Dorrington v. Minnick

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• holding that a jury instruction “on the lesser included offense is required only where the evidence presented at trial would reasonably support both an acquittal on the crime charged and a conviction upon the lesser included offense”
• holding that involuntary manslaughter is a lesser included offense of murder
• stating that involuntary manslaughter instruction appropriate “only when, on the evidence presented, the jury could reasonably find against the state on the element of purposefulness and still find for the state on the defendant’s act of killing another”
• rejecting “acquittal first” instruction as matter of law, regardless of whether or not requested by defendant
• advising the ideal instruction would insert “or are unable to agree” after “if you find him not guilty”
• finding an involuntary manslaughter instruction was not proper where “under no reasonable view of the evidence, even in a light most favorable to the accused, could the jury have found that Thomas did not purposely intend to cause the death of Newhouse.”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).