ 30 Because we conclude that the obviate all reasonable doubt element of the Robertson test carries with it the substantial risk of causing a juror to find guilt based on a degree of proof below beyond a reasonable doubt, we expressly abandon it.
¶ 31 We turn next to Mr. Reyes's claim that the beyond a reasonable doubt instruction in his case offended the Robertson proscription against the phrase reasonable doubt cannot merely be a possibility. This element of Robertson was also the product of Justice Stewart's dissent in Ireland. Robertson, 932 P.2d at 1232 (citing Ireland, 773 P.2d at 1380-82) (Stewart, J., dissenting). Justice Stewart's fundamental objection to excluding mere possibility from eligibility for consideration as reasonable doubt was that the term possibility, standing alone, fails to disclose its location on the continuum marked at its extremes by impossibility and certainty. Ireland, 773 P.2d at 1381 (Stewart, J., dissenting). We stand by this observation. ¶ 32 Robertson correctly noted that neither Justice Stewart's dissent in Ireland nor the Robertson test it spawned outlawed all references to possibilities in defining reasonable doubt. Robertson, 932 P.2d at 1232-33. To the contrary, Robertson endorsed Justice Stewart's approval of language that 'fanciful or wholly speculative possibility ought not to defeat proof beyond a reasonable doubt.' Id. (quoting Ireland, 773 P.2d at 1382) (Stewart, J., dissenting). ¶ 33 When complemented by appropriate qualifying and explanatory language, the use of the term mere possibility in the definition of doubt does not create a reasonable likelihood that the jury would apply an unconstitutionally diminished standard of proof. In fact, as the court of appeals observed, one of the instructions at issue in Victor survived a challenge to its definition of reasonable doubt as not a mere possible doubt. Reyes, 2004 UT App 8 at ¶ 18, 84 P.3d 841 (quoting Victor, 511 U.S. at 7, 114 S.Ct. 1239). Here, the exclusion of doubt which is `merely possible' from consideration as a reasonable doubt is followed by the explanatory phrase 'since everything in human affairs is open to some possible or imaginary doubt.' This language effectively neutralizes the risk that the reference to a mere possibility will improperly lead a juror to apply a standard of proof lesser than beyond a reasonable doubt. ¶ 34 We conclude that the requirement that the jury be instructed that it must obviate all reasonable doubt before it may find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt is flawed and must be abandoned. The instruction given to Mr. Reyes's jury appropriately addressed the concept of possibility in gauging the reasonableness of doubt. We therefore reverse the court of appeals on this issue and affirm Mr. Reyes's conviction.
¶ 35 Although we have allied ourselves with the Supreme Court in our skepticism of the value of talismatic phraseology to define the beyond a reasonable doubt standard, State v. Young, 853 P.2d 327, 347 (Utah 1993), we are convinced that the time has come to provide express guidance to trial courts concerning the contents of a beyond a reasonable doubt instruction. We are moved to take this action for several reasons. First, there exists a substantial inventory of reasonable doubt formulations that have gained either express or tacit ratification by this court and other state and federal courts. There is an understandable tendency to insert within a beyond a reasonable doubt instruction multiple definitions in the hope that singularly or collectively they may bring to jurors clarity of understanding. Such a practice is just as likely to bring about the real but unintended result of making reasonable doubt less comprehensible. An instruction larded with multiple definitions of reasonable doubt may also convey the incorrect message that a doubt must survive review under each definition before it may qualify as a reasonable doubt. ¶ 36 We have earlier explained our dissatisfaction with the historical approaches to appellate review of beyond a reasonable doubt. In general, the experience of appellate review of beyond a reasonable doubt instructions has been one marked by the enterprise of winnowing out ill-conceived notions of reasonable doubt. Left to follow this historical practice, we are doubtful that a serviceable reasonable doubt instruction will ever emerge. ¶ 37 We therefore exercise our supervisory authority to promulgate for use in the courts of this state the instruction proposed by the Federal Judicial Center that reads: The [State] has the burden of proving the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Some of you may have served as jurors in civil cases, where you were told that it is only necessary to prove that a fact is more likely true than not true. In criminal cases, the [State's] proof must be more powerful than that. It must be beyond a reasonable doubt. Proof beyond a reasonable doubt is proof that leaves you firmly convinced of the defendant's guilt. There are very few things in this world that we know with absolute certainty, and in criminal cases the law does not require proof that overcomes every possible doubt. If, based on your consideration of the evidence, you are firmly convinced that the defendant is guilty of the crime charged, you must find him guilty. If on the other hand, you think there is a real possibility that he is not guilty, you must give him the benefit of the doubt and find him not guilty. Victor, 511 U.S. at 27, 114 S.Ct. 1239 (Ginsburg, J., concurring in part and concurring in the judgment) (quoting Federal Judicial Center, Pattern Criminal Jury Instructions 17-18 (instruction 21)). ¶ 38 The use of this instruction was advocated by Justice Ginsburg in her concurring opinion in Victor. Id. She described it as clear, straightforward, and accurate. Id. at 26, 114 S.Ct. 1239. We agree. Moreover, in the span of time since its promulgation in 1987, the instruction has enjoyed a positive reception. [2] We believe that the consistent application of this instruction resolves any uncertainty in the phrase beyond a reasonable doubt and will benefit jurors while setting forth a balanced charge to the State and defendants. Yet, we note that history has proven that defining beyond a reasonable doubt is a process of evolution and adaptation, and in the future new definitions may emerge. Moreover, we recognize that instructions that once enjoyed widespread acceptance became anachronistic and inaccurate due to shifting definitions of terms. [3] In recognition of this possibility, we authorize use of Federal Judiciary Center Instruction 21 in Utah courts as a safe harbor instruction, but we stop short of disqualifying as constitutionally defective other reasonable doubt instructions that conform to the principles announced in this opinion.