Opinion ID: 2575903
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 11

Heading: Instructing on Rape and Attempted Rape

Text: Defendant contends the trial court erred in instructing on rape and attempted rape, which violated his rights to due process of law under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the federal Constitution, and to a jury trial under the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments thereof. The trial court originally instructed the jury that nonconsensual sexual intercourse constitutes rape whether the victim is dead or alive. The next day, the court reversed itself and instructed the jury that a completed rape is possible only when the victim is alive, and that an attempted rape is possible only if the attempt began when she was alive. Defendant argues that constitutional error occurred because the trial court did not directly repudiate its instruction that a dead victim can be raped, but retreated from it in an equivocal manner, resulting in an ambiguous charge to the jury. We do not agree. As stated, not every ambiguity, inconsistency, or deficiency in a jury instruction rises to the level of a due process violation. The question is `whether the ailing instruction . . . so infected the entire trial that the resulting conviction violates due process.' [Citation.] `[A] single instruction to a jury may not be judged in artificial isolation, but must be viewed in the context of the overall charge.' [Citation.] If the charge as a whole is ambiguous, the question is whether there is a `reasonable likelihood that the jury has applied the challenged instruction in a way that violates the Constitution.' ( Middleton v. McNeil, supra, 541 U.S. 433, 437, 124 S.Ct. 1830.) With regard to completed rape, it is well-established that the offense requires a live victim. ( People v. San Nicolas (2004) 34 Cal.4th 614, 660, 21 Cal.Rptr.3d 612, 101 P.3d 509.) With regard to attempted rape, a person who attempts to rape a live victim, kills the victim in the attempt, then has intercourse with the body, has committed only attempted rape, not actual rape, but is guilty of felony murder . . . . ( People v. Kelly, supra, 1 Cal.4th 495, 525, 3 Cal.Rptr.2d 677, 822 P.2d 385.) The trial court effectively told the jury to disregard its earlier instruction that a dead woman can be raped, and correctly stated the standard for determining the truth of the felony-murder-rape special circumstance, stating, [i]n . . . rereading the transcript, when I spoke to you and answered some of your questions, it came out a little garbled on one issue; and I want to just take a second and talk to you about it. [І] What I'm talking about is the special circumstance of murder during the commission of a rape or [an] attempted rape. So let me do it again now. [І] As you know, the special circumstance alleges the murder occurred during a rape or an attempted rape. Now, if the victim is dead before there is any sexual penetration, no matter how slight, the special circumstance of murder during the commission of rape cannot be true. In other words, there has to be sexual penetration before the victim is dead for the special circumstance of murder during . . . a rape to be true. [І] But the special circumstance of murder during the attempted commission of a rape can be true even if the victim is dead so long as the attempt began before her death. [І] . . . [І] So, in other words, if the victim is dead before there's any sexual penetration, the special circumstance of murder during the course of rape is not true; but the special circumstance of murder during an attempted rape can be true even if the victim is dead so long as the attempt began before her death. These were accurate statements of the applicable law, and there is no reasonable likelihood that the jury misunderstood and misapplied the court's corrective instruction. We reject defendant's claim.