Opinion ID: 2544661
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: Jury Instructions on Special Circumstance

Text: The court instructed the jury on the elements of the robbery-murder special circumstance in the language of the standard jury instruction, CALJIC No. 8.81.17. Among other things, the instruction explained the requirement that the murder have been committed in order to carry out or advance the commission of the crime of robbery; or to facilitate the escape therefrom or to avoid detection, and the instruction expressly admonished that the special circumstance referred to in these instructions is not established if the robbery was merely incidental to the commission of the murder. Defendant requested, but the trial court refused to give, the following special instruction: In order to find the special circumstance in count I to be true, you must be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that the primary motivation for the killing was robbery, or that the killing was done to avoid detection of the robbery. In requesting the special instruction, defense counsel explained that the standard instruction did not use the word primary to describe the required motivation for the killing. In refusing the instruction, the trial court noted that counsel would have their opportunity to highlight, apparently meaning that the phrasing of the proposed instruction was argumentative. We do not agree with defendant that the trial court erred in declining to give the proposed special instruction. The standard instruction that the court gave correctly and adequately explained the requirement for the special circumstance that the murder be committed in furtherance of the robbery or, otherwise stated, that the robbery not be merely incidental to the murder. Defendant's trial counsel apparently modeled the proposed special instruction on language in one of this court's decisions: A special circumstance allegation of murder committed during a robbery has not been established where the accused's primary criminal goal `is not to steal but to kill and the robbery is merely incidental to the murder ... because its sole object is to facilitate or conceal the primary crime.' ( People v. Thompson (1980) 27 Cal.3d 303, 322, 165 Cal.Rptr. 289, 611 P.2d 883, italics added.) More recently, however, we have not phrased the requirement in terms of the defendant's primary motivation but instead have stated that [concurrent intent to kill and to commit an independent felony will support a felony-murder special circumstance. ( People v. Raley, supra, 2 Cal.4th at p. 903, 8 Cal.Rptr.2d 678, 830 P.2d 712.) Thus, contrary to defendant's argument here, a jury deciding the truth of the special circumstance allegation is not required to assign a hierarchy to the defendant's motives in order to determine which of multiple concurrent intents was primary, but instead the jury need only determine whether commission of the underlying felony was or was not merely incidental to the murder. The proposed special instruction would have added nothing to the jury's understanding of this requirement.