Court Opinion

ID: 9522031
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 02:17:07.947817+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:02:13.319326
License: Public Domain

Robinson, J.,
¶ 48. dissenting. I do not contest the majority’s thoughtful exposition and organization of the varied applications of the “doctrine of chances,” nor its legal conclusions concerning acceptable versus unacceptable inferences in the face of repeated similar incidents. I dissent because I believe the majority’s conclusion that defendant did not preserve his objection to the court’s doctrine-of-chances instruction is incorrect, and the majority’s reliance on a plain error standard is therefore unwarranted. Moreover, given the majority’s acknowledgment that the erroneous instruction in this case permitted the jury to draw an impermissible inference regarding defendant’s intent (and thus guilt), I cannot agree given the circumstances of this case that the instruction was not plain error.
I.
¶49. At the charge conference on the last day of trial, immediately before closing arguments, the trial court presented proposed jury instructions and invited objections. Defendant objected at length to the court’s proposed “doctrine of chances” instruction. Distinguishing the various cases upon which the court relied in proposing the instruction, defendant noted that in all of those cases the other incidents supporting the doctrine-of-chances theory were uncharged. The trial court interrupted counsel to ask why that distinction made a difference. Defendant explained that the court’s invitation to the jury to infer intent in connection with the four fires “relieves the State of its burden.” Counsel continued:
*652The State has a burden to prove each and every element of each and every crime, and by saying that they can infer from the fact that there were other fires in which Mr. Vuley was not — has not even been proven guilty relieves the State of its burden and you ....
¶ 50. The court again interrupted, and defense counsel and the court had multiple backs-and-forths about various other cases. In the course of counsel’s attempt to explain again why the proposed instruction was objectionable, the court and counsel had the following exchange:
[DEFENSE COUNSEL]: Well, you — you stated to the jury that the fact that the defendant is charged with a crime is not itself proof of guilt.
THE COURT: Correct.
[DEFENSE COUNSEL]: By — by allowing the Doctrine of Chances in, you’re essentially saying the fact that Mr. Vuley is charged with four counts of arson you can infer that — intent from that.
THE COURT: Not true. It’s not an accurate statement.
¶ 51. Defendant went on to note other distinctions between cases cited by the trial court and this case. For example, counsel argued that, in one case relied upon by the court, the defendant had admitted to setting a prior fire, and the evidence was admitted because it showed a similar method. The court dismissed defendant’s argument, noting that cases are always factually distinct. When counsel argued that the instruction would violate defendant’s due process rights, the court responded:
[F]rankly, I think it’s very logical which, you know, there’s — there’s certainly been some evidence of criminal agency at least as — in terms of at least two of these fires, and what the Doctrine of Chances says is that if the jury finds that something has occurred which doesn’t occur accidentally very frequently but the evidence shows that it has happened frequently, which I think there’s certainly evidence that, in the broad scheme of things, that’s the situation here, you can infer a criminal agency from that alone. That’s • — ■ that’s what the Doctrine of Chances says. And on three of these four occasions, Mr. Vuley was home alone.
*653¶ 52. Defendant further argued:
Your Honor, I would argue that this — the Doctrine of Chances applies to admission of evidence and doesn’t apply to four counts that are pending that the jury has to determine and that the State has the burden of proof, and beyond a reasonable doubt all four ....
The court interrupted and said, ‘Yeah. Okay. Well, we agree to disagree and I’m going to include it. Anything else?”
¶ 58. The parties delivered their closing statements immediately after the charge conference, and the court instructed the jury right after that. At the close of the instructions, defense counsel stated, ‘Your Honor, I would like to renew my objection to the Doctrine of Chances.” Counsel also objected to the court’s instruction that defendant claimed that the cause of the four fires was accidental when in fact his position was that it was undetermined.
¶ 54. The majority concludes that defense counsel’s renewal of her objection to the instruction was insufficient to preserve the objection pursuant to Vermont Rule of Criminal Procedure 30. Rule 30 requires: “No party may assign as error any portion of the charge or omission therefrom unless [that party] objects thereto before the jury retires to consider its verdict, stating distinctly the matter [objected] to . . . and the grounds of [the] objection.”
