Facts
- A fight broke out in a bar, and Ray Harries was struck during the altercation.
- Harries went outside to a friend’s truck to obtain a weapon and took out a gun.
- As Harries had the gun, a third person attempted to grab or take control of it.
- During that struggle, Harries fired and shot the third person in the leg.
- The State charged Harries with assault and battery with a deadly weapon (aggravated assault and battery) under Wyoming law.
- At trial, Harries admitted firing the gun but claimed he acted in self-defense.
- The trial court instructed the jury that self-defense required that Harries have reasonable grounds to believe another was about to cause him bodily injury (and that he acted on that belief).
- Harries did not object to the self-defense instructions at trial.
- The jury rejected self-defense, convicted Harries, and the court sentenced him to a term of imprisonment (four to five years).
- Harries appealed to the Wyoming Supreme Court.
Issues
- Whether the evidence was sufficient to support the jury’s verdict rejecting self-defense and finding Harries guilty of assault and battery with a deadly weapon.
- Whether the trial court’s self-defense instruction requiring “reasonable grounds to believe” bodily injury was imminent misstated Wyoming law, and what effect Harries’s failure to object to the instruction had on appellate review.
Decision
- The Wyoming Supreme Court affirmed Harries’s conviction and sentence.
- The court held that self-defense was a fact question for the jury and that, viewing the evidence under the applicable appellate standard, there was sufficient evidence to support the jury’s rejection of self-defense and its guilty verdict.
- Because Harries did not object to the self-defense instruction, the instruction became the law of the case for purposes of reviewing the verdict, and the court found no basis to reverse on the instruction issue.
Legal Principles
- On review for sufficiency of the evidence, the appellate court views the evidence in the light most favorable to the prevailing party (the State), assumes the State’s evidence is true, disregards conflicting defense evidence, and gives the State every favorable inference fairly supported by the record.
- Self-defense generally presents factual questions for the jury, including whether the defendant actually believed he faced imminent bodily injury and whether that belief had reasonable grounds under the circumstances shown at trial.
- A defendant’s failure to object to jury instructions at trial can make those instructions the law of the case, and the appellate court measures the sufficiency of the evidence against the instructions given.
- Under the law of the case approach applied here, the key question on appeal is not whether a different instruction might have been preferable, but whether the evidence allowed the jury to find the State met its burden and that the defendant failed to establish justification under the instructions submitted.
Conclusion
Harries’s conviction was affirmed because the jury was entitled to decide the self-defense claim, the record contained evidence from which the jury could conclude Harries lacked reasonable grounds for using a firearm during the confrontation, and Harries’s failure to object to the self-defense instruction meant the appellate court reviewed the verdict under that instruction as the governing standard.