Wright v. State

• Decision Date: 03 July 2000
• Docket Number: No. 20S00-9808-CR-431.,20S00-9808-CR-431.
• Citation: 730 N.E.2d 713
• Parties: James F. WRIGHT, Jr., Appellant (Defendant Below), v. STATE of Indiana, Appellee (Plaintiff Below).
• Court: Indiana Supreme Court

730 N.E.2d 713

James F. WRIGHT, Jr., Appellant (Defendant Below), v. STATE of Indiana, Appellee (Plaintiff Below).

No. 20S00-9808-CR-431.

Supreme Court of Indiana.

July 3, 2000.

R. Brent Zook, Goshen, Indiana, Attorney for Appellant.

Karen Freeman-Wilson, Attorney General of Indiana, Thomas D. Perkins, Deputy Attorney General, Indianapolis, Indiana, Attorneys for Appellee. SHEPARD, Chief Justice.

The appellant James Wright appeals from a conviction of murder and presents four issues of our review:

I. Whether the trial court properly instructed the jury about the State's burden of proof.

II. Whether the trial court correctly instructed the jury regarding the statutory intoxication defense.

III. Whether the trial court properly admitted several photographs of the victim.

IV. Whether the trial court properly admitted several hearsay statements.

In the early morning of May 31, 1997, Debra Damron went to the home of her mother, Barbara Marshall, and found Marshall dead, lying on her living room floor in a pool of blood, amid several knives. The cause of death was a stab wound to the neck, accompanied by strangulation. Marshall's body had a total of sixty-five incisional wounds.

At some point, investigation of the murder focused on James Wright, who was Marshall's neighbor. Wright then gave a statement to the police in which he admitted going to Marshall's home on May 31st. According to Wright, he went to her home to use the telephone because he was locked out of his own home. While he was using the phone, Marshall approached him with a knife. An altercation ensued, during which Wright stabbed Marshall, then fled. A search of Marshall's home uncovered two blood spots in the hallway near one of the doors. The DNA contained in this blood matched that of Wright.

Wright was convicted of murder and sentenced to sixty-five years.

I. Reasonable Doubt Instructions

Wright first contends that three of the jury instructions regarding reasonable doubt and the jury's duty were improper because they were mandatory in nature. (Appellant's Br. at 16.)

The thrust of Wright's claim is that the court's instructions impermissibly impinged upon the jury's role under Article I, section 19 of the Indiana Constitution, which states: "In all criminal cases whatever, the jury shall have the right to determine the law and the facts."

The defense did not object to these instructions at trial. Failure to object to a jury instruction results in waiver on appeal, unless giving the instruction was fundamental error. Brown v. State, 691 N.E.2d 438, 444 (Ind.1998). Error is fundamental if it is "a substantial blatant violation of basic principles" and where, if not corrected, it would deny a defendant fundamental due process. Id.

Two of the instructions in question read in pertinent part as follows:

Instruction 15

The State has the burden of proving that the defendant is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. . . . Proof beyond a reasonable doubt is proof that leaves you firmly convinced of the defendant's guilt. . . . If, based on your consideration of the evidence, you are firmly convinced that the defendant is guilty of the crime charged, you should find him guilty. If on the other hand, you think there is a real possibility that he is not guilty, you should give him the benefit of the doubt and find him not guilty.

(R. at 158, 727-28.)

Instruction 21

I submit this case to you with the confidence that you will faithfully discharge the grave duty resting upon you, bearing in mind that the liberty of the accused is not to be trifled away nor taken by careless or inconsiderate judgment; but if after a careful consideration of the law and the evidence in the case you are satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant is guilty, you should return your verdict accordingly. Duty demands it and the law requires it.

(R. at 165, 733.)

Instructions 15 and 21 do not violate Article I, section 19. The instructions inform the jurors that if they conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant is guilty, they should return a verdict of guilty. The instructions are hardly offensive to any of our fundamental precepts of criminal justice; indeed, we have approved of them in several previous cases. See Barber v. State, 715 N.E.2d 848, 851 (Ind.1999)

; Winegeart v. State, 665 N.E.2d 893, 895 (Ind.1996).

We now turn to the third instruction at issue, which read:

Instruction 16

All the material allegations of the information must have been proved by the evidence beyond a reasonable doubt before you would be warranted in convicting the Defendant. If anyone [sic] of the material allegations has not been so proved, it would be your duty to acquit. If all the material allegations of the information have been so proved, it is your duty to convict the Defendant.

