Court Opinion

ID: 9529882
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 03:55:07.33617+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:27:56.659363
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion
DeBruler, J.
All judges and lawyers are committed by the Constitution and statutes to the principle that the accused is entitled to a trial according to the law of the land. It is beyond question that where the jury instructions fail to inform the jury of the elements of a crime charged, and the jury returns a verdict of guilty, the resulting conviction and punishment are invalid as a denial of due process of law. One of the essential elements of the offense of which appellant stands convicted is that “there was premeditated malice and *596purpose to kill the intended victim.” Noelke v. State, (1938) 214 Ind. 427, 431, 15 N.E.2d 950, 952.
None of the instructions given in this case, alone or when considered with others, informed the jury of the existence of this element and of its duty to find this element proved beyond a reasonable doubt before it could find appellant guilty. For this reason appellant should be granted a new trial.
The majority concludes that the jury was adequately informed of this element by preliminary instruction 2-P and final instruction 4-F. Preliminary instruction 2-P included a copy of the indictment for first degree murder together with statutory definitions of first degree murder, second degree murder, voluntary manslaughter, and involuntary manslaughter. That part of instruction 2-P defining first degree murder stated:
“Whoever kills a human being either purposely and with premeditated malice or while perpetrating or attempting to perpetrate rape, arson, robbery, or burglary is guilty of murder in the first degree and, on conviction, shall be imprisoned in the state prison during life.
The elements of this crime are that the accused must:
1. have killed a human being,
2. purposely, and
3. with premeditated malice.”
Final instruction 4-F stated:
“If one shoots at A but misses him and kills B he must be judged as though he killed A.
Therefore, his guilt or his innocence is to be determined as though he had, in fact, killed A.”
First, and most importantly, these instructions contain no simple, direct statement of the questioned element. The instruction giving the statutory definition contains no such statement. It refers to malice and purpose to kill the actual victim. The transferred intent instruction contains no such statement. It tells the jury to judge the accused as though he had in fact killed A,
*597Second, the majority suggests that the jury would have erected this element through use of its reasoning faculties upon consideration of the two instructions together. In order for the definition of an element of the offense to arise in this fashion, and to satisfy due process, the necessary reasoning process would have to be required by the language of the instructions and the steps in that process clearly delineated. Such is not the case with these two instructions. There is no direct reference in one to the other. There is no statement that the one creates an exception to the other. The two do not contain similar terms which would indicate their symbolic relationship. The statutory instruction is part of a larger preliminary instruction numbered 2-P which contained the indictment and the definitions of second degree murder, voluntary manslaughter and involuntary manslaughter. It was not reread as part of the final instructions. The transferred intent instruction was read as a final instruction only, and it also went to the jury in written form among other final instructions. The order in which they were presented to the jury would not alert the jury to their special relationship. In short, the jury may or may not have discovered that it was presented with a puzzle by these two instructions, and may or may not have discovered the rules by which that puzzle was to be solved, and may or may not have arrived at the necessary conclusion that it was required to be satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that “there was premeditated malice and purpose to kill the intended victim.” Noelke, supra.
Note. — Reported at 365 N.E.2d 1209.