State v. Schaf

Citations

• 989 N.W.2d 473
• 2023 ND 81

Syllabus

The district court decides the qualifications of the witness to express an opinion on a given topic. The decision whether to admit expert witness testimony rests within the court's discretion. For a lesser-included-offense instruction, there must be evidence on which a jury could rationally find beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant is not guilty of the greater offense and to find beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant is guilty of the lesser. It also must be impossible to commit the greater offense without committing the lesser. While a sexual contact charge may be a lesser included offense contained within a sexual act charge, the subsections of both offenses must be compatible and the evidence must support an inclusion. An alleged error with jury instructions will be reviewed for obvious error when the instructions were not objected to at trial and proposed instructions were not provided to the district court. Voluntary intoxication is irrelevant to a crime of general intent.