Opinion ID: 1194691
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Issues Relating to the Finding of Special Circumstances.

Text: (2) Carlos v. Superior Court (1983) 35 Cal.3d 131 [197 Cal. Rptr. 79, 672 P.2d 862], held that proof of intent to kill or to aid a killing was essential to a finding of felony-murder special circumstances under the 1978 death penalty initiative. The holding in Carlos applies retroactively to all cases not final. ( People v. Garcia (1984) 36 Cal.3d 539, 550 [205 Cal. Rptr. 265, 684 P.2d 826].) (3) In the present case, tried before Carlos was filed, the court erred in not instructing the jury that intent to kill was an essential element of a finding of special circumstances based on a murder during an attempted robbery. [4] Following federal precedent, People v. Garcia held that failure to instruct on intent to kill was reversible error per se. (36 Cal.3d 539, 554.) Garcia recognized four exceptions in which failure to instruct might not require retrial of the special circumstances, two of which have arguable relevance to the case at hand: (1) that the factual question was necessarily resolved adversely to the defendant under other, properly given instructions (pp. 554-555); and (2) that the parties recognized that intent to kill was in issue, presented all evidence at their command on that issue, and ... the record not only establishes the necessary intent as a matter of law but shows the contrary evidence not worthy of consideration. (P. 556.) Neither exception, however, justifies affirmance of the finding in the present case. The way in which defendant killed Edsill suggests that defendant intended the killing. Defendant shot Edsill in the heart from a distance of a few feet, then fired five more shots when Edsill tried to escape. Nothing in defendant's conduct at the time of the killing or afterwards suggests that defendant pulled the trigger accidentally, that he intended only to frighten or to wound the victim, or had any intent except to kill. Defense counsel, however, set out to prove a diminished capacity defense. He called witnesses to show that users of PCP often engage in impulsive and irrational violent behavior, that defendant regularly used PCP and may have used it on the day of the crime, and that defendant became unpredictably violent under the influence of that chemical. On the basis of this evidence, counsel argued that the prosecution had not proved beyond a reasonable doubt that defendant intended either to rob or to kill. The jury verdict did not necessarily establish that defendant intended to kill. Under the instructions given, defendant would have been guilty of first degree murder with felony-murder special circumstances if he intended to rob Edsill and the killing occurred during the commission of the attempted robbery, even if the killing itself was an unintentional, impulsive, druginduced act. And although the evidence suggests that defendant was not strongly under the influence of PCP at the time of the shooting, and did intend to kill Edsill, we cannot legitimately describe the contrary showing as unworthy of consideration. We conclude that the court's failure to instruct on intent to kill as an essential element of felony-murder special circumstances is reversible error.