Opinion ID: 2636172
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: The absolute certainty approach is unsound

Text: In determining whether the instructional error in Bolden required reversal, this court viewed the error through the prism of Stromberg. In Bolden, the defendant was charged with multiple general and specific intent offenses for his involvement with four other men in a robbery-kidnapping. Regarding each offense, the jury was instructed on three alternative theories of liability: (1) aiding and abetting, (2) direct participation, and (3) vicarious coconspirator liability based upon the natural-and-probable-consequences doctrine. [18] On appeal, we rejected the latter version of vicarious coconspirator liability for specific intent offenses and thus were required to determine whether the jury's verdict should stand when it was silent as to which theory the jury relied on to convict Bolden. [19] As this court then observed, the United States Supreme Court ha[d] never addressed whether harmless error analysis is available in such cases. [20] Searching for guidance in this regard, the Bolden court adopted the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals' approach to Stromberg error as developed in Keating v. Hood , [21] Under that approach, reversal is mandatory unless the court `is absolutely certain ' that the jury relied upon the legally correct theory to convict the defendant. [22] Applying the Keating absolute certainty approach, the Bolden court noted that the ground upon which the jury actually relied to determine the defendant's guilt was not discernable from the verdict, and thus the court could only speculate as to the basis for the jury's decision. [23] Consequently, the court determined that it could not conclude with absolute certainty that the jury did not find Bolden guilty of the burglary and kidnapping offenses based on the erroneous instruction. [24] Without any further examination of the record or the jury's findings, the court reversed Bolden's convictions of the specific intent offenses. Soon after we decided Bolden, the Ninth Circuit, in Lara v. Ryan, [25] for the first time clarified its rationale for approaching Stromberg error in a manner that all but guarantees reversal. In Lara, a federal habeas case, the defendant was convicted of two counts of attempted murder in state court pursuant to a general jury verdict that may have rested on a legally invalid alternative theory of attempted murder based on implied malice. [26] On direct review, Lara's convictions were affirmed under the Chapman standard of harmless-error review. On collateral review, a federal district court denied Lara habeas relief but concluded that Chapman was not the correct harmless-error standard. On appeal, the Ninth Circuit agreed with the district court and went as far as it ever has in rationalizing its disparate treatment of Stromberg error. In particular, the court reasoned that the error was structural: [T]he trial court did not merely omit or misstate an element of the charged offense. Rather, its error was structural, because it enabled the jury to deliver a general verdict that potentially rested on different theories of guilt, at least one of which was constitutionally invalid. As such, Lara's claim arises from the very limited class of cases in which a structural error has occurred. [27] Despite concluding that the error was structural in nature, a conclusion that normally requires automatic reversal, [28] the Ninth Circuit did not reverse Lara's convictions. Instead, considering the trial court's numerous instructions requiring the jury to find actual malice and the jury's special finding that the attempted murders were willful, deliberate, and premeditated, the Ninth Circuit concluded that it could be absolutely certain that the jury convicted Lara under [a legally valid] express-malice theory. [29] In our view, the result in Lara is at odds with its reasoning. The availability of harmless-error review for constitutional errors is governed by a basic dichotomy: a constitutional error is either structural or it is not. [30] If the error is structural, then it defies harmless-error review, and reversal is automatic. [31] This is true without exception, `limited' or otherwise. [32] Yet the reasoning in Lara presumes that Stromberg error, which is concededly a constitutional error, is structural and at the same time not. [33] Because an error can never be both, either the Ninth Circuit's structural label is improvident or its absolute certainty approach merely reprises Chapman harmless-error review, despite masquerading as a more inflexible standard. Either way, we take this opportunity to reexamine the wisdom of our decision to follow the absolute certainty approach in Bolden.