Court Opinion

ID: 9739193
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 20:10:25.327975+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:10.624165
License: Public Domain

WUEST, Justice
(concurring specially).
I concur with the majority opinion, except for the dicta in the last paragraph which cites Cook for the proposition that trial courts have discretion to give lesser included instructions. State v. Cook, 319 N.W.2d 809, 813 (S.D.1982). The dissent of Justice Amundson takes this discretion a step further by claiming the two-step test deprives trial courts of their right to exercise discretion.
I disagree with these arguments for two reasons. First, Cook does not hold that trial courts have such discretion — it directs trial judges to apply the legal and factual test to determine whether a lessor included offense should be submitted to the jury. Id. Second, “[discretion is the power exercised by courts to determine questions to which no strict rule of law is applicable[.]” State v. Biggs, 198 Or. 413, 255 P.2d 1055, 1059 (1953) (quoting State v. Lewis, 113 Or. 359, 230 P. 543, 544 (1924)).
Chief Justice John Marshall defined judicial discretion over a hundred and fifty years ago:
Judicial power, as contradistinguished from the power of the laws, has no existence. Courts are the mere instruments of the law, and can will nothing. When they are said to exercise a discretion, it is a mere legal discretion, a discretion to be exercised in discerning the course prescribed by law; and, when that is discerned, it is the duty of the court to follow it.
Osborn v. United States Bank, 22 U.S. (9 Wheat.) 738, 866, 6 L.Ed. 204, 234 (1824). The words of that distinguished jurist still hold true today — it is the duty of the court to follow the law.
We are a nation governed by law, not the caprice or whim of judges. We have, as the majority opinion notes, adopted a two-part test — a legal test and a factual test— each of which must be satisfied before a trial judge may submit a lesser included offense instruction to the jury. If the proposed lesser included offense does not meet the two-part test, the trial judge has no discretion to give the included instruction.
The discretion of a judge is said by Lord Camden to be the law of tyrants: it is always unknown, it is different in different men; it is casual, and depends upon constitution, temper, and passion. In the best, it is oftentimes caprice; in the *383worse, it is every vice, folly, and passion to which human nature is liable.
Delno v. Market St. Ry. Co., 124 F.2d 965, 967 (9th Cir.1942).
To allow judges to give lesser included offense instructions that do not meet the two-part test submits the law to the mere whim of “human nature.” Both the State and the defendant are entitled to impartial treatment. “Justice carries a pair of scales that are evenly balanced.” Arthur L. Goodhart, “Lincoln and the Law,” 50 A.B.A.J. 433 (1964). If a judge can give instructions which do not meet the rule of law, then different defendants can — and will — receive different treatment because of different judges. To include instructions not mandated by application of the test of law would make us a government of men rather than a government of law.
I am deeply concerned the dicta of the majority opinion and the dissent of Justice Amundson will lead our trial courts and the Bar into confusion and uncertainty. I advise trial judges continue to apply our established legal and factual test rather than enter the never, never land where each judge creates his own rules under the guise of judicial discretion. Substantive law cannot be left to the whim of a judge.