State v. King, 2014–0576
Citation | 168 N.H. 340,127 A.3d 1255 |
Decision Date | 10 November 2015 |
Docket Number | No. 2014–0576,2014–0576 |
Parties | The STATE of New Hampshire v. Marianne KING |
Court | Supreme Court of New Hampshire |
Joseph A. Foster, attorney general (Patrick J. Queenan, assistant attorney general, on the memorandum of law and orally), for the State.
Stephanie Hausman, deputy chief appellate defender, of Concord, on the brief and orally, for the defendant.
The defendant, Marianne King, appeals her conviction by a jury on one count of theft by unauthorized taking. See RSA 637:3 (2007). She argues that the Superior Court (Garfunkel, J.) erred by giving the jury a portion of the instruction we endorsed in State v. Germain, 165 N.H. 350, 360–61, 79 A.3d 1025 (2013). We affirm.
In Germain we exercised our "supervisory jurisdiction over the trial courts of New Hampshire" by endorsing "the following model instruction regarding direct and circumstantial evidence":
Germain, 165 N.H. at 360–61, 79 A.3d 1025.
At trial, the defendant argued that it was error to instruct the jury that "if there is a conflict between witnesses who offer direct evidence concerning certain facts, you must decide which witness to believe." Id. at 361, 79 A.3d 1025. She asserted that this instruction, which, for the purposes of this appeal, we refer to as "the Germain direct-evidence instruction," was "misleading" because it conflicted with the State's burden to prove the elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt:
The trial court overruled the defendant's objection to the instruction, stating: "As we discussed, the New Hampshire Supreme Court has instructed us to give this instruction exactly as it appears, and so the instruction will remain."
In addition to giving the jury the entire instruction we endorsed in Germain, the trial court instructed:
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