Court Opinion

ID: 9540175
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:13:21.331379+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:59:41.259632
License: Public Domain

BERMAN, Judge,
dissenting.
Respectfully, I dissent.
The majority holds that the jury in this case was not improperly instructed as to the use to which evidence of good character may be put. I cannot agree.
In the first place, the given character evidence instruction does not conform to Colo. J.I. — Crim. 4:14; consequently, it dis-serves the purpose for which our “uniform” instructions have been promulgated. In that regard, the Reporter of the Supreme Court’s Committee on Uniform Criminal Jury Instructions stated in the general directions for use of Colo. J.I. — Crim.:
“The major effort of this project has been to present uniformity; uniformity of instructions in criminal cases where now much disparity exists depending upon counsel, the judge, and the court location for the correctness and completeness of instructions.”
What is of greater concern to me, though, is the likelihood that the instruction given in this case caused the jury to mis-weigh evidence of defendant’s good character. The last sentence of the instruction reads as follows:
*615“If on all the evidence you believe in the guilt of the defendant beyond a reasonable doubt, he may not be acquitted solely upon the ground of . . . good moral character or good reputation for truth and veracity.”
Such language could well have induced the jurors to disregard the instruction as a whole until they had reviewed the entire case. If upon such review the jury thought the defendant guilty, the further effect of the sentence in question could have been to induce the jury to give character evidence no consideration whatever. Such a consequence would, at the very least, have resulted in the jury’s disregarding that portion of the charge which states:
“No single one of these instructions states all the law applicable to the case, but all of these instructions must be taken, read and considered together, as they are connected with and related to each other as a whole.” (emphasis added)
Hence, on the one hand, the jurors were instructed to consider all instructions together. On the other hand, they were, in effect, instructed to ignore the character evidence instruction unless, on all the evidence, they did not believe in the defendant’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Thus, the instructions given are mutually inconsistent.
Equally unfortunate, however, is the internal inconsistency of the character evidence instruction itself. In that instruction, the jury was told that character evidence
“may be used by you in conjunction with all the evidence presented in reaching your decision and such evidence is competent as evidence tending to generate a reasonable doubt of guilt of the defendant as to the offense charged [, and that i]t is entirely within the province of the jury to determine what weight shall be given this evidence.” (emphasis added)
In contrast, the selfsame instruction’s previously quoted last sentence suggests that character evidence may not be used unless the jury already entertains doubt as to defendant’s guilt.
Given such mutual and internal inconsistency of instructions, the potential to confuse and mislead the jury cannot be disputed.
Finally, the nature of these instructions is such as to create a hierarchy among them, that is, there are now major instructions which cannot be disregarded, and minor ones which the jury may disregard. This is hardly a situation conducive to uniformity.
We have previously had occasion to remind the trial courts that the pattern jury instructions should be given, and have reversed where they were not. People v. Zuniga, Colo.App., 631 P.2d 1157 (1981); People v. Sandoval, 42 Colo.App. 503, 596 P.2d 1225 (1979). A misstatement of the law in an instruction is more likely to be prejudicial than an omission or an incomplete instruction. Henderson v. Kibbe, 431 U.S. 145, 97 S.Ct. 1730, 52 L.Ed.2d 203 (1977). Such was the view of Judge Learned Hand, who stated in Nash v. United States, 54 F.2d 1006 (2d Cir. 1932), that “evidence of good character is to be used like any other, once it gets before the jury, and the less they are told about the grounds for its admission, or what they shall do with it, the more likely they are to use it sensibly.”
In my view, Edgington v. United States, 164 U.S. 361, 17 S.Ct. 72, 41 L.Ed. 467 (1896), accurately states the law, and Colo. J.I. — Crim. 4:14 more closely follows the law announced there than does the instruction given in the instant case. The federal courts, amongst others, follow Edgington, and so should we.
I would reverse the judgment and remand for a new trial.