¶ 55. Defense counsel’s extended precharge discussion with the court of defendant’s objections to the charge is relevant to our analysis of the preservation question. The majority suggests that the basis for defendant’s objection was not clear in the precharge conference. I respectfully disagree. Over the course of counsel’s baek-and-forth with the court regarding the doctrine-of-chances instruction, filling more than five pages of transcript, defendant repeatedly argued that the instruction allowed the jury to infer defendant’s guilt on all four charges on the basis of the fact that there were four charged fires. Although the trial court ultimately cut off defendant’s argument by clearly indicating that the discussion was over, it did so only after defendant repeatedly reiterated his objection to the impermissible inference permitted by the court’s proposed instruction and the effective elimination of the State’s burden of proof as a result. That is the very basis on which the majority now acknowledges the instruction was erroneous.
*654¶ 56. The majority suggests that defense counsel did not adequately articulate the grounds for defendant’s objection because she did not describe the impermissible inferences as “propensity reasoning.” Ante, ¶ 36 n.13. But “propensity” is a buzzword that describes a certain sort of inference. Defense counsel did one step better than simply stating the buzzword; counsel focused on the impermissible inference described by that term.
¶ 57. The majority contends that defendant’s renewal of the objection after the jury instructions was inadequate, and describes the renewal as “cursory” and “buried among other arguments.” In fact, the first words out of defense counsel’s mouth following the jury instruction were, “Your Honor, I would like to renew my objection to the Doctrine of Chances.” Given how little time had passed between defense counsel’s extended conversation about this objection with the court — a conversation that was ultimately cut off by the court with a firm indication that the court had heard the objection, understood the objection, and made up its mind — this renewal was more than sufficient to “afford the trial court an opportunity to correct any error or oversight it might have made in the instructions.” State v. Lettieri, 149 Vt. 340, 342-43, 543 A.2d 683, 685 (1988). The court has such an opportunity where the defendant fully identifies the objectionable issue and the trial court responds to that objection. See Briggs v. Marshall, 93 F.3d 355, 359 (7th Cir. 1996) (recognizing defense counsel’s “mighty skimpy” on-the-record statement “they are either going to find some money or not,” while not best practice, was sufficient to preserve much greater, substantive objections made off record in chambers because it effectuated purpose behind rule “to alert the judge to their reasons for objecting, so that the court may resolve legal disputes with full information and avoid all errors that are avoidable”); Martell v. Universal Underwriters Life Ins. Co., 151 Vt. 547, 552-53, 564 A.2d 584, 588 (1989) (recognizing role of charge conference in informing sufficiency of post-charge objection (citing 9 C. Wright & A. Miller, Federal Practice & Procedure § 2554, at 648 (1971) (“No particular formality is required so long as it is clear that the trial judge was informed of possible errors and was given an opportunity to correct them.”))).
¶ 58. The Vermont cases on preservation are not as severe as the majority suggests. We have analyzed two types of Rule 30 cases: those in which the defendant makes no objection at all after the jury charge, and those in which defendant makes a post-*655charge objection and the question before us is the sufficiency of that objection to preserve a particular argument. In the former set of cases — those in which a defendant failed to object at all after the jury charge — we have consistently found no preservation and have, thus, conducted a plain error analysis.15 See, e.g., State v. Myers, 2011 VT 43, ¶ 18, 190 Vt. 29, 26 A.3d 9 (reviewing jury instruction for plain error due to defendant’s failure to “restate his objection per Rule 30”); State v. Hinchliffe, 2009 VT 111, ¶ 33, 186 Vt. 487, 987 A.2d 988 (treating failure to object post-charge as waiver of objection); State v. Schreiner, 2007 VT 138, ¶ 35, 183 Vt. 42, 944 A.2d 250 (concluding defendant did not preserve issue where defendant failed to object after reading of instruction).
¶ 59. In the latter set of cases, where there has been a post-charge objection, we have deemed the objection preserved except when the objection left ambiguity as to what defendant was asking, when defendant’s objection was too general, or when defendant specified a claim of error below different from that argued on appeal. Our guiding principle in such cases has been to serve the goal Rule 30 was designed to advance: to give the trial court “one last opportunity to avoid an error.” See Wheelock, 158 Vt. at 306, 609 A.2d at 975.
