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State v. Yi1/20/2004
rime of violence in the past, and you committed another one here, and then came into court to lie about it, so I'm trying to balance that, and I think four months is, you know, a very fair sentence for that.
DISCUSSION
A. The Sufficiency of the Evidence to Convict Yi for Violation of a TRO
Yi contends that the State failed to adduce evidence of sufficient quality and probative value to enable a person of reasonable caution to conclude that he intentionally or knowingly engaged in conduct which he knew was prohibited by order of a court. Specifically, Yi argues that there was no direct evidence that he understood the TRO and that it had been issued by a judge of the family court. Therefore, he could not have acted intentionally or knowingly to disobey the order when he went back to Pom's apartment after being escorted away by Officer Lu.
When reviewing the legal sufficiency of evidence to support a conviction, this court must consider the evidence "in the strongest light for the prosecution [.]" State v. Richie, 88 Hawai'i 19, 33, 960 P.2d 1227, 1241 (1998).
The test on appeal is not whether guilt is established beyond a reasonable doubt, but whether there was substantial evidence to support the conclusion of the trier of fact.
'Substantial evidence' as to every material element of the offense charged is credible evidence which is of sufficient quality and probative value to enable a person of reasonable caution to support a conclusion.
Id. at 33 (citations and internal quotation marks omitted).
The evidence in the record reveals that Yi had arrived in Hawai'i when he was a teenager, 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
***7 The Hawai'i 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 Hawai'i 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
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