State v. Taylor

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NOT DESIGNATED FOR PUBLICATION

No. 115,420

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF THE STATE OF KANSAS

STATE OF KANSAS,
Appellee,
v.
DONNIE L. TAYLOR,
Appellant.

MEMORANDUM OPINION

Appeal from Reno District Court; TIMOTHY J. CHAMBERS, judge. Opinion filed March 17, 2017.
Affirmed.

Kai Tate Mann, of Kansas Appellate Defender Office, for appellant.

Andrew R. Davidson, assistant district attorney, and Derek Schmidt, attorney general, for
appellee.

Before LEBEN, P.J., POWELL and SCHROEDER, JJ.

LEBEN, J.: Donnie L. Taylor was convicted in a jury trial of felony theft for
stealing a digital camera from a pawn shop. He has appealed, arguing that the district
court erred by instructing the jury it "should" convict him if it found that the State had
proved all elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. Taylor suggests that the
court should instead say that the jury "may" convict the defendant under those
circumstances. But the word "'should' does not express a mandatory, unyielding duty or
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obligation; instead, it merely denotes the proper course of action and encourages
following the advised path." State v. Allen, 52 Kan. App. 2d 729, Syl. ¶ 5, 372 P.3d 432
(2016), petition for rev. filed June 6, 2016. Accordingly, as our court held in Allen and
other cases, the use of "should" in this instruction is proper. See, e.g., Allen, 52 Kan. App.
2d 729, Syl. ¶ 5; State v. Perez-Medina, No. 114,589, 2017 WL 262025, at *4-5 (Kan.
App. 2017) (unpublished opinion), petition for rev. filed February 21, 2017. We therefore
affirm the district court's judgment.

FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

To place the legal issue on appeal in context, we will first review what happened,
both in and out of court.

Terra Nolde was working as an assistant manager at Hutchinson Pawn and
Jewelry. She knew Taylor because he was a regular customer. Taylor also had an
arrangement with the store that if he cleaned the parking lot, he could take 10 DVDs with
management's approval as payment. On February 3, 2015, Taylor approached Nolde and
asked about some loans he had at the store. Taylor had her retrieve a toolbox he had
pawned so he could see what was inside. Nolde had been handling a red Nikon digital
camera worth about $20 that had been pawned by another customer. She had left it in her
work station to assist Taylor with the toolbox, which was on the floor.

A few days later, Nolde discovered the camera was missing. She reviewed a
security-camera video that suggested Taylor had taken the camera on February 3 while
Nolde was distracted. Nolde testified that Taylor did not have permission to take the
camera. After she looked at the security-camera video, Nolde called the police.

Officer Lance Crenshaw responded. After speaking with Nolde, Crenshaw learned
that Taylor was at another pawn shop, Salt City Pawn. Crenshaw drove to the other store
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and asked Taylor if he had taken the camera. Taylor replied that he had taken the camera
but had done so with permission, though he never identified the person who had given
permission. Taylor also told Crenshaw that he still had the camera—but the camera was
never recovered.

David Sinnett, the assistant manager of Salt City Pawn, said he recalled Taylor
coming into the store trying to pawn a red Nikon digital camera in February 2015. Sinnett
declined the camera because the store already had too many in stock. A day or two after
Taylor came in, Nolde contacted Sinnett to inquire whether Taylor had come in with a
camera, and Sinnett answered yes. Sinnett was unable to remember exactly what date
Taylor had come in to the store.

The State charged Taylor with felony theft; the crime was charged as a felony
under K.S.A. 2015 Supp. 21-5801(b)(6) because Taylor had two prior convictions for
theft. A jury found Taylor guilty, and the district court sentenced Taylor to 16 months in
prison with 12 months' postrelease supervision.

Taylor has appealed to this court, raising a single issue regarding the legal
instructions the district court gave the jury.

ANALYSIS

Taylor argues that the district court erred when instructing the jury on reasonable
doubt and the burden of proof. Taylor complains that the jury instruction kept the jury
from exercising its inherent right to disregard the law and evidence to acquit a defendant.
He acknowledges that he did not object to the jury instruction before the district court.

