Court Opinion

ID: 9741528
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 20:57:18.386446+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:24.517796
License: Public Domain

DeBRULER, Justice,
dissenting:
I respectfully dissent. In particular I cannot agree that it was not error to instruct the jury that its duty is to determine the “guilt or innocence” of the defendant. The entire instruction containing this command reads as follows:
You must determine the guilt or innocence of the defendant, and if you have a reasonable doubt as to guilt of the crime charged, or any offense included thereunder, then you must find the defendant not guilty.
However, if you find that the state has proven beyond a reasonable doubt the material allegations of the charge against the defendant, or any offense included thereunder, then you must find the defendant guilty. Proper verdict forms will be furnished for your use: Furthermore your sole responsibility is to determine innocence or guilt herein, and should there be a finding of guilty, sentencing responsibility is that of the trial judge alone.
In Taylor v. State (1981), Ind., 420 N.E.2d 1231, this Court concluded that in a trial on habitual offender allegations the wording of a court’s instruction which called for a finding of “innocence or guilt” was improper, but such wording did not constitute fundamental error requiring reversal in absence of an objection to such instruction at trial. The majority opinion interprets the case of Abercrombie v. State (1985), Ind., 478 N.E.2d 1236, as holding that Taylor had approved such instruction, whereas the loose language in that opinion is correctly interpreted to mean that Taylor upheld the instruction over a claim that it was “fundamental error,” thus again refusing as in Taylor to judge in the absence of an objection at trial whether the instruction was simple error. Here, defense counsel made proper and timely objections to the instruction that the trial judge fully considered and rejected.
At the present time, an Indiana jury in a criminal case has no duty to determine the innocence of the accused, and it is improper to so instruct a jury. Taylor, 420 N.E.2d 1231. State v. Brouillette, 286 N.W.2d 702 *374(Minn.1979). Such improper instructions are diametrically opposed to the instruction that the jury must presume innocence until they are persuaded of guilt.
Here, the instruction, unlike the instructions considered in Taylor and Abercrom-bie employs the improper language not once but twice. The jury was first instructed that they “must determine the guilt or innocence of the defendant” and then against that they were instructed that their “sole responsibility is to determine innocence or guilt herein.” This instruction appears toward the end of all instructions and may therefore have been deemed to be in further explanation of that which was included in all prior instructions. For these reasons, the impropriety in it is even more forcefully presented. I would hold that this instruction was error because a reasonable juror could have interpreted it as modifying the previous instruction on presumption of innocence by calling for the jury to abandon that presumption in arriving at its conclusion, and to instead compare the relative merits of inferences of guilt and innocence arising from the evidence at trial. See Cage v. Louisiana, — U.S. -, 111 S.Ct. 328, 112 L.Ed.2d 339 (1990).
Erroneous instructions, do not mandate reversal. Here, however, the major body of evidence of appellant’s guilt is not without weakness. The victim of this brutal attack was seriously injured about the head, in intensive care for two days, and consequently would have had some difficulty in recalling his attacker. Appellant’s fingerprints were taken from a safe that had been moved from a secretary’s office within the school, an item to which appellant, as a student in that school, may have had previous access. I cannot say that the giving of this erroneous instruction was harmless error. I would therefore reverse for a new trial.
DICKSON, J., concurs.