Court Opinion

ID: 9544845
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 17:02:28.1543+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:13:42.560162
License: Public Domain

LINDE, J.,
dissenting.
I join in the Court’s statement of the law applicable to this case. I disagree only with the conclusion that defendant did not adequately bring to the trial court’s attention that the instruction on the knowledge required for guilt of the first count, promoting gambling, was erroneous.
The trial court told the jury:
“I instruct you that it is not necessary for the State to prove that the defendant knew that the gambling he promoted was illegal if you find he promoted gambling. Knowledge or appreciation that the conduct in question was illegal is not an element of the offense of promoting unlawful gambling.”
After the jury retired, the defense counsel stated his exceptions. With respect to the quoted instruction, he said:
“The last and final exception we’d have would be the Court’s giving the instruction, I don’t believe the State requested it, and I asked for just the one that knowledge on the part of the defendant in the promotion charge is not an element of the offense, and we feel that it is. I think the Court gave that specific instruction.
THE COURT: “Was it State’s 8?
*666MR. JENSEN: “Oh, it is. It is State’s exhibit (sic) 8, Your Honor.
“We except to that based on our position that the knowledge is a material element of the offense, so that’s all of our exceptions.”1
The instruction was erroneous insofar as it uses the words,., “was illegal” without discriminating between knowledge of the facts that make the gambling illegal and knowledge of the law. As given, the instruction says that a defendant need not know that gambling by others in fact is of a character that brings it within the prohibition. That is wrong.
It is true that defendant argued for more than this, as the Court notes. He sought an instruction that a defendant’s knowledge of the law is an element of the offense, not only his knowledge of the facts that make the gambling in question unlawful. He was not entitled to that instruction. But the fact that defendant asked too much does not mean that his exception did not raise the error in the faulty instruction that was given. He excepted to “the Court’s giving the instruction. . . that knowledge on the part of the defendant in the promotion charge is not an element of the offense, and we feel that it is.” The instruction indeed was faulty in this respect.
When the correctness of an instruction under which a jury is told to convict or acquit an accused is called into issue, both trial and reviewing courts should focus on the merits of the instruction, not on the quality of lawyers’ arguments. If the instruction cannot withstand scrutiny, no useful purpose is served by shifting an issue of proper instructions to a potential later argument over the adequacy of the defense. The exception drew the court’s attention to defendant’s claim that the state’s requested instruction, based on State v. Wright, supra n. 1, was improper. It was *667improper. For this reason, I dissent from the affirmance of the conviction on Count I.
Campbell, J. joins in this dissenting opinion.

 The State’s requested instruction no. 8 was:
“I instruct you that it is not necessary for the State to prove that the defendant knew that the gambling he promoted was illegal. Knowledge or an appreciation that the conduct in question was illegal is not an element of the offense of Promoting Unlawful Gambling,”
for which the prosecution cited State v. Wright, 21 Or App 659 (1975), ORS 161.115(4).