Opinion ID: 1393358
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Was the instructional error prejudicial?

Text: Thus far we have explained how all four taking theories advanced by the prosecution in support of the robbery charge as a matter of law did not violate the current standards defining immediate presence which we adopted in Hayes, supra, 52 Cal.3d 577. We have further explained why, as a result of this conclusion, the Court of Appeal below erred in finding the Miramon-Brown instructional error prejudicial under the rule of reversal stated in Green, supra, 27 Cal.3d at page 69. [11] It remains to be determined whether the instructional error in this case was prejudicial under the harmless error test traditionally applied to misinstruction on the elements of an offense, namely, whether it appears beyond a reasonable doubt that the error complained of did not contribute to the verdict obtained. ( Chapman, supra, 386 U.S. 18, 24 [17 L.Ed.2d 705, 710-711]; Hayes, supra, 52 Cal.3d at p. 628 [applying Chapman standard to Miramon-Brown instructional error]; see Sullivan v. Louisiana (1993) 508 U.S. ___, ___ [124 L.Ed.2d 182, 189, 113 S.Ct. 2078, 2081 [most constitutional errors have been held amenable to harmless-error analysis, see Arizona v. Fulminante, 499 U.S. 279, 285, 111 S.Ct. 1246, 1252 [113 L.Ed.2d 302] (1991) (opinion of REHNQUIST, C.J., for the Court) (collecting examples)....]; Carella v. California (1989) 491 U.S. 263 [105 L.Ed.2d 218, 109 S.Ct. 2419] ( per curiam ) [harmless error standard applied to instruction containing erroneous conclusive presumption]; Pope v. Illinois (1987) 481 U.S. 497 [95 L.Ed.2d 439, 107 S.Ct. 1918] [harmless error standard applied to instruction misstating an element of the offense]; Rose v. Clark (1986) 478 U.S. 570 [92 L.Ed.2d 460, 106 S.Ct. 3101] [harmless error standard applied to instruction containing erroneous burden-shifting presumption]; cf. People v. Berryman (1993) 6 Cal.4th 1048, 1089 [25 Cal. Rptr.2d 867, 864 P.2d 40] (maj. opn. by Mosk, J.) [The erroneous omission of the element of intent to kill [from the felony-murder special-circumstance instruction] is not automatically reversible but rather is subject to harmless-error analysis under the `reasonable doubt' standard for federal constitutional error laid down in [ Chapman ].]; People v. Odle, supra, 45 Cal.3d at pp. 414-415.) Most recently, in Yates v. Evatt (1991) 500 U.S. 391 [114 L.Ed.2d 432, 111 S.Ct. 1884] ( Yates ), the United States Supreme Court elaborated on the nature of the inquiry a reviewing court must undertake in applying the Chapman harmless-error standard to cases, such as this one, where the jury has been misinstructed on some aspect of an element of the charged offense. We note, parenthetically, that when this court decided Green, supra, 27 Cal.3d 1, and Hayes, supra, 52 Cal.3d 577, we did not have the benefit of the high court's decision in Yates. Yates involved misinstruction on the element of malice in a murder case. The jury was erroneously instructed that the requisite element of malice could be established based on either of two mandatory presumptions: that `use of a deadly weapon' establishes malice, and that the `willful, deliberate, and intentional doing of an unlawful act' operates in the same way. ( Yates, supra, 500 U.S. at p. 401 [114 L.Ed.2d at p. 441].) Both mandatory presumptions were unconstitutional, as conceded by respondents in Yates. ( Id. at pp. 401-402 [114 L.Ed.2d at pp. 441-442].) Although the present case does not involve misinstruction of the jury with a mandatory presumption, the high court's discussion of Chapman harmless error review in Yates is nonetheless instructive on the prejudice analysis that must be undertaken here. [12] (5) The following quoted passage from Yates sheds light on the analysis to be performed in assessing the prejudicial impact under Chapman of instructional error on the elements of an offense: To say that an error did not `contribute' to the ensuing verdict is not, of course, to say that the jury was totally unaware of that feature of the trial later held to have been erroneous. When, for example, a trial court has instructed a jury to apply an unconstitutional presumption, a reviewing court can hardly infer that the jurors failed to consider it, a conclusion that would be factually untenable in most cases, and would run counter to a sound presumption of appellate practice, that jurors are reasonable and generally follow the instructions they are given. See Richardson v. Marsh, 481 U.S. 200, 211 [95 L.Ed.2d 176, 107 S.Ct. 1702] (1987) (`The rule that juries are presumed to follow their instructions is a pragmatic one, rooted less in the absolute certitude that the presumption is true than in the belief that it represents a reasonable practical accommodation of the interests of the state and the defendant'). To say that an error did not