Opinion ID: 2633286
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Special-Circumstance Instruction

Text: With respect to the special circumstance of murder in the commission of an attempted rape, the trial court instructed the jury as follows: To find that the special circumstance, referred to in these instructions as murder in the commission of attempted rape is true, it must be proved: 1. The murder was committed while the defendant was engaged in the attempted commission of a rape; and 2. The murder was committed in order to carry out or advance the commission of the crime of attempted rape or to avoid detection. In other words, the special circumstance referred to in these instructions is not established if the attempted rape was merely incidental to the commission of the murder. (Former CALJIC No. 8.81.17, italics added.) Defendant contends first that the trial court erred by refusing his request to delete the phrase or to avoid detection from the instruction on the ground that there was no evidence the killer murdered Powell to avoid detection. We disagree. The jury could reasonably infer that defendant murdered Powell either to carry out or advance the attempted rape or to avoid detection, or both. Indeed, no other reason for his killing Powell readily appears. Any of these purposes would suffice to support the special circumstance. Nothing required the trial court to limit the jury to one choice or the other. Defendant also maintains that the instruction permitted the jury to make the special-circumstance finding in the absence of evidence of an attempted rape because the jury could find the special circumstance true by simply finding he tried to avoid detection of whatever he had done up to that point. Defendant's argument is premised on an unreasonable interpretation of the instruction. To find defendant guilty of first degree felony murder, the jury was instructed it had to find defendant had the specific intent to commit rape and that the attempted rape was proven beyond a reasonable doubt. (Former CALJIC Nos. 3.31, 8.21.) The challenged instruction further required that the jury had to find the murder was committed while the defendant was engaged in the attempted commission of a rape and the rape was not merely incidental to the murder. The jury was also instructed to consider the instructions as a whole and to not single out any particular point or instruction and ignore the others. (Former CALJIC No. 1.01.) Therefore, as applied to this case, the special-circumstance instruction required that Powell's murder was committed to avoid the detection of an attempted rape. We conclude, based on the totality of the instructions given, there is no reasonable likelihood the jury misconstrued or misapplied the instructions. ( People v. Maury, supra, 30 Cal.4th at p. 437, 133 Cal. Rptr.2d 561, 68 P.3d 1.)