Opinion ID: 2630926
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Possession of Recently Stolen Property (Letner, Tobin)

Text: Defendants challenge the trial court's instruction to the jury, pursuant to CALJIC No. 2.15, that it could infer from defendants' possession of recently stolen property that they committed a robbery, but that such an inference was not sufficient to establish defendants' guilt of that offense in the absence of corroborating evidence of guilt. Defendants contend the instruction violated their constitutional rights because it constituted an improper pinpoint instruction that was beneficial to the prosecution and shifted the burden of proof to defendants, and promoted an irrational inference because the possession of stolen property, by itself, does not establish whether the property was obtained by a robbery or merely by a theft. We previously have rejected similar claims, and do so again for the same reasons expressed in our prior decisions. The instruction did not shift the burden of proof and was not an improper pinpoint instruction for the prosecution's benefitthe instruction benefited defendants in that it notified the jury that it could not convict them of robbery based solely upon the evidence establishing their possession of Pontbriant's property. The instruction did not invite the irrational inference that the jury could find defendants had robbed Pontbriant without finding that they used force or fear to obtain her property, because the jury separately was instructed regarding the elements of both robbery and theft, and there was no suggestion in the challenged instruction that the jury need not find that all of the elements of robbery (or theft) had been proved beyond a reasonable doubt. ( People v. Holt (1997) 15 Cal.4th 619, 677 [63 Cal.Rptr.2d 782, 937 P.2d 213]; see also People v. Parson (2008) 44 Cal.4th 332, 355-356 [79 Cal.Rptr.3d 269, 187 P.3d 1]; People v. Prieto (2003) 30 Cal.4th 226, 248 [133 Cal.Rptr.2d 18, 66 P.3d 1123] ( Prieto ); People v. Smithey (1999) 20 Cal.4th 936, 975-978 [86 Cal.Rptr.2d 243, 978 P.2d 1171] ( Smithey ).)