Opinion
Court of Appeals No. A-11762 No. 6403
12-07-2016
JENNIFER C. GOODWIN, Appellant, v. STATE OF ALASKA, Appellee.
Appearances: David Reineke, under contract with the Public Defender Agency, and Quinlan Steiner, Public Defender, Anchorage, for the Appellant. A. James Klugman, Assistant District Attorney, Anchorage, and Craig W. Richards, Attorney General, Juneau, for the Appellee.
NOTICE Memorandum decisions of this Court do not create legal precedent. See Alaska Appellate Rule 214(d) and Paragraph 7 of the Guidelines for Publication of Court of Appeals Decisions (Court of Appeals Order No. 3). Accordingly, this memorandum decision may not be cited as binding authority for any proposition of law. Trial Court No. 3AN-13-5772 CR
MEMORANDUM OPINION
Appeal from the District Court, Third Judicial District, Anchorage, David Wallace, Judge. Appearances: David Reineke, under contract with the Public Defender Agency, and Quinlan Steiner, Public Defender, Anchorage, for the Appellant. A. James Klugman, Assistant District Attorney, Anchorage, and Craig W. Richards, Attorney General, Juneau, for the Appellee. Before: Mannheimer, Chief Judge, Allard, Judge, and Suddock, Superior Court Judge. Judge ALLARD.
Sitting by assignment made pursuant to Article IV, Section 16 of the Alaska Constitution and Administrative Rule 24(d).
Following a jury trial, Jennifer C. Goodwin was convicted of third-degree theft and separately convicted, based on that theft, of violating a condition of her bail release in an unrelated case.
Former AS 11.46.140(a)(1) (2012); AS 11.56.757(b)(2), respectively.
On appeal, Goodwin argues that there was insufficient evidence to support her conviction for third-degree theft. Having reviewed the record in the light most favorable to the jury's verdict, we conclude that there was sufficient evidence to support Goodwin's theft conviction.
Goodwin also argues that the trial court committed plain error when it failed to instruct the jury that in order to be found guilty of violating a condition of her bail release, Goodwin had to be aware of the fact that she was on bail release and that her bail conditions prohibited her from committing theft. We reject Goodwin's claim of plain error, given the manner in which Goodwin's case was presented to the jury.
Facts and proceedings
On May 26, 2013, Jennifer Goodwin entered Fred Meyer, concealed merchandise valued at $108.49 in her shopping cart, and left the store without paying. After witnessing this conduct, Ryan Butler, a loss prevention manager, stopped Goodwin in the parking lot, seized her cart, and told her to come back to the store. Goodwin instead left the scene, leaving behind her jacket, purse, and a photo ID.
At the time Goodwin committed this theft, she was on bail release in an unrelated case. Her bail conditions in that case required her to obey all federal, state, and local laws. The State ultimately charged Goodwin with two crimes: third-degree theft (for stealing more than $50 in merchandise) and violating the conditions of her release (for violating the condition of her bail release that required her not to commit a new crime). Goodwin's trial on these charges was bifurcated — that is, the jury did not hear evidence that Goodwin was on bail release and had violated the conditions of that release by committing the theft until after it first found her guilty of the theft.
Former AS 11.46.140(a)(1) (2012).
AS 11.56.757(b)(2).
The jury convicted Goodwin of both charges. She now appeals those convictions.
Why we conclude that there was sufficient evidence for the jury to convict Goodwin of third-degree theft
Goodwin argues first that the State presented insufficient evidence to convict her of third-degree theft. She points out that the State presented no video evidence to show that she left the store with the stolen merchandise and that the State did not present an itemized accounting of the stolen merchandise to support the loss prevention manager's testimony that the stolen merchandise was valued at $108.49. Goodwin also contends that, because the loss prevention manager did not observe her continuously while she was in the store, the State's evidence left open the possibility that she paid for some of the merchandise.
Although Goodwin has identified ways in which the State's case might have been stronger, we conclude that the State presented sufficient evidence to support the third-degree theft conviction. Evidence is legally sufficient to support a conviction if, viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the jury's verdict, a reasonable juror could conclude that the State had proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt.
Moore v. State, 298 P.3d 209, 217 (Alaska App. 2013).
Here, the loss prevention manager testified that he observed Goodwin deliberately conceal merchandise and then leave the store without paying for it. He also testified that $108.49 worth of merchandise was recovered from Goodwin's shopping cart. Although he did not observe Goodwin from the moment she entered the store, he testified that he watched her continuously from the time she retrieved a cart until she left the store without paying for the items in the cart. We conclude that this evidence, when viewed in the light most favorable to upholding the jury's verdict, was sufficient for a fair-minded juror to convict Goodwin of third-degree theft.
