Opinion ID: 2546413
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 9

Heading: Instruction on Criminal Threats

Text: As discussed, ante, evidence was admitted of defendant's statement to the psychologist that he would like to gouge the prosecutor's eyes out, and the trial court instructed the jury on the elements of the crime of criminal threats under section 422. Defendant complains the trial court's instruction, for two reasons, deprived him of his constitutional rights to due process of law and to a nonarbitrary capital sentencing process. The court delivered this instruction: Any person who willfully threatens to commit a crime which will result in death or great bodily injury to another person, with the specific intent that the statement is to be taken as a threat, even if there is no intent of actually carrying it out, which on its face and under the circumstances in which it is made, is so unequivocal, unconditional, immediate, and specific as to convey to the person threatened, a gravity of purpose and immediate prospect of execution of the threat, and thereby causes that person reasonably to be in sustained fear for his or her own safety or for his or her immediate family's safety, is guilty of a felony. This instruction essentially tracks the wording of section 422 as it read at the time of defendant's trial. (Stats.1989, ch. 1135, ง 1, pp. 4195-4196.) Defendant first contends the instruction was faulty because it describes the crime as a felony, when it in fact can be punished as either a misdemeanor or a felony. (ง 422.) He is correct the instruction was slightly misleading for that reason. We do not, however, share his further view that this error was prejudicial. He argues that the instruction inflates the criminality of the act and that it suggests that the Legislature considers this type of conduct to be far more serious than many other crimes. To the contrary, we view this error as minimal. Moreover, compared to his crime of robbing the swap meet and killing the unarmed Roland Teal, as well as his long history of criminality, the instructional misstep was clearly harmless under any standard. Defendant also argues the instruction fails to set out as a separate and understandable element the mental state necessary to commit the crime. Instead, he claims, the instruction lump[s] this crucial intent element in the long stream of verbiage making up the statute. We disagree: `[T]he language of a statute defining a crime or defense is generally an appropriate and desirable basis for an instruction, and is ordinarily sufficient when the defendant fails to request amplification.' ( People v. Estrada (1995) 11 Cal.4th 568, 574, 46 Cal.Rptr.2d 586, 904 P.2d 1197.) [I]f the instruction as given is adequate, the trial court is under no obligation to amplify or explain in the absence of a request that it do so. ( People v. Mayfield, supra, 14 Cal.4th at p. 778, 60 Cal.Rptr.2d 1, 928 P.2d 485.) Finally, having found no error in the instruction on criminal threats, we reject defendant's further claim that this alleged error, compounded with other errors, resulted in an unfair sentencing process.