Court Opinion

ID: 9711983
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 04:43:38.07286+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:08.956404
License: Public Domain

DeBRULER, Justice,
concurring and dissenting.
Instruction No. 82 quoted in the majority opinion purports to set forth the elements of the crime of attempted burglary which must be proved to warrant conviction. It provides in salient part as follows:
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(1) That the defendant
(2) knowingly and intentionally
(8) engaged in conduct as described in the Information and that such conduct was a substantial step toward the com-misgion of the crime of burglary.
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In Smith v. State (1984), Ind., 459 N.E.2d 355, we condemned an instruction such as this because it purported to define the elements of an attempted felony charge and failed to include, as an element, the accompaniment of the step taken with the intent to commit the specific felony. Here, the instruction does not inform the jury that the State had to prove that at the time appellant knowingly and intentionally engaged in his conduct (here the act of breaking the glass window) he had the intent to steal. As pointed out by Justice Givan in the later case of Santana v. State (1986), Ind., 486 N.E.2d 1010, the error in a Smith type instruction on an attempted offense is its focus on conduct and its omission of the intent to effect the proscribed result. That is precisely the defect in Instruction No. 82. With No. 32 before the jury, there is no assurance that the jury came to grips with the major problem in this case, namely whether at the time appellant broke the window he had the intent to steal. For this reason, I would reverse and remand for a new trial on the charge of attempted burglary. Otherwise, I concur in the majority opinion.