State v. Reyes

• Decision Date: 07 June 2005
• Docket Number: No. 20040078.,20040078.
• Citation: 2005 UT 33,116 P.3d 305
• Parties: STATE of Utah, Plaintiff, Petitioner, and Cross-Respondent, v. German Cruz REYES, Defendant, Respondent, and Cross-Petitioner.
• Court: Utah Supreme Court

116 P.3d 305

2005 UT 33

STATE of Utah, Plaintiff, Petitioner, and Cross-Respondent, v. German Cruz REYES, Defendant, Respondent, and Cross-Petitioner.

No. 20040078.

Supreme Court of Utah.

June 7, 2005.

Mark L. Shurtleff, Att'y Gen., J. Frederic Voros, Jr., Asst. Att'y Gen., Michael E. Postma, Salt Lake City, for petitioner.

Kent R. Hart, Lisa J. Remal, Salt Lake City, for respondent.

On Certiorari to the Utah Court of Appeals

NEHRING, Justice:

INTRODUCTION

¶ 1 We granted certiorari to review the court of appeals's ruling that the reasonable doubt instruction used in the trial of German Cruz Reyes was improper because it did not specifically conform to the three-part reasonable doubt instruction upheld by this court in State v. Robertson, 932 P.2d 1219 (Utah 1997), overruled on other grounds by State v. Weeks, 2002 UT 98, ¶ 25 n. 11, 61 P.3d 1000. The State asks us to overrule Robertson. We also agreed to take up Mr. Reyes's cross-petition, which challenges the court of appeals's determination that the trial court's refusal to reread preliminary jury instructions at the close of evidence was harmless error. Because we share the court of appeals's misgivings about the wisdom of Robertson, we reverse the court of appeals's holding on the reasonable doubt instruction and announce a "safe harbor" reasonable doubt instruction. We also affirm, on other grounds, the court of appeals's decision on the timing of the jury instructions.

BACKGROUND¹

¶ 2 In 2002, the State charged Mr. Reyes with aggravated assault. Before the trial began, the court proposed reading the eighteen preliminary instructions, including instructions on the presumption of innocence and the definition of reasonable doubt. Mr. Reyes objected to an initial reading of the instructions unless the court reread the instructions at the end of the trial, arguing that a failure to recite the instructions at the close of the evidence would violate his due process rights and Utah law. Mr. Reyes also objected to the content of the trial court's reasonable doubt instruction. The instruction read:

All presumptions of law, independent of evidence, are in favor of innocence. A defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Where you are satisfied that a reasonable doubt exists as to a defendant's guilt, he/she is entitled to acquittal.

The burden is upon the prosecution to prove the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Proof beyond a reasonable doubt does not require proof to an absolute certainty. Reasonable doubt is required, not doubt which is merely possible, since everything in human affairs is open to some possible or imaginary doubt. Proof beyond a reasonable doubt is a degree of proof that satisfies your mind and convinces your conscientious understanding. Reasonable doubt is doubt entertained by reasonable men and women and arises from the evidence, or lack of evidence, in the case.

¶ 3 Mr. Reyes asserted this instruction was improper because it did not pass the three-part content test announced in State v. Robertson, 932 P.2d 1219 (Utah 1997), overruled on other grounds by State v. Weeks, 2002 UT 98, ¶ 25 n. 11, 61 P.3d 1000. Mr. Reyes cited first, the instruction's failure to comply with Robertson's mandate that a reasonable doubt instruction "specifically state that the State's proof must obviate all reasonable doubt" and, second, its improper inclusion of the phrase "doubt which is merely possible," id. at 1232.

¶ 4 The trial court turned away both of Mr. Reyes's objections. At the conclusion of opening statements, the court read the eighteen preliminary jury instructions and provided each juror with a written copy of them. The next day, before closing arguments, the court read fourteen additional instructions and again provided each juror a written copy of the instructions. The jury found Mr. Reyes guilty on both counts, and the court sentenced him to two concurrent terms of fifteen years to life. Mr. Reyes appealed.

I. THE COURT OF APPEALS REVIEWS REYES AND REASONABLE DOUBT

¶ 5 Mr. Reyes took two issues to the court of appeals. State v. Reyes, 2004 UT App 8, ¶ 1, 84 P.3d 841. First, he repeated his claim that the trial court violated his "due process and jury trial rights" under the United States Constitution because the trial court's reasonable doubt instruction did not utilize the specific language from Robertson requiring the State to "obviate all reasonable doubt" and "erroneously stated that reasonable doubt is ... not doubt which is merely possible." Id. at ¶ 16. Second, Mr. Reyes argued that when the trial court refused to reread the eighteen preliminary jury instructions at the close of evidence, it violated Utah Rule of Criminal Procedure 17(g)(6) and therefore "his due process rights to a fair trial." Id. at ¶ 23.