contribute to the verdict is, rather, to find that error unimportant in relation to everything else the jury considered on the issue in question, as revealed in the record. Thus, to say that an instruction to apply an unconstitutional presumption did not contribute to the verdict is to make a judgment about the significance of the presumption to reasonable jurors, when measured against the other evidence considered by those jurors independently of the presumption. Before reaching such a judgment, a court must take two quite distinct steps. First, it must ask what evidence the jury actually considered in reaching its verdict. If, for example, the fact presumed is necessary to support the verdict, a reviewing court must ask what evidence the jury considered as tending to prove or disprove that fact. [Fn. omitted.] Did the jury look at only the predicate facts, or did it consider other evidence bearing on the fact subject to the presumption? In answering this question, a court does not conduct a subjective enquiry into the jurors' minds. The answer must come, instead, from analysis of the instructions given to the jurors and from application of that customary presumption that jurors follow instructions and, specifically, that they consider relevant evidence on a point in issue when they are told that they may do so. Once a court has made the first enquiry into the evidence considered by the jury, it must then weigh the probative force of that evidence as against the probative force of the presumption standing alone. To satisfy Chapman 's reasonable doubt standard, it will not be enough that the jury considered evidence from which it could have come to the verdict without reliance on the presumption. Rather, the issue under Chapman is whether the jury actually rested its verdict on evidence establishing the presumed fact beyond a reasonable doubt, independently of the presumption. Since that enquiry cannot be a subjective one into the jurors' minds, a court must approach it by asking whether the force of the evidence presumably considered by the jury in accordance with the instructions is so overwhelming as to leave it beyond a reasonable doubt that the verdict resting on that evidence would have been the same in the absence of the presumption.  ( Yates, supra, 500 U.S. at pp. 403-405 [114 L.Ed.2d at pp. 448-449], italics added.) (2d) With these fundamental principles of Chapman review firmly in mind, the error in the rationale of Justice Mosk's concurring and dissenting opinion becomes apparent. That opinion misplaces principal reliance on the high court's recent decision in Sullivan v. Louisiana, supra, 508 U.S. ___ [124 L.Ed.2d 182, 113 S.Ct. 2078] ( Sullivan ). The specific holding of Sullivan is that the giving of a constitutionally deficient reasonable doubt instruction can never be deemed harmless under a Chapman analysis. ( Sullivan, supra, 508 U.S. at p. ___ [124 L.Ed.2d at pp. 187-192, 113 S.Ct. at pp. 2080-2083].) In reaching this conclusion, Justice Scalia, writing for the court, did have occasion to first reiterate the time-honored Chapman standard, and then briefly paraphrase the court's earlier holding in Yates, supra, 500 U.S. 391, in a manner fully consistent with our own reading of that decision. ( Sullivan, supra, 508 U.S. at p. ___ [124 L.Ed.2d at pp. 189-190, 113 S.Ct. at p. 2081].) Sullivan goes on to explain the illogic of applying such harmless error review to a case in which the jury has been given a constitutionally deficient reasonable doubt instruction. ( Sullivan, supra, 508 U.S. at p. ___ [124 L.Ed.2d at pp. 189-190, 113 S.Ct. at p. 2082].) That is so because, in such a case, there has been no jury verdict within the meaning of the Sixth Amendment of guilty-beyond-a-reasonable-doubt, and for that reason the question whether the same verdict of guilty-beyond-a-reasonable-doubt would have been rendered absent the constitutional error is utterly meaningless. ( Ibid., italics in original.) The Sullivan court observed that: In [ Arizona v.] Fulminante [ supra, 113 L.Ed.2d 302, 111 S.Ct. 1246,] we distinguished between, on the one hand, `structural defects in the constitution of the trial mechanism, which defy analysis by harmless-error standards,' and, on the other hand, trial errors which occur `during the presentation of the case to the jury, and which may therefore be quantitatively assessed in the context of other evidence presented.' Fulminante, supra, 499 U.S. 279, 113 L.Ed.2d 302, 111 S.Ct. 1246. Denial of the right to a jury verdict of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt [as the result of a constitutionally deficient reasonable doubt instruction ] is certainly an error of the former sort, the jury guarantee being a `basic protectio[n]' whose precise effects are unmeasureable, but without which a criminal trial cannot reliably serve its function. [Citation.] ... The deprivation of