Whether the Court should revisit the 'reasonable likelihood' test adopted in Boyde v. California and instead return to the previous standard where appellate courts inquire whether reasonable jurors 'could have' interpreted the instructions in an unconstitutional manner

QUESTION PRESENTED In light of this Court’s recent Sixth-Amendment jurisprudence emphasizing the constitutional primacy of the role of the jury, should this Court revisit its 5-4 decision in Boyde, which adopted the “reasonable likelihood” test for determining whether ambiguous jury instructions violate due process, and instead return to the previous standard, in which appellate courts inquire whether reasonable jurors “could have” interpreted the instructions in a manner that violates the U.S. Constitution? 1 Sup. Ct. R. 14.1(a) states in part: “If the petitioner .. . is under a death sentence that may be affected by the disposition of the petition, the notation ‘capital case’ shall precede the questions presented.” Mr. Ray is under a sentence of death in another Colorado state case, and the attempted-murder convictions at issue in this Petition were used as an aggravating factor to obtain the death sentence in that case. Because, under Johnson v. Mississippi, 486 U.S. 578 (1988), the disposition of this Petition may affect the death sentence in the other case, the “capital case” notation is included. li LIST OF RELATED CASES District Court, County of Arapahoe, State of Colorado; Case No. 04CR1805; People of the State of Colorado v. Robert Keith Ray; Judgment entered February 8, 2007. Colorado Court of Appeals; Case No. 2007CA561; People of the State of Colorado v. Robert Keith Ray: Modified Opinion entered March 19, 2015; Mandate to the District Court, County of Arapahoe issued June 4, 2019. Colorado Supreme Court; Case No. 15SC268; Ray v. People: Opinion entered April 8, 2019; Petition for Rehearing denied May 20, 2019; Mandate to the Colorado Court of Appeals issued May 23, 2019. iii