Court Opinion

ID: 9861596
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 00:11:51.911911+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:28:41.941382
License: Public Domain

ON PETITION FOR REHEARING
DeBRULER, Justice.
Appellee, State of Indiana, has filed a petition for rehearing. Attention is called to the case of Faught v. State, (1979) Ind., 390 N.E.2d 1011. This case was not relied upon by the prosecutor at the trial below and did not receive mention in the State’s brief on appeal. Nevertheless for reasons which will appear obvious, we turn to examine it.
In Faught we approved an instruction which is identical to State’s Instruction No. 6, which forms the basis for our reversal here. The State contends that Faught has therefore overruled Steinbarger v. State, (1948) 226 Ind. 598, 82 N.E.2d 519. While Faught is upon first reading inconsistent with Steinbarger and the case at hand, the cases are upon deeper analysis legally consistent. In the case at bar as in Steinbar-ger, an objection was made to the instruction in the trial court on the basis that it materially modified and to some extent supplanted the law of reasonable doubt through that portion of it which directed the jury to make such inferences as the “guarded judgment of a reasonable man *644ordinarily would make under like circumstances”, thereby introducing the law applicable in negligence cases. Steinbarger, supra. In Faught, no objection at the trial level was made to this instruction at all. It is clear beyond all question that this Court in Faught was not therefore faced with a challenge to this instruction on the ground that it impermissibly invaded the law of reasonable doubt. There was indeed no error at all cognizable by this Court in Faught which would have rendered the giving of this instruction erroneous. We are therefore bound by Steinbarger through the doctrine of stare decisis to reverse this case.
The petition for rehearing is denied.
GIVAN, C. J., and HUNTER, PRENTICE and PRIVARNIK, JJ., concur.