Court Opinion

ID: 9693494
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 16:44:53.944265+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:19:47.523229
License: Public Domain

Bogdanski, J.
(dissenting). The court’s instructions on robbery in the first degree and kidnapping in the second degree are valid under the Arroyo framework. State v. Arroyo, 180 Conn. 171, 429 A.2d 457 (1980).
The court’s charges on these crimes do not possess the potential for conclusiveness or burden-shifting that was present in Sandstrom v. Montana, 442 U.S. 510, 99 S. Ct. 2450, 61 L. Ed. 2d 39 (1979), or State v. Harrison, 178 Conn. 689, 425 A.2d 111 (1979). In fact, the attacked instructions are not cast in terms of a presumption at all. They merely say that, “[a] person acts intentionally under our law with respect to a result or to conduct described by the statute defining this offense, when its conscious objective is to cause such result or to engage in such conduct.” The court then instructed the jury to apply this definition of the word intent in their deliberations. This instruction on intent could not be reasonably construed to require a conclusive presumption or a shifting of the burden of proof. It overcame any conclusive and burden-shifting effect of the earlier instruction.
*470The court, at the start of its instructions, gave the impermissible Sandstrom charge. It gave further instructions on intent for the robbery and kidnapping charges. At the time of giving the robbery and kidnapping charges it did not refer to its earlier impermissible instructions. Therefore, we should not assume that the jury considered the Sandstrom instruction in conjunction with the robbery and kidnapping charges. Arroyo, supra, 181.
I would affirm the convictions.