Opinion ID: 1203248
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Sound Mind Instruction

Text: (61) Defendant claims that an instruction that the jury should assume that he was of sound mind at the time of his alleged conduct (former CALJIC No. 3.34) amounted to a conclusive presumption that lightened the prosecutor's burden of proof on the element of specific intent applicable, he claims, to most of the charges against him, in violation of the due process clauses of the state and federal Constitutions. [12] He claims that the instruction interfered with the jury's consideration of his claim that because of drug and alcohol intoxication, he did not form the necessary specific intent. He argues that the instruction may have caused the jury to shift the burden of proof to him, and that it may have caused the jury to fail to consider the evidence at all, even in deciding whether there was any reasonable doubt on the element of intent. Given the full spectrum of instruction on the issues of intent and voluntary intoxication, we find, as we have before, that it is not reasonably likely the jury would have discerned in the presumption of mental soundness a presumption of sobriety. ( People v. Mickey (1991) 54 Cal.3d 612, 671 [286 Cal. Rptr. 801, 818 P.2d 84]; see also People v. Kelly (1992) 1 Cal.4th 495, 525-526 [3 Cal. Rptr.2d 677, 822 P.2d 385].) A sound mind does not convey to us, or to the reasonable juror, we think, the concept of sobriety. Rather, it conveys the absence of mental illness (see People v. Gorshen (1959) 51 Cal.2d 716, 729 [336 P.2d 492]; former ง 21, as enacted in 1872; see also People v. Mickey, supra, 54 Cal.3d at p. 670.) Reading the instructions as a whole, as we must ( Francis v. Franklin (1985) 471 U.S. 307, 315 [85 L.Ed.2d 344, 354, 105 S.Ct. 1965]; Cupp v. Naughten (1973) 414 U.S. 141, 147 [38 L.Ed.2d 368, 373-374, 94 S.Ct. 396]), we think it is reasonably likely the jury would understand that the People had the burden of proving defendant's specific intent, and that while defendant's sanity for the purpose of proving specific intent was generally presumed, evidence of intoxication and abnormal physical condition was nonetheless relevant to raise a reasonable doubt whether specific intent had been proven.