Opinion ID: 1199801
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Instructions on Lesser Included Offense and Partial Verdicts as to Homicide

Text: As noted above (see pt. II.C., ante ), the court instructed that the jury could find defendant not guilty of murder but guilty of the lesser included offense of voluntary manslaughter. It also declared that it could return partial verdicts, and related findings, as to homicide, including first degree murder, second degree murder, and voluntary manslaughter. Finally, it explained how it was to complete the forms for the possible verdicts and findings. As also noted above (see pt. II.C., ante ), we held in People v. Kurtzman, supra, 46 Cal.3d 322, after our decision in Stone v. Superior Court, supra, 31 Cal.3d 503, that a court may restrict[] a jury from returning a verdict on a lesser included offense before acquitting on a greater offense but may not preclude [it] from considering lesser offenses during its deliberations. ( People v. Kurtzman, supra, 46 Cal.3d at pp. 324-325, italics in original.) We thereby impliedly rejected a strict acquittal-first rule under which the jury must acquit of the greater offense before even considering lesser included offenses. ( Id. at p. 333.) (10) Defendant contends that by instructing the jury as it did, the court erred under Stone and Kurtzman : it effectively imposed, he asserts, an acquittal-first rule. We disagree. On this record, there is no reasonable likelihood that the jury construed or applied the challenged instructions in a manner offensive to Stone and Kurtzman. We do not overlook certain language in the instructions themselves that arguably suggested that the jury was required to deliberate on the charges and allegations in a specified order. Neither do we overlook a number of comments in the prosecutor's summation, referred to above (see pt. II.C., ante ), to similar effect. Nevertheless, we believe that a reasonable juror would have understood and employed the instructions  which he or she was directed to consider as a whole and in context  simply to govern how the jury was to return its verdicts and findings after it completed its deliberations on the charges and allegations. This is because, in accordance with their very terms, the instructions spoke much of returning verdicts and findings and little of deliberating on the charges and allegations. [7]