Background
William Sharbono was convicted in Marion County Circuit Court of unlawful use of a weapon following a jury trial. During trial, Sharbono requested that the court give a specific jury instruction on inferences — drawn from State v. Bivins, 191 Or App 460 (2004) — that would have told jurors any inferred fact must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt from the underlying facts and that “speculation and guesswork are not” permissible.
The trial court declined to give the requested instruction, finding it was not appropriate under the circumstances. Instead, the court gave the uniform jury instruction on inferences, which permitted reasonable inferences based on common sense and experience, and separately instructed the jury on the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard and prohibited guesswork, conjecture, and speculation.
Sharbono appealed, arguing the trial court erred by refusing his proposed instruction. He contended the uniform instructions failed to adequately convey that inferred facts must be found beyond a reasonable doubt, effectively lowering the state’s burden of proof. He also raised several pro se supplemental claims of error.
The Court’s Holding
The Oregon Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction in a per curiam nonprecedential memorandum opinion. Relying on its prior decisions in State v. Hines, 84 Or App 681 (1987), and State v. Thomas, 324 Or App 114 (2023), the court rejected Sharbono’s argument that the instructions given lessened the state’s burden of proof so as to require the additional instruction he requested.
The court further held that the instructions actually given — covering permissible inferences and the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard — adequately addressed the substance of Sharbono’s proposed instruction, and that a trial court does not err in refusing an instruction whose substance is fully covered by the instructions given. See State v. Roberts, 293 Or App 340, 345 (2018).
As to the pro se supplemental claims, the court declined to address them because Sharbono failed to assign error to specific trial court rulings as required by ORAP 5.45 and did not develop any legal argument sufficiently for the court to consider.
Key Takeaways
- A trial court does not err in refusing a defendant’s proposed jury instruction if the instructions given fully cover the substance of the requested instruction.
- Oregon’s uniform inference instruction, combined with a standard reasonable-doubt instruction prohibiting speculation and guesswork, adequately conveys that inferred facts must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt — no additional Bivins-style instruction is required.
- Pro se supplemental claims on appeal that lack proper assignment of error under ORAP 5.45 or sufficiently developed legal argument will not be addressed by the Oregon Court of Appeals.
Why It Matters
This decision reinforces the longstanding Oregon rule that trial courts have discretion to rely on uniform jury instructions when those instructions adequately cover the legal points at issue. Defense practitioners seeking to supplement standard instructions with defendant-specific language — particularly on the relationship between inferences and the reasonable-doubt standard — will face a high bar in demonstrating that the uniform instructions are legally insufficient.
Although nonprecedential under ORAP 10.30, the opinion reaffirms the principles articulated in Hines and Thomas and signals that the Court of Appeals views those cases as fully settled authority on this jury-instruction question.