¶ 60. In several cases we have held that defendants’ objections were too ambiguous to prompt the appropriate, corrective response from the trial court. See, e.g., State v. Massey, 169 Vt. 180, 188-89, 730 A.2d 623, 629 (1999) (describing defendant’s post-charge objection as “cryptic,” considering what defendant might have meant, and noting that defendant had failed to propose alternative instruction that “would have made his position clear to *656the court”); State v. Crosby, 124 Vt. 294, 296-97, 204 A.2d 123, 124-26 (1964) (holding that where defendant requested instruction on “the inferences [the jury] may draw,” but declined to elaborate on what inferences he had in mind, and refused multiple requests by court for proffered instruction, objection was not preserved). In these cases, this Court has recognized the importance of fairly and reasonably indicating to the trial court “the particulars in which such instructions were claimed to be in error.” Id. at 297, 204 A.2d at 126. However, there is no indication in either of the above decisions that the thrust of the defendants’ objections was apparent on the basis of prior discussions, or that the trial court understood the objections. In these cases, the objections were genuinely nebulous and inadequate to give the court a chance to fix the problem, if any.
¶ 61. This Court has concluded that defendants did not preserve the objections raised on appeal where they only objected generally to the instructions or they objected to another aspect of the instructions distinct from their objections on appeal. See State v. Martin, 2007 VT 96, ¶ 42, 182 Vt. 377, 944 A.2d 867 (“None of defendant’s objections related to the link between defendant’s intoxication and the accident, and furthermore we find no general statement of objection to the charge.”); State v. Covino, 163 Vt. 378, 381, 658 A.2d 916, 918 (1994) (where defendant objected to charge that allowed conviction for kidnapping “by misrepresentation” on grounds that “misrepresentation” is too ambiguous and is not supported by case law, he did not preserve argument that instruction was error because prosecutor charged “kidnapping by force” rather than “kidnapping by inveiglement”); State v. Valley, 153 Vt. 380, 398, 571 A.2d 579, 588 (1989) (defendant “bound by the specifics of her objection” at trial, and, therefore, more generalized objection to instruction not preserved for appeal following narrower and more specific objection); State v. Hicks, 148 Vt. 459, 464, 535 A.2d 776, 778 (1987) (defendant did not make objection urged on appeal at charge conference or after jury instruction, so objection was not preserved); State v. Kerr, 143 Vt. 597, 606-07, 470 A.2d 670, 674-75 (1983) (defendant’s general objection inadequate as he never offered additional cautionary instruction urged on appeal, and did not specify error in instruction). All of these cases involved arguments on appeal about jury instructions on grounds not specifically urged below. These cases did not involve objections that were clearly delineated below and *657referenced moments later after the jury charge; the trial courts in the above cases did not have sufficient notice of the errors that were subsequently argued on appeal to take timely action to prevent the error.
¶ 62. In contrast, we have found post-charge objections to be sufficient to preserve arguments for appeal when the court understood the specifics of the objection. See, e.g., State v. Swift, 2004 VT 8A, ¶ 11, 176 Vt. 299, 844 A.2d 802 (rejecting State’s claim that post-charge objection was not sufficiently specific where defendant identified offending language and further stated that issue of credibility — affected by objected-to language — went to heart of defendant’s case); State v. Moffitt, 156 Vt. 379, 380, 592 A.2d 894, 895 (1991) (rejecting claim that defendant’s objection to language in jury instruction was not sufficiently specific where defendant’s precharge arguments meant “court knew the exact language defendant wanted and rejected it”).
¶ 63. We recently considered a lack-of-preservation argument very similar to this case. We found preserved an objection squarely on point with the one in this case. State v. Kolibas, 2012 VT 37, 191 Vt. 474, 48 A.3d 610. In Kolibas, defendant was charged with aggravated assault for drugging his minor daughter and her friend. Defendant mounted a mistake defense — he had intended to drug his wife, not his daughter and her friend. During the charge conference, defendant opposed any instruction on a theory of transferred intent. After the charge, defendant reiterated the objection, saying, ‘We object to the instruction of intent regarding the aggravated assault charges, that the State does not have to prove there was an intent to harm a specific individual.” On appeal, the State contended that defendant’s “objection was not sufficiently detailed to preserve the issue for review under” Rule 30. Id. ¶ 12. We found this to be a “detailed objection” clearly preserving the issue for appeal. Id. In so concluding, we pointed to the lengthy debate about the issue in the charge conference and to defendant’s repeated objections therein.