When a defendant fails to object to a jury instruction at trial, we apply a more
rigorous standard when deciding whether to set aside the jury's verdict and order a new
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trial. See State v. Briseno, 299 Kan. 877, 882, 326 P.3d 1074 (2014). In such cases, an
appellate court can reverse only if the jury instruction as given was clearly in error. See
K.S.A. 2016 Supp. 22-3414(3). In determining whether an instruction was clearly in
error, we first consider whether the district court erred at all, which requires that we
review the trial record to determine whether the instruction was legally and factually
appropriate. State v. Williams, 295 Kan. 506, Syl. ¶ 4, 286 P.3d 195 (2012). If the district
court erred, we then consider whether we are "firmly convinced that the jury would have
reached a different verdict had the instruction error not occurred." 295 Kan. 506, Syl. ¶ 5.

The jury instruction Taylor challenges was taken from the pattern jury instructions
that Kansas trial courts are urged to use. These pattern instructions have been created by a
committee whose goal is to provide instructions that are accurate, clear, and uniform. See
Allen, 52 Kan. App. 2d at 733-34.

Taylor challenges the use of the word "should" in the last sentence of the
instruction:

"The test you must use in determining whether Donnie Taylor is guilty or not
guilty is this: If you have a reasonable doubt as to the truth of any of the claims required
to be proved by the State, you must find Donnie Taylor not guilty. If you have no
reasonable doubt as to the truth of each of the claims required to be proved by the State,
you should find Donnie Taylor guilty." (Emphasis added.)

The instruction differed from the pattern instruction, PIK Crim. 4th 51.010, only by
substituting Taylor's name for the word "defendant."

Taylor argues that the jury instruction was not legally appropriate because it
precluded the possibility of jury nullification—the power of the jury "to disregard the
rules of law and evidence in order to acquit the defendant based upon the jurors'
sympathies, notions of right and wrong, or a desire to send a message on some social
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issue." See Allen, 52 Kan. App. 2d 729, Syl. ¶ 4. He contends that the use of the word
"should" rather than "may" requires the jury find the defendant guilty if it finds that all
elements of the charged crime were proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

Although Taylor is correct that jurors in a criminal case may disregard the rules of
law and the evidence in order to acquit a defendant, the proper duty of a jury is to accept
the rules of law given to it as instructions, apply those rules to determine whether facts
are proven, and deliver a verdict based on those considerations. State v. McClanahan,
212 Kan. 208, 217, 510 P.2d 153 (1973). For those reasons, criminal defendants are not
entitled to have the jury explicitly instructed on its inherent power of nullification. State
v. Naputi, 293 Kan. 55, 66, 260 P.3d 86 (2011).

At the same time, the jury instructions cannot forbid a jury from exercising its
inherent power of nullification. State v. Smith-Parker, 301 Kan. 132, 164, 340 P.3d 485
(2014). In Smith-Parker, the relevant jury instruction read: "'If you do not have a
reasonable doubt from all the evidence that the State has proven murder in the first
degree on either or both theories, then you will enter a verdict of guilty.'" 301 Kan. at
163. The Smith-Parker court held that the instruction went too far and "essentially
forbade the jury from exercising its power of nullification." 301 Kan. at 164. The court
concluded that the use of "must" or "will" amounted to a directed a verdict for the State,
noting that "[a] judge cannot compel a jury to convict, even if it finds all elements proved
beyond a reasonable doubt." 301 Kan. at 164.

