Opinion ID: 2508855
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 14

Heading: Incomplete Instructions on Relationship Between Murder and Burglary.

Text: The trial court instructed the jury (through CALJIC No. 8.21) that the killing of Diane Pencin was first degree murder if committed during the commission of burglary and (through CALJIC No. 8.81.17) that the burglary murder special circumstance required proof that the murder was committed while the defendant was engaged in the commission of a burglary. The court did not, however, instruct with the last portion of CALJIC No. 8.81.17, to the effect that the murder must have been carried out to advance the burglary, and not vice versa (see People v. Green (1980) 27 Cal.3d 1, 60-62, 164 Cal.Rptr. 1, 609 P.2d 468, disapproved on other grounds in People v. Hall (1986) 41 Cal.3d 826, 834, fn. 3, 226 Cal.Rptr. 112, 718 P.2d 99); nor was the jury instructed, pursuant to the merger principle, that a burglary committed solely with the intent to kill or assault the victim inside the premises may not serve as the predicate for a felony murder conviction (see People v. Hansen (1994) 9 Cal.4th 300, 311-312, 36 Cal.Rptr.2d 609, 885 P.2d 1022; People v. Wilson (1969) 1 Cal.3d 431, 440-441, 82 Cal.Rptr. 494, 462 P.2d 22). Defendant contends the instructions were prejudicially incomplete and deprived him of due process under the Fourteenth Amendment to the federal Constitution because, under them, the jury might have improperly rested both the first degree murder conviction for Diane's killing and the associated special-circumstance finding on a theory that defendant had burglarized the townhouse only with the intent to kill Diane, not to rape her. But we need not decide whether the trial court should, sua sponte, have given specific instructions precluding that theory, for the record establishes that the jury did not rely on such a theory of burglary. On the charge of burglary itself, the jury was instructed that burglary was entry into an inhabited dwelling house with the specific intent to commit rape, and there must be proof that at the time of entry defendant had the specific intent to commit the crime of rape. This instruction left no room for a theory of burglary with the sole intent to kill, yet the jury convicted defendant of burglary, necessarily finding he entered with the intent to rape, not only to kill, Diane. It follows that the murder and burglary did not merge, for purposes of first degree felony murder, and that the burglary was not merely incidental to the murder for purposes of the special circumstance. Any error in failing to instruct more fully was therefore harmless, even under a federal constitutional standard, because the jurors necessarily resolved the assertedly omitted factual question through other properly given instructions. ( People v. Flood (1998) 18 Cal.4th 470, 483, 506, 76 Cal.Rptr.2d 180, 957 P.2d 869.)