Court Opinion

ID: 9774595
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 18:25:56.794809+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:32:11.205474
License: Public Domain

EAGER, Judge
(dissenting).
While I agree with the analysis of our prior cases as made in the principal opinion, I believe that the rule reaffirmed therein is causing and will cause much uncertainty in the trials of criminal cases, and that it puts the burden in the wrong place. The complexity of the situation is shown by the various classifications discussed in the principal opinion. I do not believe in changing the law for the sake of change or to demonstrate some phase of advanced thinking, but I do conceive it to be our duty to change a rule of nonstatutory law, procedural or substantive, when we are convinced that it is basically wrong. The various classifications as made, with very hazy delineations, can only tend to bewilder the trial judges and lawyers; I believe that the principle now reasserted does more harm to the public interest than any possible good which it may do for defendants, I would require the defendant to offer a correct instruction on all matters which he desires to have covered except those prescribed in § 546.070(4), before reversing. I have considerable doubt as to whether this tendered instruction was substantially er*250roneous, but I base this dissent upon broader grounds than that.