that right [to trial by jury], with consequences that are necessarily unquantifiable and indeterminate, unquestionably qualifies as `structural error.' ( Sullivan, supra, 508 U.S. at pp. ___ [124 L.Ed.2d at pp. 190-191, 113 S.Ct. at pp. 2082-2083].) There was no constitutionally defective reasonable doubt instruction given in the present case. The precise holding in Sullivan thus has no direct bearing on the question at hand; did the Miramon-Brown misinstruction on immediate presence prejudice the robbery and robbery-related verdicts under the Chapman test? As Chief Justice Rehnquist observed in his separate concurring opinion characterizing the holding in Sullivan : I accept the Court's conclusion that a constitutionally deficient reasonable-doubt instruction is a breed apart from the many other instructional errors that we have held are amenable to harmless-error analysis. ( Sullivan, supra, 508 U.S. at p. ___ [124 L.Ed.2d at p. 193, 113 S.Ct. at p. 2084], italics in original (conc. opn. of Rehnquist, C.J.) [citing, among other examples of instructional errors which are subject to harmless error review, instruction[s] misstating an element of the offense, with citation to Pope v. Illinois, supra, 481 U.S. 497].) The error under review in Sullivan is a breed apart from the Miramon-Brown instructional error we face in this case. For this reason, Justice Mosk's apparent fear that our opinion in this case is inconsistent with, and unfaithful to, the high court's opinion in Sullivan, is simply unfounded. Justice Mosk's understanding of the analysis an appellate court must undertake in conducting Chapman review of misinstruction on an element of an offense is also at odds with the holding in Yates. His concurring and dissenting opinion suggests that to say that the superior court's instructional misdefinition of the `immediate presence' element of the crime of robbery did not contribute to the verdict is to make a judgment about the significance of the instructional misdefinition to reasonable jurors, when considered against the other pertinent, and proper, instructions. (Conc. & dis. opn. of Mosk, J., post, at p. 443.) But that is only part of our inquiry under the mandate of Chapman and Yates ; we must ultimately look to the evidence considered by defendant's jury under the instructions given in assessing the prejudicial impact or harmless nature of the error. Justice Mosk appears to conclude otherwise, implying that we should virtually ignore the record evidence as largely irrelevant to our task, and expressly concluding that any finding as to whether the jury actually rendered its actual verdict without reliance on the Miramon-Brown misinstruction must turn on whether the other pertinent and proper instructions are so implicated on the record, including the parties' evidence and theories, as to compel a conclusion beyond a reasonable doubt that they must have made the instructional misdefinition superfluous. ( Id. at pp. 443-444.) This conclusion  that [i]t is only if the instructional misdefinition [is] minimal in importance compared to the other pertinent and proper instructions that it can be held not to have contributed to the verdict ( id. at p. 444)  does not accurately characterize the prejudice analysis to be undertaken here. As explained in Yates, under Chapman we must inquire whether it can be determined, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the jury actually rested its verdict on evidence establishing the requisite taking element of robbery independently of the force of the Miramon-Brown misinstruction. ( Yates, supra, 500 U.S. at p. 405 [114 L.Ed.2d at p. 449.) [13] As previously noted, Yates involved misinstruction in a murder case on the requisite element of malice, the trial court having erroneously told the jury the element could be established based on either of two mandatory presumptions, both of which in fact were unconstitutional. The Supreme Court's task in Yates, therefore, was to determine the effect of the erroneous mandatory presumptions on the jury's verdict impliedly finding malice. First, the court determined that in light of all the instructions the jury would have considered all the evidence relevant to malice. ( Yates, supra, 500 U.S. at pp. 408-409 [114 L.Ed.2d at p. 452].) Then, looking itself to all the relevant evidence, the court concluded the evidentiary record did not clearly establish malice; hence the court was unable to infer beyond a reasonable doubt that the mandatory presumptions did not contribute to the jury's verdict. ( Id. at pp. 409-410 [114 L.Ed.2d at p. 452].) Here, by contrast, the trial court's misinstruction did not implicate the entirety of the definition of the taking element of robbery  instead the jury was misinstructed on one of two possible factual theories by which that element could be satisfied, i.e., the theory of a taking from the victim's immediate