Opinion ID: 2517841
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Third Party Defense

Text: Defendant claims the trial court erred in failing to instruct sua sponte on the proper operation of his third party culpability theory. In particular, the court allegedly failed to relate the third party defense to the burden of proof by not instructing the jury that he need not prove the third party guilty of the charged crime, and that he need only raise a reasonable doubt as to his own guilt based on the third party evidence. As a result, violations of defendant's federal constitutional right to due process, compulsory process, and trial by jury allegedly occurred. Without deciding whether such a sua sponte duty existed, we find no error. The trial court gave standard instructions on the presumption of innocence and on the People's burden of proving defendant's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. (See CALJIC No. 2.90.) In an apparent abundance of caution, the trial court also gave a special instruction requested by defendant clarifying that he bore no such burden of proof, and guiding the jury's consideration of evidence suggesting that a third party committed the capital crime. (Cf. People v. Bolden (2002) 29 Cal.4th 515, 558, 127 Cal.Rptr.2d 802, 58 P.3d 931 [instruction pinpointing defense theory of the case is unnecessary even on request where, among other things, no substantial evidence supports it].) In particular, after reminding jurors of the People's heavy burden of proof, the special defense instruction stated that it is not necessary for the defendant to prove that another person may have committed the crime, nor is it the burden of the defendant to prove his innocence. [¶] If facts and circumstances have been introduced into evidence which raise a reasonable doubt as to whether the defendant was the person who committed the crime charged, then you must find the defendant not guilty. [17] Thus, consistent with what defendant claims was required here, jurors knew that he had no duty to prove another person's guilt or his own innocence, and that they must acquit him if the evidence merely raise[d] a reasonable doubt as to his guilt of the capital crime. Defendant misreads the record to the extent he suggests the contrary is true. We also reject defendant's related challenge to standard instructional language requested by both parties describing the sufficiency of circumstantial evidence of guilt. (See CALJIC No. 2.01.) This instruction directed the jury to accept an interpretation of the evidence favorable to the prosecution and unfavorable to the defense only if no other reasonable interpretation could be drawn. Though the precise nature of defendant's claim is unclear, the challenged instruction could not have exacerbated any error in instructing on the relationship between third-party-culpability evidence and burden-of-proof principles, because no such error occurred. As noted above, the trial court instructed the jury, at defendant's request, that evidence implicating a third party need only raise a reasonable doubt to warrant acquittal. We have consistently rejected claims that the standard circumstantial evidence instructions dilute the prosecution's burden to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. (E.g., People v. Stitely (2005) 35 Cal.4th 514, 555-556, 26 Cal.Rptr.3d 1, 108 P.3d 182 ( Stitely) ; People v. Millwee (1998) 18 Cal.4th 96, 160, 74 Cal.Rptr.2d 418, 954 P.2d 990 ( Millwee) ; People v. Ray (1996) 13 Cal.4th 313, 347-348, 52 Cal.Rptr.2d 296, 914 P.2d 846 ( Ray ).) We reject any similar claim of error here.