Court Opinion

ID: 9549852
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 18:25:40.051593+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:20:59.134640
License: Public Domain

STEWART, Justice
(concurring in the result):
I concur in the majority opinion, but write separately because the opinion can be read to support a view of the law that I think is not correct. The trial court gave the jury instructions on the critical beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard that I submit are incorrect and perpetuate erroneous ideas about the meaning of the term “beyond a reasonable doubt” that is often insinuated into jury instructions.
The trial court instructed the jury as follows:
INSTRUCTION NO. 11
Proof beyond a reasonable doubt is that degree of proof that satisfies the *1148mind and convinces the understanding of those who are bound to act conscientiously upon it. It must arise from the evidence or lack of evidence in the case.
If, after an impartial consideration and comparison of all the evidence, you can honestly say that you are not satisfied of the defendant’s guilt, you have a reasonable doubt; but if, after such impartial consideration and comparison of all the evidence, you can truthfully say that you have an abiding conviction of the defendant’s guilt such as you would be willing to act upon in the more weighty and important matters relating to your own affairs, you have no reasonable doubt.
INSTRUCTION NO. 12
The law does not require demonstration of that degree of proof which, excluding all possibility of error, produces absolute certainty, for such degree of proof is rarely possible. Only that degree of proof is necessary which convinces the mind and directs and satisfies the conscience of those who are bound to act conscientiously upon it.
In my view, each of the instructions misstates the law, to one degree or another. Each allows the jury to convict on something less than evidence proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. The lead opinion points out that no valid objection was taken to the instructions. I agree. However, the defendant did request an instruction which stated that reasonable doubt “is not a mere possible doubt.... It is the state of the case which after the entire comparison and consideration of all of the evidence leaves the mind[s] of the Jurors in that condition that they cannot say they feel an abiding conviction to a moral certainty of the truth of the charge.” Although the defendant’s instruction also leaves something to be desired, it comes closer to conveying the essential meaning of the legal concept of proof beyond a reasonable doubt than does the trial court’s instruction. Even though the instructions given in this case do not rise to the level of reversible error, we should not, in my view, leave an impression that the instructions were correct.
The instructions given in this case are not precisely the same as the instructions given in State v. Ireland, 773 P.2d 1375 (Utah 1989), but the point I made in that case is applicable here also. There, I stated in a dissenting opinion:
A number of courts have criticized the definition of the reasonable doubt standard expressed in terms of making important or “weighty” decisions in the jurors’ own lives. An instruction that does that tends to diminish and trivialize the constitutionally required burden-of-proof standard. See Dunn v. Perrin, 570 F.2d 21 (1st Cir.), cert. denied, 437 U.S. 910, 98 S.Ct. 3102, 57 L.Ed.2d 1141 (1978). In Scurry [v. U.S.], 347 F.2d [468] at 470 [D.C.Cir.1965] Judge Skelly Wright stated:
A prudent person called upon to act in an important business or family matter would certainly gravely weigh the often neatly balanced considerations and risks tending in both directions. But, in making and acting on a judgment after so doing, such a person would not necessarily be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that he made the right judgment. Human experience, unfortunately, is to the contrary.
The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts in Commonwealth v. Ferreira, 373 Mass. 116, 130, 364 N.E.2d 1264, 1273 (1977), stated:
The degree of certainty required to convict is unique to the criminal law. We do not think that people customarily make private decisions according to this standard nor may it even be possible to do so. Indeed, we suspect that were this standard mandatory in private affairs the result would be massive inertia. Individuals may often have the luxury of undoing private mistakes; a verdict of guilty is frequently irrevocable. (Footnotes omitted.)
Finally, I submit that it is inappropriate to instruct that a reasonable doubt is not merely a possibility, as the instruction in this case does. Possibilities may or may not create doubt. Depending on *1149the circumstances, a possibility may constitute a reasonable doubt. Whether a possibility is sufficient to create a reasonable doubt depends upon the likelihood of the possibility. Certainly a fanciful or wholly speculative possibility ought not to defeat proof beyond a reasonable doubt. But the instruction does not make the point clear.
An instruction that a reasonable doubt must be a “real, substantial doubt, and not one that is merely possible or imaginary” has been held to be erroneous because, in practical effect, it tends to diminish the prosecution’s burden of proof by implying that the prosecution need not obviate a real or substantial doubt. See, e.g., Dunn v. Perrin; United States v. Flannery, 451 F.2d 880, 882-83 (1st Cir.1971).
In my view, the trial court’s instruction was clearly erroneous and ought to be so declared.
Ireland at 1378 (footnote omitted).
For the foregoing reasons, I believe the instructions in this case were incorrect.
DURHAM and ZIMMERMAN, JJ., concur in the concurring opinion of STEWART, J.