Court Opinion

ID: 9537976
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 07:28:05.268968+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:57:14.533129
License: Public Domain

ZIMMERMAN, Justice:
(concurring and dissenting).
I concur in parts II, III, and IV of Justice Howe’s opinion. I concur in the result in part I, but do not join in some portions of part I.1
Part I of the majority opinion addresses the failure of the trial judge to give defendant’s two requested instructions on what the terms “distribute” and “distribute for value” mean, concluding that the trial judge adequately instructed the jury on the substance of defendant’s theory when it informed the jury that “distribution ... without value” was a lesser included offense. The majority then states that to give the requested definitional instructions would be duplicative. I disagree. In my view, once the trial judge told the jury that it had a choice of convicting defendant of “distribution for value” and “distribution ... without value,” it quite properly should have informed the jury of the meaning of those terms. It was error to reject the proposed instructions.
I do not conclude, however, that this error requires reversal. The instructions offered by defendant did little more than give common sense explanations for the terms “distribute” and “for value.” Nothing contained in those instructions was controversial, and defendant has not suggested that the prosecution’s argument led the jury to believe that these terms meant any*506thing other than what was in the offered instructions. Therefore, I conclude that the refusal to give the instructions was harmless error and not an abuse of discretion. See State v. Larson, 775 P.2d 415, 419 (Utah 1989).
My point of departure from the majority is its suggestion that the trial court could not have given the two requested instructions. The majority seems to say that under our decision in State v. Udell, 728 P.2d 131, 134 (Utah 1986), a defendant cannot defend against a distribution-for-value charge by showing that all of the money given to him or her was turned over to another for drugs that were then given to the purchaser. That is not the holding of Udell. There, the defendant was attempting to bring himself under the holding of State v. Ontiveros, 674 P.2d 103 (Utah 1983), where we held that there was not sufficient evidence to support a conviction for distributing for value, but that the evidence did show an “arranging” a distribution for value. 674 P.2d at 104. The facts in Udell were quite different from those in Ontiveros, and we simply held that in Udell, there was sufficient evidence to sustain the jury’s verdict that Udell did distribute for value when he acted as the seller, took a sum of money from the purchaser, bought some gasoline out of that money, and later returned with drugs, when there was no uncontested evidence that he paid the same amount for the drugs as he charged the purchaser.
Accordingly, under Udell and Ontiveros, as well as State v. Fixel, 744 P.2d 1366 (Utah 1987), also cited by the majority, a defendant seeking to avoid conviction on a distribution-for-value charge by showing that he or she is guilty only of the lesser included arranging charge quite properly can argue to the jury that one of the things that makes the crime an arranging and not a distribution for value is that the defendant turned all the money over to another for the drugs, something the evidence did not compellingly show in Udell. Because this is true, it is certainly not error for a trial judge to so instruct a jury.
STEWART and DURHAM, JJ., concur in the concurring and dissenting opinion of ZIMMERMAN, J.

. Because a majority of the Court concurs with this opinion, it represents the decision of the Court for those issues it addresses.