presence. No instructional error occurred in connection with the alternate theory by which the element of taking could be satisfied  the theory of a taking directly from the victim's person. With this distinction in mind, we turn again to the language in Yates that must guide this court: To say that an error did not `contribute' to the verdict, the high court stated, is not to say the jury was totally unaware of that feature of the trial later held to have been erroneous. ( Yates, supra, 500 U.S. at p. 403 [114 L.Ed.2d at pp. 448-449].) Here, of course, the jury certainly was aware of the evidence and arguments of counsel concerning those takings that would not have been from Atherton's person, but only from his immediate presence. To say that an error did not contribute to the verdict, the court continued, is, rather, to find that error unimportant in relation to everything else the jury considered on the issue in question, as revealed in the record. ( Ibid., italics added.) In Yates, as indicated, the issue in question was malice. Here, the issue in question is not whether the takings were from Atherton's immediate presence; rather, the issue in question is simply whether there was a taking  either from Atherton's person or from his immediate presence  sufficient to satisfy the taking requirement for robbery. Paraphrasing Yates, to say that an instruction [here, misdefining the facts necessary to support one theory establishing an element] did not contribute to the verdict is to make a judgment about the significance of the [instruction] to reasonable jurors, when measured against the other evidence considered by those jurors independently of the [evidence to which the erroneous instruction applied]. ( Yates, supra, 500 U.S. at p. 404 [114 L.Ed.2d at pp. 449-450].) Continuing, the high court stated, If, for example, the fact presumed [or, as here, the factual theory concerning which the jury was misinstructed] is necessary to support the verdict, a reviewing court must ask what evidence the jury considered as tending to prove or disprove that fact. ( Id. at p. 404 [114 L.Ed.2d at pp. 449-450], fn. omitted.) Then, in a footnote at this point, the court admonished: If the presumed fact is not itself necessary for the verdict, but only one of a variety of facts sufficient to prove a necessary element, the reviewing court should identify not only the evidence considered for the fact subject to the presumption, but also the evidence for alternative facts sufficient to prove the element. (500 U.S. at p. 404, fn. 9 [114 L.Ed.2d at p. 449].) The latter caveat, in our view, is relevant here, as it was not in Yates. Here the theory on which the jury was misinstructed is not itself necessary for the verdict; rather, the theory of a taking from Atherton's immediate presence is only one of a variety of facts sufficient to prove the necessary element of taking. The trial court instructed the jurors on both theories of taking. In particular, the jury was told that [r]obbery is the felonious taking of personal property in the possession of another, from his person or immediate presence, and against his will, accomplished by means of force or fear. (Italics added; see CALJIC No. 9.40.) We are directed in Yates to apply the customary presumption that jurors follow instructions and, specifically, that they consider relevant evidence on a point in issue when they are told that they may do so. ( Yates, supra, 500 U.S. at p. 404 [114 L.Ed.2d at p. 449].) The court's instructions made the question whether there was a taking from the victim's person a point in issue for the jury. Following Yates, we therefore presume the jury considered all relevant evidence relating to a taking from the victim's person. The United States Supreme Court has admonished that, [h]armless-error analysis addresses ... what is to be done about a trial error that, in theory, may have altered the basis on which the jury decided the case, but in practice clearly had no effect on the outcome.  ( Rose v. Clark, supra, 478 U.S. at p. 582, fn. 11 [92 L.Ed.2d at p. 473], italics added.) Because the force of the evidence showing Atherton's wallet, car keys, and automobile were taken directly from his person is overwhelming (see Yates, supra, 500 U.S. at p. 405 [114 L.Ed.2d at pp. 449-450]), the conclusion is inescapable that the evidence, as Yates requires, is of such compelling force as to show beyond a reasonable doubt that the erroneous instruction must have made no difference in reaching the verdict obtained. ( Yates, supra, 500 U.S. at p. 407 [114 L.Ed.2d at pp. 451-452].) [14]
That portion of the judgment of the Court of Appeal reversing the robbery, kidnapping for robbery, and first degree murder convictions is reversed. In all other respects the judgment is affirmed, and the matter remanded to the Court of Appeal for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.