Toliver v. State

355 N.E.2d 856, 171 Ind. App. 235, 1976 Ind. App. LEXIS 1083
CourtIndiana Court of Appeals
DecidedOctober 28, 1976
Docket2-476A150
StatusPublished
Cited by8 cases

This text of 355 N.E.2d 856 (Toliver v. State) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Indiana Court of Appeals primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Toliver v. State, 355 N.E.2d 856, 171 Ind. App. 235, 1976 Ind. App. LEXIS 1083 (Ind. Ct. App. 1976).

Opinions

White, J.

Convicted of assault with intent to commit statutory rape, appellant was sentenced to imprisonment for one (1) year. His appeal claims error: (1) In the court’s giving its instruction on (a) reasonable doubt and (b) the jury’s duty to reason together; (2) In refusing to give" (a) appellant’s instruction on degree of certainty and (b) his instruction on mistake as to victim’s age. Finding merit in (1) (b) and (2) (a), we reverse.

I.

Appellant objects to the giving of paragraphs five and seven of the trial court’s preliminary instruction 3P which reads as follows:

“[1] This formal charge is no evidence of guilt. ■ It merely defines the accusation and limits it to the statutory crime. It, with the plea of Not Guilty, form the issue to be tried.
“[2] The burden is always upon the State to prove— never upon the accused to disprove — guilt. You must reconcile the evidence upon the theory of innocence, if that can reasonably be done.
“[3] In this process you must continuously presume innocence, until and unless, after full deliberations, each of you find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
“[4] A reasonable doubt is not a fanciful doubt. It is a doubt which arises from the evidence, the lack of evidence of a conflict in the evidence. ,
“[5] It is a doubt which would disturb the conscience of a resolute and decent person who is sincerely devoted to justice for everyone, without regard to his or her status in life or society.
[237]*237“ [6] Each of you'must be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt before you can, under your oath, vote for guilt.
“[7] But under the same oath each of you are obligated to listen to differing views, with a willingness to be convinced. It is your duty to reason with each other in an honest effort to arrive at a jusf verdict.
“[8] Since you are the judges of the law you should give the accused the benefit of any reasonable doubt as to the law.
“[9] But you are bound by your oaths to apply the law as it exists, not as you believe it should be, either as to what constitutes a crime or the penalty the law prescribes for committing that crime.
“ [10] These are the standards you must honor — and be governed by — in a criminal trial.
“[11] These rules are not intended to shield the guilty. They are humane rules designed to guard against the unjust punishment of the innocent.”

The court refused to give appellant’s tendered instruction which follows:

“The rule touching reasonable doubt can be and is thus stated for your guidance. If you and each of you are so convinced by the evidence, and considering all of the facts and circumstances in the evidence as a whole, of the guilt of the defendant, that as prudent men and women you would feel safe to act upon such conviction in a matter of the highest concern and importance to your own dearest and most important interests where there was no compulsion or coercion upon you to act at all, then you will have attained such degree of certainty as excludes reasonable doubt and authorizes conviction. If you are not so convinced by all the facts and circumstances in the evidence as a whole of the guilt of the defendant then you should acquit him.”

Since the only specific objection he makes to- the court’s fifth paragraph is that it omits the language of his instruction, we consider only whether it was error to refuse-his.

■ The two instructions speak of opposite aspects of the rule of reasonable doubt: The court’s of doubt, the appellant’s of certainty. The court gave no instruction which described [238]*238the degree of certainty of guilt the evidence must produce to justify conviction.

The State does not contend that there is anything erroneous, confusing, or misleading in appellant’s instruction. The long history of Indiana Supreme Court approval of the wording of the instruction precludes such an argument. That history begins with Bradley v. State (1870), 31 Ind. 492, and continues to the present in Vacendak v. State (1976), 264 Ind. 101, 340 N.E.2d 352, 361, the latest of many intervening expressions of approval which have quoted the following from Baker v. State (1956), 236 Ind. 55, 61, 138 N.E.2d 641, 644:

“The rule of law defining proof beyond a reasonable doubt has been well settled for many years and requires each juror to be so convinced by the evidence that as a prudent man he would feel safe to act upon such conviction in matters of the highest concern and importance to his own dearest and most important interests, under circumstances where there was no compulsion or coercion upon him to act at all. Chambers v. State (1953), 232 Ind. 349, 356, 111 N.E.2d 816; Morgan v. State (1921), 190 Ind. 411, 130 N.E. 528; Bradley v. State (1870), 31 Ind. 492.”

The State correctly asserts that no Indiana case has disapproved a reasonable doubt instruction because it omitted the language of appellant’s instruction, but cites no case in which such an omission was at issue. However, we note that in Williams v. State (1974), 162 Ind. App. 57, (rehearing den.), 314 N.E.2d 764, 766, the court found no error in the trial court’s deletion of a much differently worded standard of juror certainty because “[t]he reasonable doubt standard was covered in several other instructions.” The instructions which Williams quotes contain no reference to degree of juror certainty but they do require the State to establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt without defining it. We agree with the Williams result because we consider the deleted language to be both confusing and without validating precedent.

[239]*239The State has correctly cited Brewer v. State (1969), 253 Ind. 154, 162, 252 N.E.2d 429, for the proposition that an instruction is not erroneous merely because it does not state a rule of law in a particular way. But the question here is not whether, as in Brewer, the instruction given is a correct statement of a rule of law, but whether it is a complete statement of the rule. More specifically whether appellant has a right to have the court’s reasonable doubt instruction supplemented by his instruction which looks at the other side of the coin; the degree of certainty required to remove reasonable doubt. That an accused has such a right when he tenders a proper instruction is clearly implied in Bradley, Baker, Vacendak, and the many intervening opinions which have approved the Bradley language.

Appellant’s short and unimpressive argument that the seventh paragraph of the above quoted Instruction 3P is erroneous merits no consideration because he made no objection in the trial court prior to the reading of the instruction nor in his motion to correct errors.

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

Decker v. State
386 N.E.2d 192 (Indiana Court of Appeals, 1979)
McKinley v. State
379 N.E.2d 968 (Indiana Supreme Court, 1978)
Ingle v. State
377 N.E.2d 885 (Indiana Court of Appeals, 1978)
Lash v. State
367 N.E.2d 10 (Indiana Court of Appeals, 1977)
Randolph v. State
361 N.E.2d 900 (Indiana Supreme Court, 1977)
Toliver v. State
355 N.E.2d 856 (Indiana Court of Appeals, 1976)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
355 N.E.2d 856, 171 Ind. App. 235, 1976 Ind. App. LEXIS 1083, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/toliver-v-state-indctapp-1976.