¶ 6 Mr. Reyes argued that the "beyond a reasonable doubt" jury instruction was defective because it failed to comport with the Robertson test. Id. at ¶ 16. The court of appeals took up its analysis of Mr. Reyes's challenge not with Robertson, but with the United States Supreme Court's most recent pronouncement on reasonable doubt in Victor v. Nebraska, 511 U.S. 1, 114 S.Ct. 1239, 127 L.Ed.2d 583 (1994). In Victor, the Supreme Court held:

The beyond a reasonable doubt standard is a requirement of due process, but the Constitution neither prohibits trial courts from defining reasonable doubt nor requires them to do so as a matter of course. Indeed, so long as the court instructs the jury on the necessity that the defendant's guilt be proved beyond a reasonable doubt,... the Constitution does not require that any particular form of words be used in advising the jury of the government's burden of proof. Rather, taken as a whole, the instructions [must] correctly convey the concept of reasonable doubt to the jury.

Id. at 5, 114 S.Ct. 1239 (emphasis added) (citations omitted).

¶ 7 The court of appeals contrasted the Supreme Court's guidance on reasonable doubt with ours in Robertson. Robertson, which has been our sole occasion to review a "beyond a reasonable doubt" instruction since the Supreme Court handed down Victor, did not acknowledge the existence of Victor. Instead, we ratified and applied a three-part evaluative model first suggested by Justice Stewart in his dissent in State v. Ireland, 773 P.2d 1375, 1380-82 (Utah 1989) (Stewart, J., dissenting). Robertson described the test as follows:

First, "the instruction should specifically state that the State's proof must obviate all reasonable doubt." Second, the instruction should not state that a reasonable doubt is one which "would govern or control a person in the more weighty affairs of life," as such an instruction tends to trivialize the decision of whether to convict. Third, "it is inappropriate to instruct that a reasonable doubt is not merely a possibility," although it is permissible to instruct that a "fanciful or wholly speculative possibility ought not to defeat proof beyond a reasonable doubt."

Robertson, 932 P.2d at 1232 (citations omitted).

¶ 8 The court of appeals hewed tightly to the Robertson test in assessing Mr. Reyes's challenge. It held that the reasonable doubt instruction given the jury in Mr. Reyes's trial failed the first and third Robertson elements, and it accordingly remanded for a new trial. Reyes, 2004 UT App 8 at ¶¶ 21-22, 84 P.3d 841. The court of appeals reached its holding reluctantly, agreeing with the State that the rigor of the Robertson test could not be reconciled with Victor's expansive approach to the content of reasonable doubt instructions. Id. at ¶ 21.

¶ 9 The court of appeals also concluded that the trial court erred when it did not repeat the preliminary jury instructions at the close of evidence. Id. at ¶ 24. The court read Utah Rule of Criminal Procedure 17(g)(6) to unambiguously require that the jury should be instructed "'[w]hen the evidence is concluded and at any other appropriate time.'" Id. (quoting Utah R.Crim. P. 17(g)(6)). It interpreted this language to mandate a repetition of all instructions vital to the defendant's rights at the conclusion of evidence irrespective of when or how the court had previously delivered those instructions. However, the court of appeals held that this error was harmless because there was no likelihood that, had the trial court repeated the preliminary instructions at the close of evidence, the verdict would have been any different. Both parties petitioned for certiorari, which we granted.

STANDARD OF REVIEW

¶ 10 "On certiorari, we review the court of appeals'[s] decision for correctness, giving its conclusions of law no deference." State v. Geukgeuzian, 2004 UT 16, ¶ 7, 86 P.3d 742.

ANALYSIS

I. UTAH'S REASONABLE DOUBT INSTRUCTION

¶ 11 No person accused in the United States may be convicted of a crime unless each element of the offense has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt. In re Winship, 397 U.S. 358, 362, 90 S.Ct. 1068, 25 L.Ed.2d 368 (1970). The Supreme Court has assigned this standard of proof constitutional status, linking it to both the Fifth Amendment right to due process of law and the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial. Sullivan v. Louisiana, 508 U.S. 275, 278, 113 S.Ct. 2078, 124 L.Ed.2d 182 (1993); Winship, 397 U.S. at 362, 364, 90 S.Ct. 1068. The degree of certainty of guilt that we insist be held by those entrusted with judging the fate of persons charged with crimes before we will permit the State to wield its power to punish is not only a measure of evidence, but also in a more fundamental sense a gauge of our nation's conscience. The measure of certainty the law demands before finding guilt reflects the balance we are willing to strike between ensuring that all of the guilty are brought to justice and preventing the conviction and punishment of the innocent. Blackstone set an enduring benchmark for the measure of certainty required to convict in a civilized society when he stated that "the law holds that it...