Court Opinion

ID: 9536633
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 07:03:45.734617+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:54:53.470279
License: Public Domain

BOOCHEVER, Justice
(dissenting).
In Cupp v. Naughten,1 the majority of the United States Supreme Court refused to reverse an Oregon state court conviction despite an instruction given to the jury that “a witness is presumed to speak the truth.” The majority in Cupp based its decision on a distinction between the role of the federal appellate courts in supervising the federal trial courts and in overruling a state court:
Thus even substantial unanimity among federal courts of appeals that the in*1019struction in question ought not to be given in United States district courts within their respective jurisdictions is not, without more, authority for declaring that the giving of the instruction makes a resulting conviction invalid under the Fourteenth Amendment. Before a federal court may overturn a conviction resulting from a state trial in which this instruction was used, it must be established not merely that the instruction is undesirable, erroneous,' or even “universally condemned,” but that it violated some right which was guaranteed to the defendant by the Fourteenth Amendment.2
Thus, the United States Supreme Court implied that if it were exercising the same supervisory power which, as a state supreme court we are required to exercise over a trial court, it might have held the jury instruction to be reversible error.
The majority opinion on rehearing in Galauska’s case condemns the questioned instruction, stating:
Such an instruction is subject to numerous infirmities. It interferes with the province of the jury to determine credibility of witnesses. It seems to conflict with the presumption of innocence. The instruction serves to raise doubt in the juror’s mind as to his role and adds a confusing factor to jury deliberations, (footnotes omitted)
Despite these shortcomings, the majority holds the instruction to be harmless error under the circumstances of Galauska’s trial. In Anthony v. State,3 we reiterated the test for harmless error as previously enunciated in Love v. State 4 stating:
Only if we can fairly say that the error “did not appreciably affect the jury’s verdict” can we conclude that infringement of the right to the instruction was harmless.
Galauska’s conviction depended on whether or not the jury believed Roger Peter’s version of the incident. As I have indicated in my dissent to the original opinion in this case, I believe that Peter was an accomplice and that Galauska was entitled to his requested instruction that “the testimony of an accomplice ought to be viewed with distrust”.5 In the absence of giving that instruction, I fail to see how it can be said to be harmless error to instruct the jury over defendant’s objection that Peter was presumed to speak the truth. Moreover, if we deem the instruction to be erroneous as indicated by the majority, there is no prohibition to its continued use when it is held to be harmless error in a case such as this, for it is hard to envision circumstances where the instruction would be more damaging. I accordingly would hold that the giving of the instruction under the circumstances here involved constituted reversible error.

. 414 U.S. 141, 94 S.Ct. 396, 38 L.Ed.2d 368 (1973).

. 414 U.S. at 146, 94 S.Ot. at 400, 38 L.Ed.2d 373.

. 521 P.2d 486, 491 (Alaska 1974).

. 457 P.2d 622, 632 (Alaska 1967).

. The instruction is required by Alaska It. Crim.P. 30(b) (2).