Opinion ID: 1386250
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Requested Instructions on Duress

Text: Immediately after his arrest, defendant talked to Officer Reyes after waiving his constitutional rights under Miranda v. Arizona, supra, 384 U.S. 436, 479 [16 L.Ed.2d 694, 726]. At first, defendant denied his involvement in the jewelry store incident, but later he admitted killing the Guerrero brothers. Defendant made vague reference to a group he called the Colombian Mafia, [2] which he said had contracted him to commit the double murder and threatened to kill him and his family if he did not do so. Defendant said he was to turn the stolen jewelry over to the Colombian Mafia in New York. At trial, Officer Reyes testified to defendant's admissions made about the killings and defendant's comments about the Colombian Mafia. Defendant did not testify. The prosecution offered alternative theories to support defendant's guilt of first degree murder: the killings were premeditated and deliberate, and they occurred in the course of a robbery. (ง 189.) The trial court instructed the jury on both of these theories. At the prosecution's request, the court also instructed the jury on the defense of duress as defined in CALJIC No. 4.40 (4th ed. 1979, bound vol.; unless otherwise indicated, all further references to CALJIC are to this edition), and it gave a modified version of CALJIC No. 4.41, [3] informing the jury that duress was not a defense to a charge of homicide. The defense acknowledged that duress would not be a complete defense to murder, but argued that it should reduce criminal culpability by negating the ability to premeditate and deliberate. Accordingly, defense counsel requested the court to instruct the jury on this theory of duress and to give an additional instruction on manslaughter. Counsel also asked for permission to argue this theory to the jury. The court denied each of these requests. (5) Defendant contends that the trial court erred in refusing to instruct the jury that duress could negate the elements of premeditation and deliberation, and that the court's ruling denied him the effective assistance of counsel by improperly limiting counsel's argument to the jury. Defendant posits that the threats of harm would negate the mental states necessary for first degree murder, thereby reducing his criminal culpability either to second degree murder (see Lafave & Scott, Criminal Law (1st ed. 1972) ง 49, p. 379 [suggesting that duress may eliminate the ability to deliberate or premeditate]) or to manslaughter (Lafave & Scott, Criminal Law (2d ed. 1986) ง 7.11(c), pp. 666-667 [duress may negate malice thereby reducing murder to manslaughter]). As we shall discuss, the facts of this case do not support the instruction that defendant requested. A trial court need only give those requested instructions supported by evidence that is substantial. ( People v. Flannel (1979) 25 Cal.3d 668, 684, fn. 12 [160 Cal. Rptr. 84, 603 P.2d 1].) Central to a defense of duress is the immediacy of the threat or menace on which the defense is premised. ( People v. Quinlan (1970) 8 Cal. App.3d 1063, 1068 [88 Cal. Rptr. 125]; People v. Pic'l (1981) 114 Cal. App.3d 824, 869 [171 Cal. Rptr. 106], disapproved on other grounds in People v. Kimble (1988) 44 Cal.3d 480, 498 [244 Cal. Rptr. 148, 749 P.2d 803].) [A] phantasmagoria of future harm, such as a death threat to be carried out at some undefined time, will not diminish criminal culpability. ( People v. Otis (1959) 174 Cal. App.2d 119, 125 [344 P.2d 342]; People v. Lewis (1963) 222 Cal. App.2d 136, 141 [35 Cal. Rptr. 1].) Here, defendant's vague and unsubstantiated assertion in his statement to Officer Reyes โ that the Colombian Mafia had threatened to kill him and members of his family if he did not kill the Guerrero brothers โ did not constitute substantial evidence that the threat of death to defendant and his family was imminent. Without bestowing merit on defendant's theory that duress can negate premeditation and deliberation, we simply hold that in the absence of substantial evidence of immediacy of the threatened harm, the trial court did not err in refusing defendant's proffered instructions. Consequently, defendant was not denied the effective assistance of counsel when, as a result of the court's ruling, defendant was precluded from presenting to the jury a theory of defense unsupported by the evidence. Moreover, by finding the alleged robbery special circumstance to be true, the jury necessarily decided that the murders were committed in the course of a robbery. (งง 189, 190.2, subd. (a)(17)(i); People v. Garrison (1989) 47 Cal.3d 746, 779 [254 Cal. Rptr. 257, 765 P.2d 419].) For this reason, the murder verdicts are not dependent on findings that the killings were deliberate or premeditated. Thus, any error by the trial court in refusing the requested instructions, which pertained only to murder premised on deliberate and premeditated conduct, was harmless. ( People v. Sedeno (1974) 10 Cal.3d 703, 721 [112 Cal. Rptr. 1, 518 P.2d 913].)