Court Opinion

ID: 9709592
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 03:51:54.997199+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:50.402285
License: Public Domain

DeBRULER, Justice,
dissenting.
The preliminary instruction mentioned in the majority opinion required the jury to give due regard to the presumption of innocence during the receipt of the evidence and up until the conclusion of the trial. The instruction concluded with the statement that a finding of not guilty is required if at the conclusion of the trial a reasonable doubt of guilt remains. The instruction does not, I believe, express a clear and understandable requirement that the jury take the presumption of innocence into the jury room and there give conscious consideration to it during deliberation. The presumption of innocence continues throughout the trial and terminates only when the verdict is reached. McKee v. State, (1926) 198 Ind. 590, 154 N.E.2d 372. The preliminary instruction was correct as far as it went. It clearly did not go far enough. The final instruction requested by appellant covered a part of the subject properly omitted from the preliminary instruction. It required the jury to be conscious of the presumption of *1318innocence during deliberation while in the process of reconciling all of the evidence.
I have no quarrel with the majority opinion wherein it maintains careful fidelity to the reasoning of the United States Supreme Court in the recent due process cases cited. However, I see no way to avoid competing state law questions which present themselves in the course of considering the “totality of the circumstances.” To permit the case to stand in its present form is to invite trial judges to ignore state law which condemns the refusal to give a proper instruction on the presumption of innocence upon request of the accused. Long v. State, (1874) 46 Ind. 582. In fact a strong probability exists that the trial judge below was encouraged by our recent case of Kennedy v. State, (1977) Ind., 370 N.E.2d 331, to consciously refuse appellant’s requested instruction. There, we simply noted the existence of a preliminary instruction on the presumption of innocence in denying a claim that the presumption of innocence had been denied during the trial. Nothing was said in that opinion which establishes the absence of a presumption of innocence instruction from the final instructions. This case, then, also skirts the core requirement of state law and at the same time adds to the weakening effect upon that law already started by the Kennedy case.
Indiana law gives to the accused the protection of the presumption of innocence during the reconciliation of all the evidence of the jury, duly sworn and assembled, and the only way that I know of to assure this is by requiring trial courts to correctly state to the jury the law on the subject.