State v. Perez

Summary

The Utah Court of Appeals affirmed Gerardo Enrique Perez’s conviction for possessing a dangerous weapon as a restricted person. The court held that, even assuming counsel should have objected to a jury instruction that omitted statutory factors and included erroneous language, Perez failed to establish prejudice because consideration of the omitted factors would have supported conviction. The court therefore rejected his ineffective-assistance claim and affirmed.

Holdings

1. Perez failed to establish prejudice from counsel's failure to object because, in a hypothetical trial with a legally proper instruction requiring consideration of all six statutory factors and omitting the erroneous 'not commonly known' language, the evidence overwhelmingly supported finding that the shiv was a dangerous weapon.
2. The instruction should have tracked the statute, and its inclusion of 'not commonly known as a dangerous weapon' language was erroneous as a matter of law; however, those instructional defects did not prejudice Perez.

Questions Presented

1. Whether the jury instruction defining dangerous weapon was defective because it omitted three statutory factors and included language suggesting that the statutory factors need not be considered for an object commonly known as a dangerous weapon.
2. Whether trial counsel rendered ineffective assistance by failing to object to the allegedly defective jury instruction.
3. Whether Perez was prejudiced by counsel's failure to object.

Disposition

affirmed