Opinion ID: 2567349
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Trial court's response to jury request for legal definition of rational manner

Text: During deliberations, the jury sent the court a note asking for a legal definition of the term rational manner, as used in CALJIC No. 4.10. Out of the jury's presence, the court discussed the request with counsel. After conducting research, the court and counsel could find neither a judicial decision defining the term nor a dictionary definition to which all parties would agree. Accordingly, the court instructed jurors to rely upon the common understanding of the meaning of the word, and reread to them the first paragraph of CALJIC No. 1.01, which directed them not to single out any particular sentence, point or instruction, but to consider the instructions as a whole. Defendant contends that by referring the jury to the common understanding of the term, the court failed in its duty to assist the jury to understand the issue before it, depriving him of a reliable competency verdict under the Sixth, Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the federal Constitution. The Attorney General asserts that defendant forfeited the issue for appellate purposes by approving the trial court's response, but the record reflects that his trial counsel objected to the court's proposed response and suggested a different one of his own devising, which the court declined to give. Counsel was not required to continue to argue the point in order to preserve it for appeal. On the merits, however, we see no reasonable likelihood ( People v. Barnett (1998) 17 Cal.4th 1044, 1161, 74 Cal.Rptr.2d 121, 954 P.2d 384) that the trial court's response could have led the jury to misunderstand the nature of its task. That the jury expressed some uncertainty over the legal definition of the term rational manner, and the parties could not agree on a definition, does not mean that the term has a technical meaning, peculiar to the law, on which the court had an obligation to instruct the jury. (See People v. Howard (1988) 44 Cal.3d 375, 408, 243 Cal.Rptr. 842, 749 P.2d 279.) Thus, the trial court was not remiss in failing to instruct in the manner that defendant now argues. Our conclusion is unaffected by the circumstance that the court followed this advice with a rereading of CALJIC No. 1.01. Nothing in the instruction would have caused the jury to minimize the importance of the competency instructions.