Court Opinion

ID: 9844079
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 02:57:22.805851+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:15:27.345553
License: Public Domain

McQUADE, Chief Justice, and BAKES, Justice
(concurring in part and dissenting in part).
I.C. § 19-2117 provides that a conviction may be based on testimony of an accomplice if it is corroborated by other evidence that independently “tends to connect the defendant with the commission of the offense.” The majority’s holding, that the prosecution’s chief witness was an accomplice under the statute, necessarily raises the issue of corroboration. However, the majority opinion circumvents this pivotal question by declining to consider it as an issue properly before this Court. On that basis the defendant is discharged. I concur in the holding on the accomplice issue; but I believe that the corroboration question should be faced squarely, and that the case should be remanded for a new trial.
I.C. § 19-2117 embodies a careful balance of competing social policies. By restricting reliance on accomplice testimony, the statute protects innocent defendants from convictions based solely on evidence obtained from sources considered suspect.1 However, by authorizing convictions based on such testimony when corroborated by evidence independently tending to connect the defendant with commission of the crime, the statute also protects society from offenders who seek to escape crimi*610nal liability simply by asserting the culpability of the witnesses.2 This synthesis of policies signifies to me that the accomplice and corroboration issues are indivisible when the statute is applied to a set of facts. In this case, the appellant has asked us to review the factual record in light of that part of the statute defining an accomplice. I cannot read our own Rule 41(2) as rendering this Court helpless to apply the whole statute unless requested in respondent’s brief to do so. In any event, the State did make such a request in oral argument before this Court. For the Court to examine the accomplice issue but evade the corroboration issue is not justified by the circumstances of this appeal, nor is it consistent with the structure and language of the underlying statute.
The disputed Instruction 17, quoted in the majority opinion,'was an instruction no one requested. In fact, the defendant requested that the chief witness be deemed an accomplice but that the issue of corroboration be submitted to the jury. When the trial court gave the accomplice issue to the jury but deemed the testimony totally uncorroborated, the prosecution objected and termed the court’s instruction “highly prejudicial.” However, the jury, after being so instructed, returned a guilty verdict. In the oral argument to which I previously referred, counsel for the State argued that if the judgment of conviction were reversed on the accomplice issue the case should be remanded for new trial because there remained a genuine issue of corroboration which should not have been taken from the jury.
Instruction 17 was peremptory in nature; it commanded the jury to acquit the defendant if the chief witness were found to be an accomplice, because his testimony was not corroborated. The peremptory instruction is a creature of common law which may be employed only when there is no evidence on which to base a conviction.3 Where the evidence is merely insufficient, the court may give only an advisory instruction, which is discretionary and which the jury is not bound to follow.4 “The distinction turns on the quantum of evidence produced.” 5
In the present case, the peremptory instruction was proper only if there was no corroborating evidence whatsoever. The trial court so found, and that finding ordinarily is entitled to great weight, but it is difficult to reconcile with the record before us. Frank, the youth who was dropped at his home, placed the defendant in the group as late as 12:00 or 1:00 a. m. the night the crime was committed. The car transfer already had occurred, and when Frank left the group there were three individuals including the defendant in their automobile. Mr. Rowland, the salesman from whose station wagon the typewriter and other items were removed, testified that between 1:30 and 2:00 a. m. he saw from the window of his house a car stopped beside the station wagon. As it moved away he discerned the figures of “three or four” persons inside. When he went outside to investigate he found the tail gate and left rear door of tne station wagon open and the items in question gone. Police officer Wing testified that he later recovered the typewriter from a Mrs. Dill, and testified further without objection that she informed him the typewriter was purchased from Ted, a member of the group in which the defendant had been placed. None of this evidence was disputed by the defendant, who produced no other evidence of his own at trial and whose sole defense was that the chief witness was an accomplice.
*611The testimony of an accomplice is corroborated under I.C. § 19-21J if the evidence “tends to connect the defendant with the commission of the offense * * *
[and does not merely show] the commission of the offense or the circumstances thereof.” There is no general rule governing the quantum of evidence required, but it is well settled that the corroborative evidence need not be sufficient by itself to prove guilt, nor need it support the testimony of the accomplice on every material fact.6 The evidence by itself may be slight and entirely circumstantial so long as it legitimately “tends to connect” the accused with commission of the offense.7 It is instructive to note our application of these rules to analogous facts in State v. Bassett.8 In that case the defendant in question was convicted of stealing and killing a steer belonging to another. The corroborating evidence placed the defendant in a group with a co-defendant and the testifying accomplice, place the group at the scene of the crime, and traced physical evidence of the crime to the group. The testimony of the accomplice identified the defendant as a culpable party within the group. The corroborative evidence was found sufficient and the judgment of conviction was affirmed. In that decision we recognized that testimony of an accomplice is necessary to identify culpable members of a group when the entire group may consist of principals or accomplices. If the group could not be pierced in this fashion, it would be possible for each member to escape criminal liability merely by asserting the culpability of the others.
This analysis is applicable to the present case. Evidence independent of the accomplice’s testimony placed the defendant in a specified group, placed a corresponding group at the scene of the crime, and traced the contraband to the specified group. Testimony of the accomplice pierced the group to identify the defendant as a culpable party. On this basis it might be persuasively argued that the corroborating evidence satisfied the requirements of I.C. § 19-2117. At the very least there was sufficient corroboration to render improper a peremptory instruction to the jury based on a finding by the court that there was no corroborating evidence whatsoever. In light of our holding that the chief witness was an accomplice, the State is entitled to a new trial at which the jury is properly instructed on corroboration.
I.C. § 19-2821 empowers this Court to order a new trial on reversal. Such an order is made on the Court’s own motion because the right to move for new trial is reserved by I.C. § 19-2406 to the defendant. Of course, we should refrain from exercising this statutory power to act on our own motion if the rights of the defendant would be prejudiced. However, the corroboration issue has been raised by defendant’s request that we review Instruction 17 in light of I.C. § 19-2117. Moreover, there has been no judgment in favor of defendant in this case; judgment of conviction was entered pursuant to a verdict of guilty. No prejudice to the defendant would result from a new trial. To the contrary, discharge of the defendant without a new trial penalizes the State for an erroneous instruction which it did not request and to which it objected. More importantly, it compromises the fundamental public interest in having this defendant’s true guilt or innocence properly determined under the law.
The case should be remanded for a new trial.

. E. g., State v. Smith, 30 Idaho 337, 164 P. 519 (1917).

. See State v. Gillum, 39 Idaho 457, 228 P. 334 (1924).

. State v. Powaukee, 78 Idaho 257, 300 P.2d 488 (1956); State v. Adair, 70 Idaho 486, 222 P.2d 741 (1950); State v. McCarty, 47 Idaho 117, 272 P. 695 (1928).

. State v. Puckett, 88 Idaho 546, 401 P.2d 784 (1965); State v. McCallum, 77 Idaho 489, 295 P.2d 259 (1956).

. State v. Grow, 93 Idaho 588, 591, 468 P.2d 320, 323 (1970).

. State v. Gillum, supra note 2.

. State v. McCandless, 70 Idaho 468, 222 P.2d 156 (1950); State v. Mundell, 66 Idaho 339, 158 P.2d 799 (1945); State v. Brown, 53 Idaho 576, 26 P.2d 131 (1933); State v. Orr, 53 Idaho 452, 24 P.2d 679 (1933).

. 86 Idaho 277, 385 P.2d 246 (1963).