Court Opinion

ID: 9521330
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 02:02:46.505047+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:49:40.657187
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion
White, J.
The court’s opinion correctly states that “[g]uilt in a homicide prosecution is not proved beyond a *328•reasonable doubt if there is a reasonable doubt as to whether the killing was . . . done in self-defense.” The opinion piles words upon words upon words to reach that conclusion and its further conclusion that “[t]o say then, that the prosecution must prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt and that the court must define self-defense telling the jury that one acting in self-defense commits no crime at all, is to say all that needs to be said.”
That may or may not be all that needs to be said to a jury of lawyers to tell them by implication that if a reasonable doubt exists as to whether or not defendant acted in justifiable self-defense he is entitled to be acquitted, but it is utterly unrealistic to suggest that lay jurors will comprehend the implication.1
In Miller v. State (1944), 223 Ind. 50, 55, 58 N.E.2d 114, 116, the court noted that:
“The purpose of instructions is to inform the jury of the law applicable to the facts in such a manner that the jurors will not be misled, and that they may clearly comprehend and understand the case and arrive at a just, fair, and correct verdict. Jurors are laymen, unversed in the technicalities of the law, and this fact should be considered in drafting instructions. An instruction may correctly state the law, and yet, because of involved and obscure language, unintelligible to the layman who hears it read but once, be so misleading as to be prejudicial and therefore erroneous.”
At bar, the Court’s Instruction No. 29 does contain language which to a layman can certainly seem involved and obscure, although it does correctly state the substantive law of self-defense, but does so wholly without reference to the burden of proof or to the rule of reasonable doubt. Instruction No. 7 does nothing to fill that void when it tells the jury only that the State has the burden of proving the material allegations of the indictment and the essential elements of *329the crimes therein charged. • (No. 7 was a preliminary ■ instruction not read again at the end of the trial when No. 29 was read.) Instruction No. 20 (which was a final instruction) likewise relates reasonable doubt only to “the guilt of the defendant as charged in or covered by the indictment,” without mentioning the defense of self-defense.
In Fleming v. State (1894), 136 Ind. 149, 153, 36 N.E. 154, 155, there was evidence of alibi. The court refused defendant’s tendered instruction which would have called attention to that evidence and would have told the .jury that if it raised a reasonable doubt the jury could not convict. The Supreme Court said:
“A general charge was given upon the subject of reasonable doubt as it should affect the jurors collectively and individually, and as it should apply to the identity of the person claimed to have committed the larceny charged, but the specific elements of the instruction asked were not given in any other charge.
•t* ÍJÍ í}í
“A general instruction does not authorize the refusal of a specific instruction applicable to the charge and the evidence: Parker v. State [(1894), 136 Ind. 284], 35 N.E. Rep. 1105; Carpenter v. State, 43 Ind. 371.
“We conclude, therefore, that the refusal of this instruction was error, and that the-judgment of the circuit court should be reversed.”
In Parker (cited above in Fleming) the court said:
“To the end that the jury may be correctly informed as to the law applicable to his case, and that he may not be erroneously convicted, a defendant on trial, charged with crime, has the right to insist that the court shall instruct the jury on all legal questions necessary to enable them to reach a true verdict.” (136 Ind. at 292.) See also Dunn v. State (1906), 166 Ind. 694, 702, 78 N.E. 198, 200.
The burden of proof as to the defense of self-defense is a legal question in this case and the defendant was entitled to have the jury instructed upon it, specifically as well as generally. His tendered instructions 2 and 4 correctly state the *330law in- that regard and the State does not contend otherwise.
It was error for the court to refuse to give either of said instructions and for that error the judgment should be reversed and the cause remanded for a new trial.
Note. — Reported at 319 N.E.2d 688.

. For an example of misunderstanding by an “expert”, see Homicide § 84, 15 I.L.E. 336 and page 62 of the 1973 pocket supplement.