Court Opinion

ID: 9860518
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 23:24:31.230971+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:16:04.496589
License: Public Domain

*245TERNUS, Justice
(concurring specially).
I concur specially to state my disagreement with the majority’s interpretation of Iowa Rule of Criminal Procedure 21(2). I think this rule requires the court to submit a special interrogatory requested by the defendant when the interrogatory is directed to whether a witness is an accomplice. In pertinent part the rule provides that the jury “must ... return answers to special interrogatories submitted by the court ... at the request of the defendant in prosecutions where ... it is claimed any witness is an accomplice....” The majority interprets this rule to simply mean that the jury must answer special interrogatories that the court, in its discretion, chooses to submit. But if that is true, what is the purpose of including in the rule the specific categories of interrogatories to which the rule is applicable? Do these categories merely describe the interrogatories that the jury “must” answer? If the court submits a special interrogatory requested by the defendant on an issue not encompassed within these categories, does the jury have the discretion to refuse to answer the interrogatory?
I think a more sensible interpretation of the rule starts with the premise that the jury must answer any interrogatory submitted to it by the court. Rule 21(2) was surely not intended to merely restate this basic proposition. Rather, rule 21(2) specifies those categories of interrogatories that the court must submit at the request of the defendant. I readily concede the rule could have been more artfully drafted. But if the jury must answer interrogatories requested by the defendant on these issues, as the rule clearly states, then it follows that the court must submit such interrogatories when requested in order to give the jury the opportunity to answer them. I would hold the trial court erred in refusing to give the defendant’s requested interrogatory on whether Walker and Palmer were accomplices.
SNELL, J., joins this special concurrence.