Court Opinion

ID: 9749087
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 16:23:55.247421+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:43.898053
License: Public Domain

WEISBERGER, Justice,
concurring.
In light of the opinion of the Supreme Court in Sandstrom v. Montana, 442 U.S. 510, 99 S.Ct. 2450, 61 L.Ed.2d 39 (1979), I agree that the result reached by the majority was inevitable and I concur therein. However, I have a few comments that I should like to add in connection with State v. McGehearty, R.I., 394 A.2d 1348 (1978), and the implications of Sandstrom.
First in regard to McGehearty, I agree that in a situation like the one in the case at bar, when counsel could not have reasonably foreseen a holding of this court or of the Supreme Court of the United States upon which to base a constitutional challenge, a defendant should not be precluded from raising a novel constitutional claim for the first time on appeal. However, upon reflection, in future cases in which a constitutional issue is sought to be raised, if counsel should have been aware of such issue at the time of trial and nevertheless fails to preserve the issue for review, I would advocate that this court decline to review such a point, whether or not a “deliberate bypass” or “trial strategy” has been discerned from the record. See Wainwright v. Sykes, 433 U.S. 72, 97 S.Ct. 2497, 53 L.Ed.2d 594 (1977).
In respect to the implications of Sand-strom, I believe that in any event this case sounds the deathknell of the use of the term “presumption” in criminal cases. This process began in Tot v. United States, 319 U.S. 463, 63 S.Ct. 1241, 87 L.Ed. 1519 (1943), when the Court assumed that Congress could not constitutionally establish a mandatory inference bearing on an element in a criminal case. Relying upon the holding in Tot, we recognized in In re Vincent, R.I., 413 A.2d 78 (1980), that a statutory presumption was merely a legislatively authorized inference and that such presumptions are permissive rather than mandatory. We stated that the trier of fact, judge or jury, is free to accept or reject the inference in each case. Id. 413 A.2d at 81; State v. Neary, R.I., 409 A.2d 551, 555 (1979).
As a consequence, the use of the term “presumption,” with its connotation of mandating that an inference be drawn creates unnecessary confusion in the minds of jurors, to say nothing of appellate courts. Therefore, I would suggest that the use of the term “presumption” in criminal jury instructions be abandoned and that the term “inference” be substituted therefor.1 *242By casting the instructions in terms of permissive inferences, the trial justice avoids not only the danger of appearing to remove a factual issue from the consideration of the jury, see McFarland v. American Sugar Refining Co., 241 U.S. 79, 36 S.Ct. 498, 60 L.Ed. 899 (1916), but also avoids the burden-shifting connotations that accompany presumptions. For an interesting analysis of this subject, see Nesson, Reasonable Doubt and Permissive Inferences: The Value of Complexity, 92 Harv.L.Rev. 1187 (1979); also see 9 Wigmore, Evidence § 2491 (Chadbourn rev. 1981).

. Of course, this substitution would not apply to the presumption of innocence to which the Supreme Court of the United States is fully devoted. Taylor v. Kentucky, 436 U.S. 478, 98 S.Ct. 1930, 56 L.Ed.2d 468 (1978).