Court Opinion

ID: 9462427
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:40:46.830295+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:37:35.121360
License: Public Domain

VAN PELT, Senior District
Judge (dissenting):
I am unable to agree with the conclusion that this case should be reversed. I am in agreement with the overall idea that if standardized instructions have been adopted or are being used in a district that a district judge should use such instructions rather than to rearrange the same as was done in this case.
The majority opinion in setting forth the charge given by the court omits two paragraphs which I deem important. The opening two paragraphs of the complained of instruction are:
Chronic alcoholism is not a defense to the crime of entering a bank with intent to rob, which is the crime charged in this indictment.
However, you are instructed that if you find Mr. Scott to be a chronic alcoholic, you may consider that fact along with the other evidence presented in this case in determining whether the Government has proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Scott was capable of forming the specific intent to rob and that he had the specific intent to rob at the time he entered the bank.
I believe the instruction thus given included all of the essential elements provided under Instruction 5.12 of the standard “Redbook,” Criminal Jury Instructions for the District of Columbia (1972 ed.), and that it did not change or shift the burden of proof, which earlier had been placed on the Government. The above quoted portion of the instruction again definitely reminded the jury of the burden on the Government to prove “beyond a reasonable doubt” the specific intent. While the evidence of intoxication is felt by the majority to be “quite strong” it was not strong enough for the jury to believe that it prevented the forming of the necessary specific intent.
I have a good deal of sympathy for the defendant and do not approve of his incarceration for a term of years in the District of Columbia jail. I think he should have been sent to Springfield or some other federal penitentiary. Congress has placed that determination in the hands of the Attorney General, however.
*342At this point I should observe that I am a district judge who believes that the Circuit Courts of Appeal should on occasion exercise their authority to modify sentences. I favor, in this case, the af-firmance of the conviction but would remand the case to the district judge to modify the sentence to cover incarceration for the period actually served by the defendant to date of resentence, and probation for the remainder of the term, not to exceed five years. If he is a chronic alcoholic he has certainly dried out by now.