Court Opinion

ID: 9797134
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 04:14:15.135871+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:52:46.811554
License: Public Domain

GOLDEN, Justice,
dissenting.
[124] The majority opinion determines that mens rea is a required element of the offense of escape as charged and therefore it is reversible error if the jury is not instructed thereon. I fail to see such an element in the statute. To refresh-Seymore was charged under Wyo. Stat. Ann. § 6-5-206(a) which states that "[a] person commits a crime if he escapes from official detention." Clearly absent from the statute is a requirement of mens rea. The statute defines a strict liability crime. Had the Wyoming Legislature intended to make escape under this statute a general intent crime, it could have included a mens rea requirement as it did in Wyo. Stat. Ann. § 7-16-809, which defines an escape from a work release program to require an "intentional act." Because I find escape as defined by § 6-5-206 to be a strict liability crime, the jury instructions correctly excluded mens rea as an element of the crime.
[T25] As for the prosecutor's statements, I have reviewed the trial transcript in its entirety. I find I must agree with Justice Hill While some of the prosecutor's statements certainly are improper when read in isolation, when considered in the proper context and in the context of the entire record, as we must, the comments are not enough, in my estimation, to require reversal.