In his brief, Taylor discusses State v. Lovelace, 227 Kan. 348, 354, 607 P.2d 49
(1980), overruled in part by Smith-Parker, 301 Kan. 132, where our Supreme Court held
that the words "must" and "should" were interchangeable in a reasonable doubt
instruction, as "[b]oth convey a sense of duty and obligation." At the time, the pattern
jury instruction used the word "should" in the instruction. 227 Kan. at 354. Smith-Parker
discussed Lovelace's holding and overruled it, concluding that the use of "must" in
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Lovelace and the use of "will" in Smith-Parker "fly too close to the sun of directing a
verdict for the State." 301 Kan. at 164. In essence, the Smith-Parker court concluded that
"must" was much closer in meaning to the term "will" than the term "should." See 301
Kan. at 164; State v. Benewiat, No. 114,676, 2017 WL 66355, at *7 (Kan. App. 2017)
(unpublished opinion), petition for rev. filed February 6, 2017. In our view, the holding in
Smith-Parker suggests that the use of "should" in a reasonable doubt jury instruction is
appropriate. See Smith-Parker, 301 Kan. at 164; Benewiat, 2017 WL 66355, at *7.

Taylor acknowledges that our court has held in several cases that the jury
instruction at issue is proper. See, e.g., Allen, 52 Kan. App. 2d 729, Syl. ¶ 5; Perez-
Medina, 2017 WL 262025, at *4-5; State v. Cuellar, No. 112,535, 2016 WL 1614037, at
*1-2 (Kan. App. 2016) (unpublished opinion), petition for rev. filed May 23, 2016; State
v. Jones, No. 111,386, 2015 WL 4716235, at *6 (Kan. App. 2015) (unpublished opinion),
rev. denied 303 Kan. 1080 (2016). Nevertheless, Taylor maintains that the panels have
wrongly decided this issue because "should" is the past tense of "shall," and "shall" is, by
definition, a command or an indication that something is mandatory. But his argument is
off the mark when applied to this jury instruction.

Taylor is right that one can use "should" as the past tense of "shall." For example,
let's assume that John says, "I shall go." If you report that to someone else, you would
say, "John said that he should go." That's because of sequence-of-tense rules: If you
introduce what someone said with a past-tense verb (like "said"), the rest of the sentence
reflects the past tense too, so the present-tense "shall" switches to the past-tense "should."
After all, unless you're doing a play-by-play broadcast, whatever you're reporting about
has occurred in the past. (A retired journalism professor, Malcolm Gibson, has a great
summary of sequence-of-tense rules at web.ku.edu/~edit/sequence.html.)

The use of should as the past tense of shall seems odd to many; at least when we
speak, we don't use shall much at all, let alone need to use should as its past tense. But
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"should" isn't being used as the past tense of "shall" in the jury instruction Taylor is
complaining about. Instead, as is often the case, the "should" in the instruction simply
reflects a lesser degree of duty than "shall." See Black's Law Dictionary 558 (10th ed.
2014) (noting that a directory requirement, which is an action that is advisable but not
mandatory, "is frequently introduced by the word 'should'"); Black's Law Dictionary
1585 (10th ed. 2014) (noting that while "shall" properly means a mandatory requirement,
it is sometimes interpreted to mean "should," a lesser duty); Garner's Modern Legal
Usage 952-55 (3d ed. 2011). As the Allen panel recognized, "Unlike the words 'must,'
'shall,' and 'will,' the word 'should' does not express a mandatory, unyielding duty or
obligation; instead, it merely denotes the proper course of action and encourages
following the advised path." 52 Kan. App. 2d 729, Syl. ¶ 5. Likewise, in State v.
Singleton, No. 112,997, 2016 WL 368083, at *6 (Kan. App.) (unpublished opinion), rev
denied 305 Kan. ___ (December 21, 2016), a panel of this court emphasized that
"should" is advisory, explaining:

"[A]s every teacher instructing a class knows, and as every parent admonishing a child
knows, should is less of an imperative than must or will. [Citation omitted.] Nutritionists
urge that we all should eat our vegetables. But that does not constitute a directive to have
recalcitrant diners force-fed their vegetables if they do not comply. . . . Should as used in
this instruction is not the equivalent of 'must' or 'will'. . . . Should is advisory. It is not an
imperative."

To sum up, the jury instruction on reasonable doubt and the burden of proof did
not impermissibly direct a verdict for the State or take away the jury's inherent power of
nullification. The district court committed no error by giving the jury instruction.

We therefore affirm the district court's judgment.