Court Opinion

ID: 9758823
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 23:51:21.345791+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:56.515546
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
BATTAGLIA, Judge,
which HARRELL and GREENE, Judges, join.
I respectfully dissent. This Court has never required that a trial judge give a verbatim recitation of the Maryland Criminal Pattern Jury Instruction defining reasonable doubt for the *374trial court’s instruction to be deemed an accurate statement of the law. Moreover, it is inconceivable that this Court could issue a holding requiring that trial judges provide the Maryland Criminal Pattern Jury Instruction explanation of reasonable doubt without first addressing whether the instruction at issue in the present case was defective under our established caselaw. The majority is essentially overruling our precedent regarding this issue in favor of the reasoning explicated in the concurrence in Wills v. State, 329 Md. 370, 620 A.2d 295 (1993), which advocated the strict adherence to the language of the pattern jury instruction.
We consistently have stated that “[o]ur opinions have refrained from adopting a boiler plate explanation of reasonable doubt.” Wills, 329 Md. at 382, 620 A.2d at 301; see also Merzbacher v. State, 346 Md. 391, 399, 697 A.2d 432, 436 (1997) (“While we agree that [Maryland Criminal Pattern Jury Instruction] 2:02 provides an adequate, if not preferable, explanation of the reasonable doubt standard, we in no way intimated in Wills that 2:02 is the definitive statement of the concept.”); Hunt v. State, 345 Md. 122, 151-52, 691 A.2d 1255, 1269 (1997) (stating that there are no magic words that must be included in a reasonable doubt instruction for it to be acceptable); Montgomery v. State, 292 Md. 84, 95, 437 A.2d 654, 659-60 (1981) (“[W]e hasten to add that this is not the only satisfactory explanation of reasonable doubt and we decline to prescribe an instruction that will apply in every case.”). Moreover, our jurisprudence is congruent with the United States Supreme Court’s admonition in Victor v. Nebraska, 511 U.S. 1, 114 S.Ct. 1239, 127 L.Ed.2d 583 (1994), that
[S]o long as the court instructs the jury on the necessity that the defendant’s guilt be proved beyond a reasonable doubt, ... the Constitution does not require that any particular form of words be used in advising the jury of the government’s burden of proof.
Id. at 5, 114 S.Ct. at 1243, 127 L.Ed.2d at 590.
The instruction in the present case provided the jury with an adequate alternative definition of the concept of reasonable *375doubt. The trial judge informed that jury that the defendant was presumed innocent, that the State bears the burden of proving the guilt of the defendant beyond a reasonable doubt, which he defined as “proof as would convince you of the truth of a fact to the extent that you would be willing to act upon such belief without reservation in an important matter in your own business or personal affairs,” and that the defendant is not required to prove his innocence. The definition of “reasonable doubt” as given is accurate. The deviations from the pattern jury instruction did not result in an erroneous description of the term. The jury was not led to believe that the State bore a lesser burden of proof, nor was the jury misinformed as to the defendant’s burden of proof.
Mr. Ruffin asserts that the trial judge’s omission of the final sentence of the pattern jury instruction renders the instruction constitutionally deficient. I would disagree. The final sentence, which states, “However, if you are not satisfied of the defendant’s guilt to that extent, then reasonable doubt exists and the defendant must be found not guilty,” merely iterates the logical conclusion should the jurors determine that the State has not carried its burden of proof regarding the defendant’s guilt. The sentence is not required for a juror to adequately understand the meaning of reasonable doubt, nor does its omission result in the instruction being skewed in favor of the State. The substance of the instruction given to the jury ensures that the jury knew that it should return a verdict of guilty only upon the State proving the defendant’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, and that conversely it is required to return a verdict of not guilty if a reasonable doubt existed. Therefore, 1 would conclude that the absence of the final sentence of the pattern jury instruction did not deprive Mr. Ruffin of a substantive part of the instruction as he asserts and that the instruction passed constitutional muster.
Mr. Ruffin’s two other contentions, specifically that the trial judge substituted “until” for “unless,” and that he added to the definition of reasonable doubt that it is “not a fanciful doubt, a whimsical doubt or a capricious doubt,” were not raised at trial, and as such are only reviewable under the plain error *376doctrine. We previously have noted that our discretion under the plain error doctrine should only be brought to bear when the error raised is “compelling, extraordinary, exceptional, or fundamental to assure the defendant a fair trial.” Richmond v. State, 330 Md. 223, 236, 623 A.2d 630, 636 (1993). I would conclude that, if we were to address the remaining issues raised by Mr. Ruffin, there was no error.
Mr. Ruffin’s assertion that the substitution of “until” for “unless” is error is not supported by our jurisprudence. In our decision in Williams v. State, 322 Md. 35, 585 A.2d 209 (1991), we noted that a presumption of innocence instruction should include the “heart of the principle,” which is that “the accused stands innocent until the jury is convinced that he is guilty upon evidence placed before it which is legally sufficient to sustain its verdict.” Id. at 48, 585 A.2d at 215. Because we have previously approved of the use of “until” in delineating the “heart of the principle,” the trial judge cannot have erred in complying with our prior iteration. Moreover, because the rest of the trial judge’s instruction was nearly identical to the pattern jury instruction, I would find that the change of the single word was not error.
Furthermore, I would find that Mr. Ruffin’s final contention also is without merit. He argues that the description of reasonable doubt as “not a fanciful doubt, a whimsical doubt or a capricious doubt” results in a “higher degree of doubt” required. This phrase was part of the Maryland Pattern Jury Instruction until 1999, when it was omitted in the course of the revision of the pattern instructions. The Supreme Court in Victor v. Nebraska, supra, described reasonable doubt as not being “[a] fanciful doubt.” 511 U.S. at 17, 114 S.Ct. at 1248, 127 L.Ed.2d at 597. Even assuming that such language was error, the instruction as a whole still clearly and properly conveyed the principles underlying reasonable doubt to the jury. Therefore, I would conclude that the instruction given in the case sub judice is consistent with the principles explicated in our prior caselaw regarding jury instructions on reasonable doubt.
*377Although the majority purports to be urging merely that the trial courts “closely adhere” to the reasonable doubt instruction delineated in the Maryland Criminal Pattern Jury Instruction, as this Court has done throughout its precedent, it is in fact rejecting our prior assertion that “[t]o suggest that reasonable doubt is best defined by a particular set of words strung in a specific order pretends a mathematical rectitude which, even in the best of circumstances, does not exist in the deliberative process.” Merzbacher, 346 Md. at 404, 697 A.2d at 438. I would continue to entrust the formulation of jury instructions about reasonable doubt to the trial court’s “best legal judgment” within the principles delineated in Wills:
It is better that the explanation begin with a statement of the principle of presumption of innocence which places the burden of proof on the State, where it remains throughout the trial. The State is not required to prove guilt beyond all possible doubt or to a mathematical certainty, but it is not enough if the evidence shows that the defendant is probably guilty. Nor is it sufficient that reasonable doubt is defined only by its own terms. The explanation should focus on the term ‘reasonable doubt,’ so as to bring home to the jury clearly that the corpus delicti of the crime and the criminal agency of the accused must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt.
Wills, 329 Md. at 382-83, 620 A.2d at 301. In the present case, the instruction did not expand upon the pattern instruction; rather, it adhered to the simple austerity of the suggested pattern instruction.
In light of our established precedent, I would affirm the judgment of the Court of Special Appeals and Judges Harrell and Greene authorize me to state that they join this dissent.