¶ 64. The majority relies on three cases to support its conclusion. In Wheelock, we considered the objection preserved despite defense counsel’s failure to object after the reading of the charge because the judge told the parties that all objections made during the charge conference were being preserved and that they need not renew the objections. 158 Vt. at 306, 609 A.2d at 975. In Wheelock, we made it clear that a post-charge renewal of objec*658tions is required, even when the trial court says otherwise. Because there was no post-charge objection in Wheelock, this Court did not consider the adequacy of the post-charge objection. We described the primary reason for the rule — “to give the trial court one last opportunity to avoid an error.” Id. We noted that the practice makes our review easier because “objections during a charge conference often are vaguely worded and are interspersed during lengthy discussion,” and we often do not have in the record copies of the proposed instructions given to counsel to discuss at the charge conference. Id. I agree that Wheelock is a pivotal case on this issue, but conclude that the post-charge objection here is the type of “succinct” post-charge objection that is sufficient under Wheelock.
¶ 65. The majority also cites a civil case,16 Winey v. William E. Dailey, Inc., for the proposition that the sufficiency of the stated grounds requires something more than is present here. 161 Vt. 129, 636 A.2d 744 (1993). Winey is another failure-to-objeet case with the twist that the court told the parties that all charge conference objections would be preserved as in Wheelock. Plaintiff made a general objection at the end of the two-day, 300-page-transcript charge conference: “And we have stated our basis yesterday. I won’t reiterate it now, but I do want to reincorporate now all the arguments I made on those various points and I won’t waste the Court’s time further.” Id. at 137, 636 A.2d at 749. We would not accept such a blanket reference as sufficiently specific to preserve the issues for appeal. Id. at 138, 636 A.2d at 750. This case is very different. Defense counsel here did not purport to make a general “all-previous-objections” sort of objection; she specifically identified the instruction that was the subject of defendant’s objection. The charge conference discussion of the challenged instruction in this case was not buried in a deep, prolonged record distant in time from the renewal of defendant’s objection; in this case, the court conducted a charge conference, delivered the jury instructions, and then entertained post-charge objections all in one session, without breaks.
¶ 66. Finally, the majority relies on State v. Rounds, another failure-to-object case. 2011 VT 39, 189 Vt. 447, 22 A.3d 477. As in Wheelock, this case involved a failure to make any objection at all *659following the jury charge. Defendant conceded his failure to preserve. We reviewed for plain error.
¶ 67. I see no basis in this record for concluding that the trial court did not have ample notice of defendant’s arguments, or that if defense counsel had only repeated that the objected-to instruction allowed an impermissible inference of guilt one more time after the charge the trial court would have had more of an opportunity to correct the error. And I believe the majority’s opinion stretches Rule 30 beyond our existing case law in a way that does not promote the rule’s underlying goals. I cannot join the majority’s conclusion that defendant’s conviction — and his sentence of five-to-ten years — should stand on the basis of an excessively restrictive application of Rule 30.
II.
¶ 68. In arguing the preservation point, I do not concede the majority’s conclusion that the instruction was not plain error. In this case, the jury could easily have concluded that the repeated fires resulted from defendant’s carelessness rather than design given his chronic state of intoxication combined with his smoking habit. The court’s instruction called special attention to an alternative, impermissible inference — one that would rest a finding of guilt with respect to a specific fire on impermissible propensity reasoning. This is exactly the kind of instruction we have deemed to be plain error because it effectively allowed the jury to convict without finding defendant guilty of all elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. See Rounds, 2011 VT 39, ¶ 32 (court’s instruction improperly allowing permissive inference of defendant’s intent plain error).
