Court Opinion

ID: 9745132
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 22:36:26.867369+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:56.479360
License: Public Domain

*786DeBRULER, Justice,
dissenting.
Appellant was convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment on March 29, 1976. On December 20, 1977, this Court affirmed the conviction and sentence. Hill v. State (1977), 267 Ind. 411, 370 N.E.2d 889. Two years later in Sandstrom v. Montana, 442 U.S. 510, 99 S.Ct. 2450, 61 L.Ed.2d 39 (1979), it was held that where intent is an element of a crime, a jury instruction that "the law presumes that a person intends the ordinary consequences of his voluntary acts" violates the Fourteenth Amendment's requirement that the State prove every element of a criminal offense beyond a reasonable doubt, as had been required in In re Winship 397 U.S. 358, 90 S.Ct. 1068, 25 LEd.2d 368 (1970). The error in the instruction is the resulting suspension of the requirement of proof of specific intent beyond a reasonable doubt, and generally such error is fundamental in nature and may be raised at any time, despite the lack of contemporaneous objection at the initial trial and despite the failure to lay claim in the first appeal. Reid v. State (1988), Ind., 529 N.E.2d 1309;. Thomas v. State (1982), Ind.App., 442 N.E.2d 700. Cf. Haggenjos v. State (1986), Ind., 493 N.E.2d 448.
Appellant filed her first post-conviction petition on July 21, 1982; the petition was amended twice by the State Public Defender on December 16, 1988, and February 1, 1989. The latter amendment added the following specification:
The giving of jury instructions 12 and 13 on specific intent impermissibly shifted the burden of proof on this element to the defendant, thus relieving the State of . its burden to prove all necessary elements of First Degree Murder.
The record discloses no special defenses by the State. At the conclusion of the post-conviction trial, the judge concluded in part that the instructions 12 and 18 do not constitute Sandstrom error and otherwise denied post-conviction relief. On appeal, the State does not argue waiver or raise any procedural complaint, but addresses the issue on its merits,. The majority opinion concludes that it is not required to address appellant's challenge to the trial court's judgment on this basis because there was no objection to the instructions at trial and in the first direct appeal and because Sand-strom was decided after the trial and appeal and is presumably not retroactive.
The two instructions at stake were as follows:
INSTRUCTION NO. 12
Every person is presumed to intend the natural and probable consequences of his or her acts and, therefore, the intent to commit a criminal offense may be inferred from the acts, word or declaration of the person accused, as well as from the manner and circumstances of the act committed.
INSTRUCTION NO. 13
The Court instructs that as long as the offender is capable of conceiving an intelligent design, she will be presumed, if the case is otherwise made out beyond a reasonable doubt to have intended the natural consequences of her own act.
In my opinion, it is appropriate to now consider appellant's present, appellate post-conviction claim that Judge Ryan's post-conviction judgment was erroneous wherein it determined that these two instrue-tions, given at the initial trial without objection and unchallenged in the direct appeal, did not impermissibly shift the burden of proof on the element of intent to appellant at the trial, and it is not appropriate to refuse to do so on the basis stated in the majority opinion. This ground was first stated by appellant in her original post-conviction petition, at the trial level, before Judge Ryan. On the occasion of this first raising of the issue at the trial court level, appellant had the burden of demonstrating that there was sufficient reason for her failure to assert this new issue at time of her trial and direct appeal. Ind. Post-Conviction Rule 1, Section 8; Osborne v. State (1985), Ind., 481 N.E.2d 376. At the conclusion of the post-conviction hearing, Judge Ryan addressed the claim on its merits, treating it as though this basic burden had been met, and, in such cireumstances, we should now do so also, for in this appeal, *787the issue of whether Judge Ryan was in error in going to the merits of the claim has not been raised by the State by way of a Statement in Opposition, Ind. Trial Rule 59(E), and the legal questions involved have not been briefed.
Even when one chooses to now consider, for the first time on appeal without briefing, the question of whether appellant has met the basic burden of showing a sufficient reason for not previously raising this Sandstrom issue, the resolution of that issue should be in her favor. First, the issue has been raised in a first original petition for post-conviction relief, and the policy of P-C.R. 1, Section 8, is to encourage an expansion of the range of issues in such first petitions. Second, the legal perception that the age-old idea that a person is presumed to intend the consequences of all voluntary acts and deeds, when included in a criminal jury instruction, shifts the burden of proof on intent, did not find judicial sanction in Indiana until the Sand-strom decision, after appellant's trial and appeal. Third, the shifting of the burden of proof upon an element of a crime is totally contrary to our basic notions of the proper balance between the penal interests of the State and the liberty interests of the individual.
In dealing with the merits of this issue, as did Judge Ryan, I am convinced that the two instructions constitute an artful and successful effort to establish and maintain the impermissible presumption of intent. The word "presumption" is used twice. The second time, it is employed in Instruction 13 in conjunction with the words "if the case is otherwise made out beyond a reasonable doubt," and would be understood by the jury as meaning that the presumption of intent may be indulged in if all of the other elements are made out beyond a reasonable doubt. The presence of this additional instruction using the presumption, and the manner of its operation, serve to distinguish this case from our holding in Haggenjos, 493 N.E.2d 448, where an instruction in the form of Instruction 12, above, passed a Sandstrom test.
Finally, I do not believe that the error in the giving of these erroneous instructions, shifting the burden of proof, was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. Appellant testified that she was under the influence of drugs during the period leading up to the murder and that everything seemed unreal. She had no recollection of having shot anyone. One psychiatrist testified that appellant's history showed a pattern of being manipulated that she was fairly suggestible by men and that she was under the compelling foree of Cantrell Johnson and had been programmed by him to kill. While this evidence need not be considered true or to have great weight by the trier of fact, it demonstrates that the question of intent was poignant at the trial and that the instructions on intent were crucial.
I would reverse the judgment of the trial court and order post-conviction relief in the form of a new trial.
DICKSON, J., concurs.