See Ratliff v. State, 798 P.2d 1288, 1291 (Alaska App. 1990) ("[T]he weight and credibility of evidence are matters for the jury to consider in reaching a verdict, not for the reviewing court to decide in ruling on the legal sufficiency of the evidence.").
Why we conclude that the court's instruction on the elements of violating conditions of release was not plain error
After the jury convicted Goodwin of theft, the State presented evidence that Goodwin was on bail release from a municipal criminal case and that Goodwin's conditions of bail release required her to obey all federal, state, and local laws. The State argued that Goodwin had violated her conditions of release by committing the theft for which the jury had just convicted her.
At the close of the State's evidence, Goodwin moved for a judgment of acquittal, asserting that the State failed to prove that she "acted knowingly and recklessly with regard to violating the conditions of release." The court denied the motion, finding that the evidence, viewed in the light most favorable to the State, showed that the judge who imposed the conditions of release personally addressed Goodwin and told her not to commit any new crimes.
In the course of ruling on this acquittal motion, the trial judge realized that the State's proposed jury instruction on the elements of violating a condition of release failed to advise the jury of the requisite mental states. (The State's proposed jury instruction was based on a pattern jury instruction that has since been revised.)
See Alaska Criminal Pattern Jury Instruction AS 11.56.757 (revised 2014).
The court therefore revised the instruction so that it properly instructed the jury that the State had to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Goodwin acted recklessly with regard to the fact that her conduct (the theft) violated a condition of her bail release. In its final form, the instruction read:
To prove that the defendant committed this crime, the state must prove beyond a reasonable doubt each of the following elements:Goodwin did not object to this jury instruction or offer any additional revisions.
(1) the defendant was charged with a crime;
(2) the defendant was released under AS 12.30;
(3) the defendant violated a condition of release imposed by a judicial officer under AS 12.30, other than the requirement to appear as ordered by a judicial officer, and;
(4) the defendant recklessly disregarded a substantial and unjustifiable risk that her conduct violated an order prohibiting her from violating a state law.
On appeal however, Goodwin asserts that the instruction was misleading because it failed to instruct the jury that the State had to prove that Goodwin "knew of [the bail release conditions and their contents], and that, so knowing, [s]he recklessly disregarded a substantial and unjustifiable risk that [her] conduct was prohibited by the [bail release conditions]."
We agree with Goodwin that the State could not convict her of violating a condition of her bail release without showing that Goodwin had been given proper notice of the bail condition. But Goodwin never argued that she did not have proper notice of the bail condition prohibiting her from committing new crimes. Moreover, the audio recording played for the jury unequivocally showed that Goodwin received proper notice of her bail conditions at her bail hearing. The recording also showed that the judge who imposed the bail conditions personally directed Goodwin not to commit any new crimes, and there was never any claim that Goodwin was confused about the meaning of this prohibition. We therefore reject Goodwin's claim that the jury instructions in her case were inadequate or misleading. To the contrary, the trial judge is to be commended in this case for sua sponte recognizing the deficiencies in the pattern jury instruction that neither party had noticed.
See State v. Strane, 61 P.3d 1284, 1292 (Alaska 2003); Vickers v. State, 175 P.3d 1280, 1283-84 (Alaska App. 2008); see also Jarnig v. State, 2014 WL 819490, at *2 (Alaska App. Feb. 26, 2014) (unpublished).
Id.
We take this opportunity to remind trial judges and trial advocates that the Alaska Criminal Pattern Jury Instructions do not necessarily provide complete or correct jury instructions for any individual case. As the Preface to the Criminal Pattern Jury Instructions explains, the judges and lawyers who draft these instructions offer them only "as a basis for trial judges and practitioners to tailor instructions for a particular case."
There will be times when a pattern jury instruction omits a culpable mental state, or when a pattern instruction's description of an element is ambiguous or misleading under the facts of a particular case. Ultimately, it is the trial judge's responsibility to provide the jury with the law it needs to resolve the case before it — an obligation that may require the judge to supplement or amend the pattern jury instruction, as the judge did here.
See Alaska R. Crim. P. 30(b) ("The court shall instruct the jury on all matters of law which it considers necessary for the jury's information in giving their verdict."); see also Jackson v. State, 890 P.2d 587, 596 (Alaska App. 1995) (explaining that a trial judge's decisions regarding the wording of jury instructions are reviewed for abuse of discretion). --------
Conclusion
We AFFIRM the decision of the district court.