Court Opinion

ID: 9709571
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 03:51:16.941115+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:50.193707
License: Public Domain

CHIPMAN, Presiding Judge,
concurring.
Although I concur with the majority in the ultimate conclusion, I am gravely concerned over the trial court’s instruction concerning probation, short sentences, parole, good time and credit for time spent in jail prior to sentencing. Even though the concluding paragraph of this instruction advises the jury not to speculate as to the time a defendant may ultimately serve, it actually injects into a criminal trial an element that is so complicated that attorneys and even the Parole Board have difficulty interpreting the legislation pertaining to these subjects.
As pointed out in the majority opinion, the Supreme Court addressed this issue in the cases of Feggins v. State, (1977) 265 Ind. 674, 359 N.E.2d 517 and Cooper v. State, (1977) 265 Ind. 700, 359 N.E.2d 532. In the Feggins trial a prospective juror inquired as to whether a life sentence would mean imprisonment for the remainder of the defendant’s life. The trial court attempted to 'respond by stating that some defendants die in prison and others are paroled. Justice DeBruler, writing for the majority, stated that it was error for the court to instruct and for the prosecutor to argue that a convicted defendant will serve a lesser sentence than that which the jury might impose. The Supreme Court did hold, however, that if there is inquiry by a juror concerning the actual time a defendant might serve or if the subject is inadvertently introduced to the jury, then the court may give a limited instruction on that subject.1
The record in the case at bar does not disclose that an inquiry was made by a juror on the subject of a lesser sentence or that through inadvertence the matter was injected into the trial. In light of the Feg-gins decision, the court’s “good time” instruction would be in error. We are, however, compelled by the Cooper decision to hold that Decker has waived this issue by failing to include it in his motion to correct errors and, further, that the court’s giving the identical “good time” instruction does not rise to “substantial error” which would thus permit appellant to address it for the first time on appeal.
I think it should be clear that a trial court’s attempt to discuss with a jury the possibility of a lesser sentence, unless the circumstances are similar to the Feggins case, is inviting reversible error when the defendant preserves that error.

. The best approach to the prevention of such inappropriate jury speculation, an approach which is fair to the accused and the State, is to instruct the jury upon their inquiry or upon the inadvertent introduction of the subject before the jury, that, first, the State is authorized by law to confine the accused for the full length of any sentence received by him, but that second, various devices exist which could reduce the length of any sentence received by the defendant, including parole, pardon, and “good time,” and that the length of the sentence which the accused will actually serve is contingent upon numerous future events and cannot be determined with any reasonable certainty at the time of trial. For this reason the jurors should exclude consideration of such devices from their deliberations so as not to fall into fruitless speculation. Feggins v. State, (1977) 265 Ind. 674, 685, 359 N.E.2d 517, 524.