State v. Mason

BILLINGS, Justice.

On appeal defendant assigns error to certain portions of the trial court’s instructions to the jury and to portions of the prosecutor’s closing argument. For the reasons set forth below, we find no error on these issues. The case must be remanded for a new sentencing hearing, however, as a result of defendant’s convic tions and sentences for both first degree rape and first degree kidnapping based on the rape.

Defendant first contends that by instructing the jury that “a knife ... of three or four inches in length is a deadly weapon,” the trial judge erroneously created a…