Opinion ID: 1226896
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Failure to Instruct on Concurrence of Act and Intent and on Diminished Capacity and Voluntary Intoxication With Regard to Burglary and Robbery

Text: As indicated above, defendant was charged with the murder of Hanson and Blount, but not with burglary or robbery; he was alleged to have committed the crimes under special circumstances including felony-murder-burglary and felony-murder-robbery; at trial, the People sought to prove that the charged murders were in the first degree on theories of wilful, deliberate, and premeditated murder and also felony-murder-burglary and felony-murder-robbery. (36a) The trial court generally instructed the jury on homicide, including first degree wilful, deliberate, and premeditated murder; first degree felony murder in the course of a burglary or robbery; second degree murder; voluntary manslaughter; and involuntary manslaughter. It also declared that for murder there must exist a concurrence of act and intent. It then defined the defenses of diminished capacity and voluntary intoxication for murder (with the exception of first degree felony murder) and voluntary manslaughter. It did not, however, instruct the jury as to the necessity for the concurrence of act and intent, or the availability of the defenses of diminished capacity and voluntary intoxication, for burglary and robbery  which underlay first degree felony murder and the felony-murder special circumstances. Defendant contends that the trial court's failure to instruct on these matters was erroneous. We agree. (37) It is, of course, virtually axiomatic that a trial court must correctly instruct on such legal principles as are applicable to the evidence [citation]  and on such legal principles alone. The failure or refusal to do so constitutes error. ( People v. Benson, supra, 52 Cal.3d at p. 799.) (36b) Here, the necessity for the concurrence of act and intent for burglary and robbery, and the availability of the defenses of diminished capacity and voluntary intoxication for those same offenses, were applicable to the evidence. By failing to instruct thereon, the court erred. Each of the errors, however, implicates state law only. Defendant claims, to the contrary, that the instructional omissions are violative of the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. His point is predicated on the assertion that, separately or together, the errors effectively reduced the People's beyond-a-reasonable-doubt burden of proof as to the intent element of the burglary and robbery predicates of first degree felony murder and the felony-murder special circumstances. The assertion is unsupported. The instructions actually given clearly communicated to a reasonable juror that the People were required to prove the required intent beyond a reasonable doubt. We now turn from the fact of error to its consequences. (38) It is the general rule for error under state law that reversal requires prejudice and prejudice in turn requires a reasonable probability of an effect on the outcome. ( People v. Gordon, supra, 50 Cal.3d at p. 1253.) That rule is plainly applicable here. Defendant claims, to the contrary, that the instructional omissions are subject to harmless-error analysis under the reasonable doubt standard of Chapman v. California (1967) 386 U.S. 18, 24 [17 L.Ed.2d 705, 710-711, 87 S.Ct. 824, 24 A.L.R.3d 1065]. His basis is that the errors are of federal constitutional dimension. But as shown above, that basis is unsound. (36c) We are of the opinion that there is no need to reverse defendant's conviction for first degree murder or to set aside either of the felony-murder special-circumstance findings. We come to that conclusion whether we employ the applicable, and more tolerant, reasonable probability test or the inapplicable, and less tolerant, reasonable doubt test. The omission of an instruction requiring the concurrence of act and intent for burglary and robbery could not have significantly affected the result. A reasonable juror would have understood from the charge as a whole that for burglary and robbery there must exist a concurrence of act and intent, and could not have believed otherwise. That message was all but express in the instructions defining burglary and robbery as well as in the instructions dealing with the requisite specific intent to commit burglary and robbery as the predicate felony in first degree felony murder. Neither could the result have been significantly affected by the omission of an instruction on the availability of the defenses of diminished capacity and voluntary intoxication for burglary and robbery. As noted, defendant relied on voluntary intoxication and diminished capacity as a result of voluntary intoxication. A reasonable juror would have effectively given consideration to these defenses through the instructions dealing with the requisite specific intent to commit burglary and robbery. Under the charge as a whole, and in light of the evidence the parties adduced and the arguments they presented, such a juror could not have inferred that the issue of voluntary intoxication  on which both of the defenses rested  was somehow immaterial to the question of the presence vel non of specific intent to commit burglary or robbery. Contrary to defendant's assertion, there was no reduction in the People's beyond-a-reasonable-doubt burden of proof attributable to the errors, whether considered by themselves or in conjunction with any others. Nor was there any other prejudicial effect flowing from the instructional omissions. (39)(See fn. 12.), (36d) In view of the foregoing, we are of the opinion that the errors were harmless beyond a reasonable doubt and, a fortiori, do not support a reasonable probability of an effect on the outcome. [12]