(R. at 159, 728-29.)

Our caselaw on similar instructions makes several distinctions.

First, it is proper to tell the jury it "should" convict. Justice DeBruler outlined the rule in Loftis v. State, 256 Ind. 417, 419-20, 269 N.E.2d 746, 747 (1971):

The principle is established that a trial court may instruct the jury that if they find that all the material allegations of the indictment or affidavit are proven beyond a reasonable doubt that they "should" convict the defendants. However, such an instruction would be erroneous where the court failed to set forth all the material allegations which the state must prove before a conviction can be obtained or where the court failed to instruct the jury that they were the judges of the law as well as the facts.

Second, as the Loftis court recognized, it is error to mandate that jurors return a guilty verdict upon a finding of certain specifically mentioned facts. In Pritchard v. State, 248 Ind. 566, 568, 230 N.E.2d 416, 417 (1967), the trial court instructed the jury as follows:

The Court now instructs you that if you should find that [the defendant] . . . [was] guilty of cruelty or neglect of Kathy Jean Pritchard and that as a result of such cruelty or neglect beyond a reasonable doubt Kathy Jean Pritchard did sicken, languish and die, then you shall find such defendant guilty of involuntary manslaughter.

(emphasis omitted). We held this instruction impinged upon the role of jurors under our state Constitution. Id. at 576, 230 N.E.2d at 421.

Third, instructions that might be erroneous do not constitute grounds for reversal where no objection was lodged. Fundamental error does not occur, for example, even when the trial judge gives the jurors a relatively strong directive, so long as the court also tells them the elements of the offense and reminds them that they are the judges of both law and fact. Barker v. State, 440 N.E.2d 664 (Ind.1982) (no fundamental error where instructions told jury that it "must" convict if material elements were proven and that it was judge of both law and facts); see also Taylor v. State, 420 N.E.2d 1231 (Ind.1981)

(no fundamental error to tell jury it "must find the Defendant guilty" if material allegations are proven beyond a reasonable doubt where no "Pritchard instruction" was given and instruction on jury as judge of law and facts was given).

The instructions here fit inside the holdings of Barker and Taylor. The trial court gave a final instruction on the elements of murder. (R. at 145.) It also instructed the jurors that they were the judges of both the law and the facts, and that they were to consider all the instructions as they relate to each other. (R. at 143, 162.) Any error was not fundamental.

II. Voluntary Intoxication Instruction

Wright also asserts that the trial court wrongly instructed the jury about whether it could consider evidence of Wright's intoxication in assessing his mens rea as an element of the murder offense.

We have had other occasions to consider such a claim.

When Wright committed the offense in question, Ind.Code § 35-41-3-5(b) read: "Voluntary intoxication is a defense only to the extent that it negates an element of an offense referred to by the phrase with intent to or with an intention to." This Court held that statute void in Terry v. State, 465 N.E.2d 1085, 1088 (Ind.1984), saying the voluntary intoxication defense can be offered for any crime, regardless of the exact language used in defining the elements of the crime.

Even giving an instruction based on this voided statute, however, does not always require a new trial. In Horan v. State, 682 N.E.2d 502, 509 (Ind.1997), the trial court did precisely that, but the defendant did not object. Because none of the charged crimes contained the phrase "with intent to" or "with an intention to", the legal upshot of the erroneous instruction was that voluntary intoxication was not a defense available to Horan.

We affirmed the conviction anyway. As Justice Sullivan put it, when a defendant "was not entitled to a voluntary intoxication instruction in the first place, it could not have been fundamental error to give a defective one."¹Id.

A voluntary intoxication instruction is required only where "`the evidence relevant to the defense, if believed, was such that it could have created a reasonable doubt in the jury's mind that the accused had acted with the requisite mental state.'" Id. (quoting Van Cleave, 674 N.E.2d at 1303). As Justice Boehm recently observed, establishing reasonable doubt through an intoxication instruction "is not an easy threshold to meet." Van Cleave, 674 N.E.2d at 1303. The author of Terry, Chief Justice Givan, thought it required showing the defendant was "completely non compos mentis." Sills v. State, 463 N.E.2d 228, 242 (Ind.1984) (Givan, C.J., concurring).

The degree of intoxication is immaterial; rather, the issue is whether the accused was still able to form the mens rea required for the crime. Van Cleave, 674 N.E.2d at 1303. Evidence that shows a defendant could form the requisite mens rea includes proof such as his ability to "`devise a plan, operate equipment, instruct the...