Court Opinion

ID: 9851866
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 05:20:46.634654+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:22:18.085319
License: Public Domain

ERICKSON, Justice,
concurring in the result:
I respectfully concur in the result.
After an in camera hearing, the trial judge denied the defendant’s motion to suppress and concluded that the defendant’s statements were made voluntarily. No appeal was taken from the trial judge’s finding at the Jackson v. Denno, 378 U.S. 368, 84 S.Ct. 1774, 12 L.Ed.2d 908 (1964), hearing.
The sole issue on appeal is whether the trial judge erred in refusing to instruct the jury on the definition of the term “voluntary.” I agree with Judge Smith’s opinion and his statement that “[t]he word voluntary is not so unusual or unfamiliar as to require elaboration.” People v. Kwiatkoski, 671 P.2d 982, 983 (Colo.App.1983).
We said in People v. Deadmond, 683 P.2d 763 (Colo.1984), in addressing the failure of the court to instruct the jury as to the definition of voluntary when no request was made for an instruction:
[W]e find no reversible error here in the trial court’s failure to define the word “voluntary” in the absence of a specific request for such instruction.... The word, while imprecise, is one with which reasonable persons of common intelligence would be familiar, and its meaning is not so technical or mysterious as to create confusion in jurors’ minds as to its meaning. See People v. Ortega, 181 Colo. 223, 508 P.2d 784 (1973); Simms v. People, 174 Colo. 85, 482 P.2d 974 (1971).
Id. at 769.
In my view, the failure to give the prof-erred instruction was not reversible error.