Background
Jonathan Paul Ruth argued with a neighbor over a parking spot at their townhome complex. After the neighbor allegedly threatened him and went to get her husband, Ruth took out a handgun. When the neighbor and her husband returned, they saw the gun; following a brief exchange, the husband called police.
The prosecution charged Ruth with menacing. At trial, Ruth claimed self-defense and testified that he displayed the gun because he feared for his safety. The jury received a self-defense instruction that included the provocation and initial-aggressor exceptions, found Ruth guilty, and the trial court imposed two years of supervised probation.
The Court’s Holding
The Colorado Court of Appeals affirmed. It held that Ruth invited any error in the self-defense instruction because his counsel drafted and tendered the instruction containing the provocation and initial-aggressor exceptions, corrected and resent it after a formatting issue, and raised no objection to the final instruction packet.
The court also declined to review Ruth’s challenge to the prosecutor’s closing argument about retreat. Read in context, the prosecutor’s remarks concerned the initial-aggressor exception and whether Ruth withdrew from the encounter. Because Ruth had invited the instructional error and a prosecutor may comment on an instruction given to the jury, the court did not decide whether the comments were erroneous.
Key Takeaways
- A defendant generally cannot challenge on appeal a jury instruction his own counsel drafted or tendered.
- Claims that counsel’s strategic decision was incompetent must be pursued through ineffective-assistance procedures, not by avoiding invited-error doctrine on direct appeal.
- Closing-argument references to retreat may be evaluated in context as addressing the initial-aggressor exception rather than imposing a general duty to retreat.
Why It Matters
The decision underscores the appellate consequences of defense counsel’s role in proposing jury instructions. Counsel must carefully review self-defense instructions before tendering them, because invited error can foreclose direct appellate review even where the defendant later argues the evidence did not support an included exception.