¶ 69. The majority identifies the elements of plain error: error that is obvious, affects substantial rights and results in prejudice, and seriously affects the fairness, integrity, or public reputation of judicial proceedings. Ante, ¶ 40. The majority concedes that the instruction was error and does not assert that it was not obvious. The plain error argument seems to falter in the majority’s analysis on the questions of whether the error affects substantial rights and results in prejudice to the defendant, and whether it affected the fairness, integrity or public reputation of judicial proceedings.
¶ 70. In assessing prejudice, the majority states, “Although the jury instruction could have resulted in prejudice for defendant and *660a miscarriage of justice, we can only speculate that it did, and, in fact, the jury verdict is consistent with the proper use of the doctrine of chances.” Ante, ¶ 41. We can never know exactly why the jury did what it did, but a defendant need not read the jurors’ minds in order to establish plain error. In Rounds we found plain error in a jury instruction that improperly permitted the jury to draw an inference about defendant’s intent when the State had not established the requisite factors underlying the statutory permissive inference; this Court found prejudice not because we .concluded that the jury had in fact impermissibly relied on the improper inference, but on the ground that the court’s instruction allowed the jury to do so. 2011 VT 39, ¶ 33 (“The instruction as given allowed the jury to look past defendant’s theory and infer his criminal intent based on insufficient or nonexistent evidence, all to his direct prejudice.”).
¶ 71. Likewise, in Rounds, in considering whether the instruction seriously affected the integrity of the jury verdict, this Court wrote:
By allowing the jury to infer defendant’s intent by way of an instruction that should never have been given and failed to announce the proper standard, the jury “may have relied upon the presumption rather than upon the evidence” and thus convicted defendant based on a standard less rigorous than the Constitution or the statute at issue require. Because the errors could have affected the jury’s deliberation, and we cannot know what they decided or how they decided it, we find plain error in this instruction.
Id. ¶ 34 (emphasis added). The majority’s reasoning here turns this analysis on its head, suggesting that because the instruction may not have influenced the jury, it was not prejudicial.
¶ 72. The majority then goes a step further, offering its own speculation, based on the jury’s acquittal in connection with the first two fires, that the jury did not, in fact, use the impermissible propensity-based inference but, rather, invoked what the majority calls the “psychological doctrine of chances.” The jury’s split verdict is equally consistent with an application of propensity-based reasoning coupled with reasonable doubt with respect to the first two fires because the jury found the alternate explanations for those fires plausible, albeit speculative. The majority is right *661that the jury may well have reached its verdict applying reasoning that is fully consistent with the law; but the jury also may well have reached its verdict on the basis of the very impermissible inference the majority so perceptively identifies. The majority’s speculation is not a proper basis on which to sustain a conviction in the face of such a critical and conceded error.
¶ 73. In this case, defendant’s intent in setting the fires, if the jury concludes he did so, is very much in dispute, and the evidence supports an alternate narrative in which defendant was a causal agent in setting one or more of the fires but lacked the criminal intent necessary to support the conviction. Under these circumstances, the jury instruction inviting the jury to draw an impermissible inference about defendant’s intent cuts to the core of this case and creates a serious risk that the jury convicted defendant without finding all the essential elements to convict beyond a reasonable doubt. I do not see how the majority can reconcile its no-plain-error holding with this Court’s recent analysis in Rounds.

 This Court has only departed from this bright-line rule in a case in which the parties relied upon the trial court’s assurance that they need not renew their objections, defendant had made the same objection repeatedly throughout the trial, and the error occurred within two weeks of our decision making it clear that a post-instruction objection is required even in the face of a contrary assurance by the trial court. State v. Bacon, 163 Vt. 279, 284-85, 658 A.2d 54, 59 (1995). In Bacon, we clarified that despite the judge’s instruction in contravention of Rule 30, counsel was obligated to articulate an objection after the charge is read, but treated the objection as preserved given that our decision establishing otherwise in State v. Wheelock was only two-weeks old at the time of the Bacon trial. See State v. Wheelock, 158 Vt. 302, 306, 609 A.2d 972, 975 (1992) (requiring parties provide “succinct recitation of specific itemized objections” despite contrary trial-judge instruction).

 V.R.C.P. 51(b) is the civil analog to Criminal Rule 30. The relevant text of the rules is virtually identical. Compare V.R.C.R 51(b), with V.R.CrR. 30.