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[T] State v. Yi1/20/2004
ager, aged fourteen, and had been living here for over twenty years, more than half his lifetime. Yi ran his own auto body repair business, and Officer Lu testified that he interacted with Yi extensively on the day of the violation and Yi always seemed to understand what was being told or asked of him. Viewed "in the strongest light for the prosecution[,]" the evidence adduced at trial was clearly substantial enough to determine that Yi understood the TRO that had been served on him.
B. The Family Court's Jury Instructions
The Hawaii Supreme Court has stated:
When jury instructions or the omission thereof are at issue on appeal, the standard of review is whether, when read and considered as a whole, the instructions given are prejudicially insufficient, erroneous, inconsistent, or misleading. If the instructions requested by the parties are inaccurate or incomplete but are necessary in order for the jury to have a clear and correct understanding of what it is that they are to decide, then the trial court has the duty either to correct any defects or to fashion its own instructions.
Nevertheless, the trial court is not required to instruct the jury in the exact words of the applicable statute but to present the jury with an understandable instruction that aids the jury in applying that law to the facts of the case. Erroneous instructions are presumptively harmful and are a ground for reversal unless it affirmatively appears from the record as a whole that the error was not prejudicial. If that standard is met, however, the fact that a particular instruction or isolated paragraph may be objectionable, as inaccurate or misleading, will not constitute ground for reversal. Whether a jury instruction accurately sets forth the relevant law is a question that this court reviews de novo.
State v. Sawyer, 88 Hawaii 325, 330, 966 P.2d 637, 642 (1998) (citations and internal quotation marks omitted). The supreme court also stated in Sawyer:
As a general rule, jury instructions to which no objection has been made at trial will be reviewed only for plain error. If the substantial rights of the defendant have been affected adversely, the error will be deemed plain error. Further, this court will apply the plain error standard of review to correct errors which seriously affect the fairness, integrity, or public reputation of judicial proceedings, to serve the ends of justice, and to prevent the denial of fundamental rights.
Id. (citations omitted).
Applying the foregoing standards, we initially review de novo whether the family court's jury instruction in this case accurately set forth the relevant law.
HRS § 586-4(d) (Supp. 2002), which sets out the offense of Violation of a TRO, states, in relevant part:
(d) When a temporary restraining order is granted and the respondent or person to be restrained knows of the order, a knowing or intentional violation of the restraining order is a misdemeanor.
For Yi to be convicted of the foregoing offense, the State was required to prove that:
(1) " temporary restraining order s granted";
(2) Yi knew of the TRO; and
(3) Yi "knowing or intentional " violated the restraining order.
The family court in this case gave the following jury instructions, as modified by agreement of the State and Yi, without objection by Yi:
The defendant, , is charged with the offense of Violation of .
A person commits the offense of Violation of , if he [or she] intentionally or knowingly engages in conduct which he [or she] knows is prohibited by a issued by a judge of th
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