Opinion
A-13298
06-09-2021
STUART G. SINYON, Appellant, v. STATE OF ALASKA, Appellee.
Sharon Barr, Assistant Public Defender, and Samantha Cherot, Public Defender, Anchorage, for the Appellant. Kenneth M. Rosenstein, Assistant AttorneyGeneral, Office of Criminal Appeals, Anchorage, and Clyde Ed Sniffen Jr., Acting Attorney General, Juneau, for the Appellee.
UNPUBLISHED See Alaska Appellate Rule 214(d)
Appeal from the Superior Court, Third Judicial District Trial Court No. 3AN-17-00380 CR, Anchorage, Erin B. Marston, Judge.
Sharon Barr, Assistant Public Defender, and Samantha Cherot, Public Defender, Anchorage, for the Appellant.
Kenneth M. Rosenstein, Assistant AttorneyGeneral, Office of Criminal Appeals, Anchorage, and Clyde "Ed" Sniffen Jr., Acting Attorney General, Juneau, for the Appellee.
Before: Allard, Chief Judge, and Wollenberg and Harbison, Judges.
SUMMARY DISPOSITION
Stuart G. Sinyon entered a truck in the parking lot of an Anchorage store and attempted to drive it away as the truck's owner and two others were loading groceries into the back seat. As the owner grabbed at Sinyon from the back seat, Sinyon threatened to shoot him. Based on this conduct, a jury found Sinyon guilty of first-degree robbery, second-degree robbery, and first-degree vehicle theft.
See AS 11.41.500(a)(1); AS 11.41.510(a)(1); AS 11.46.360(a)(1), respectively. The trial court ultimatelymerged the second-degree robbery and first-degree vehicle theft into the first-degree robberyconviction. Sinyon pleaded guiltyto two additional charges, and the jury acquitted him of eight other charges involving robbery, theft, and reckless endangerment.
Prior to trial, Sinyon proposed a jury instruction that defined reasonable doubt. Sinyon's instruction characterized the concept in terms of "virtual certainty," incorporating language from instructions used in Hawaii and Massachusetts. The superior court rejected Sinyon's instruction, instead using a former version of Alaska Criminal Pattern Jury Instruction 1.06, which described reasonable doubt as "proof of such a convincing character that, after consideration, you would be willing to rely and act upon it without hesitation in your important affairs."
On appeal, Sinyon argues that the court erred in rejecting his proposed instruction. But so long as the jury instructions properly state the law, a trial court has broad discretion to decide what instructions to give the jury. We have repeatedly held that the "important affairs" formulation of the instruction "taken as a whole, accurately explains the presumption of innocence, the prosecutor's burden of proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, and the definition of 'reasonable doubt'." The instruction we approvedin Lampley v. Anchorage matchestheinstruction given inSinyon'scasealmost verbatim.
Stoneking v. State, 800 P.2d 949, 950 (Alaska App. 1990).
Lampley v. Anchorage, 159 P.3d 515, 522 (Alaska App. 2007); see also Wilson v. State, 967 P.2d 98, 100-01 (Alaska App. 1998); Hilbish v. State, 891 P.2d 841, 850-51 (Alaska App. 1995).
Lampley, 159 P.3d at 522. The Alaska Supreme Court has also approved a nearly identical formulation over other language. See Rivett v. State, 578 P.2d 946, 950 (Alaska 1978); McCurry v. State, 538 P.2d 100, 106 n.17 (Alaska 1975); Davenport v. State, 519 P.2d 452, 456 (Alaska 1974); Avery v. State, 514 P.2d 637, 643 (Alaska 1973).
Sinyon devotes little attention to these cases, instead drawing on our recent dicta in Roberts v. State, in which we criticized - but did not formally disapprove of - the pattern instruction given in his case. But as the Alaska Supreme Court has stated, judicial opinions that discuss preferences for, or criticisms of, a version of the reasonable doubt instruction do not "establish the 'preferred' instruction as an invariable standard."Our decision in Roberts offered our view of the most helpful description of the reasonable doubt standard without purporting to hold that the challenged standard was constitutionally deficient or a misstatement of the law.
Roberts v. State, 394 P.3d 639, 644 (Alaska App. 2017).
Rivett, 578 P.2d at 950 (citing Holland v. United States, 348 U.S. 121 (1954)); see also Victor v. Nebraska, 511 U.S. 1, 16 (1994) ("We do not think it reasonably likely that the jury understood [the instruction] as suggesting a standard of proof lower than due process requires . . . . At the same time, however, we do not condone the use of the phrase."); id. at 24 (Ginsburg, J., concurring) ("I agree, further, with the Court's suggestion that the term 'moral certainty,' while not in itself so misleading as to render the instructions unconstitutional, should be avoided as an unhelpful way of explaining what reasonable doubt means.").
Sinyon relies on Adams v. State and Mati v. State, in which we disapproved of the use of real-life analogies to describe the concept of reasonable doubt. These cases demonstratesomeoftheflaws in the"important affairs" formulation, similar to the issues we discussed at length in Roberts: by encouraging the jury to think of reasonable doubt using metaphors, the instruction invites the use of metaphors that might minimize the State's burden and create reversible error. But these cases also demonstrate that the improprieties that can stem from the "important affairs" version of the instruction can be addressed on their own terms, without rendering the instruction itself constitutionally infirm or inaccurate. Sinyon does not point to any particular way in which the jury could have improperly applied the reasonable doubt instruction in his case, and we are unable to identify any, especially given that the jury acquitted Sinyon of the majority of charges.
Adams v. State, 440 P.3d 337, 340 (Alaska App. 2019); Mati v. State, 2019 WL 3715059, at *8 (Alaska App. Aug. 7, 2019) (unpublished).
See Victor, 511 U.S. at 6 (majority opinion) (recognizing that a reasonable doubt instruction may not suggest a higher degree of doubt than is required for acquittal under the reasonable doubt standard, and that reversal is required when there is a reasonable likelihood that the jury applied the instruction in an unconstitutional manner).
Id.
Accordingly, we conclude that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in declining to give Sinyon's "virtual certainty" instruction and instead providing the jury with the prior version of the pattern instruction on reasonable doubt.
The judgment of the superior court is AFFIRMED.