Court Opinion

ID: 9789298
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 01:33:38.61476+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:21.407964
License: Public Domain

KENNARD, J., Dissenting.
Unlike the majority, I am of the view that the trial court’s failure to properly instruct the jury on the scope of the transferred intent doctrine prejudiced defendant. Nor do I agree that the trial court’s failure to define the term “proximate cause” in connection with the sentence enhancement for “proximately” causing great bodily injury or death was harmless error.
I
Skylar Morgan and Leon Simon, neither of whom was a gang member, testified that on the night of March 6, 1999, they were in Long Beach in a car driven by Kenneth “Kebo” Wilson, a member of the Rolling 20’s Crips street gang. Wilson stopped the car to talk to defendant and another man, both members of the Insane Crips, a rival gang. When defendant asked Wilson if he was “Kebo,” Wilson replied he was, adding that his passengers were not gang members. He said he would drop off his passengers and return. Saying, “So you Kebo from 20’s,” defendant opened fire. As Wilson started to drive away, defendant and his companion fired at the car. Wilson was killed; his passengers, Morgan and Simon, were wounded.
According to Morgan and Simon, it was defendant who started shooting. In a tape-recorded statement to the police that was played to the jury, defendant said his companion, Patrick LeBeau, fired the first shots, after which defendant “just started shooting, too” because LeBeau was his “home boy.” The evidence does not show who fired the shots that hit Wilson, Morgan, and Simon.
Long Beach Police Officer Paul Edwards found a loaded gun on the floor of Wilson’s car between the driver’s seat and the door. The gun was inoperable.
A jury convicted defendant of the murder of Wilson and the attempted murders of Morgan and Simon. As to each count the jury found true a sentence enhancement allegation that defendant had fired a gun and “proximately” caused great bodily injury or death. (Pen. Code, § 12022.53, subd. (d)0
*340The Court of Appeal reversed the attempted murder convictions, based on its conclusion that the trial court had misinstructed the jury on transferred intent. It also reversed the sentence enhancement findings because of the trial court’s failure to define proximate causation, an element of the enhancement.
II
In his closing statement, the prosecutor argued that defendant fired at the victims’ car with a premeditated intent to kill passengers Morgan and Simon, but he also argued that even if defendant intended to kill only driver Wilson, the jury could, by applying the doctrine of transferred intent, convict defendant of attempting to kill Morgan and Simon. In his words, “the intent . . . follows the bullet; wherever you are pointing it, that’s where it goes.”
When defense counsel argued there was no evidence that defendant intended to kill Morgan and Simon, the prosecutor told the jury in rebuttal: “[0]ne of the instructions talks about that, it is the concept of transfer [sic] intent. You don’t get a benefit if you try to kill one person and inadvertently kill another, that that was not your intent. An attempt follows the bullets, kills a different person, the crime so committed is the same as though you originally had given that intended target. The law does not excuse bad marksmanship or hitting other people. [Defendant] is responsible for each of those acts.”
After closing argument, the prosecutor asked the trial court to give the jury CALJIC No. 8.65, the standard instruction on transferred intent. He gave this reason: “[T]he argument of the defense was basically he didn’t necessarily intend to shoot the other people [Morgan and Simon]. And I felt it necessary to respond to that with transfer [sic] intent.” The trial court then instructed the jury, “When one attempts to kill a certain person, but by mistake or inadvertence kills a different person, the crime, if any, so committed is the same as though the person originally intended to be killed, had been killed.”
During deliberations, the jury asked the trial court whether a finding of premeditation as to the murder of Wilson would “follow over” to the attempted murder of Morgan. The court responded that the jury had to make a separate determination whether, as to each count, defendant’s acts were willful, malicious, and premeditated. The prosecutor then asked the trial court to direct the jury to consider CALJIC Nos. 8.65 (transferred intent), 8.66 (defining attempted murder) and 8.67 (defining attempted premeditated murder). The court did so, telling the jury: “I will refer you to three jury *341instructions that may assist you in reaching a determination. One is 8.65, the other is 8.66, and the third is 8.67. ... If you wish to take a look at those, it may be helpful. [f| With respect to each count, each count is determined separately from one another. So a finding on one does not necessarily lead to a finding on another. It may assist.”
The majority correctly holds that the doctrine of transferred intent does not apply to a charge of attempted murder. Thus, if defendant here had acted with a premeditated intent to kill Wilson, but as to Morgan and Simon lacked premeditation or intent to kill, he could not be convicted of the charges of attempted premeditated murder. Nevertheless, the majority concludes that the trial court did not err in giving CALJIC No. 8.65, the instruction on transferred intent. The majority reasons that the instruction discussed only what the jury should do if it were to find that in trying to kill one person, the defendant killed another. This leads the majority to conclude that the jury must have assumed that the instruction pertained only to the charge that defendant murdered Wilson, a crime to which the transferred intent doctrine applies,1 and that the jury did not apply the instruction to the charges of attempted murder because victims Morgan and Simon were not killed.
The majority’s reasoning is unsound for three reasons.
First, the prosecutor believed that CALJIC No. 8.65, the instruction on transferred intent, applied not only to murder but also to attempted murder: He specifically asked the trial court to give the instruction to counter the defense argument that defendant should not be convicted of attempted murder because he lacked the intent to kill Morgan and Simon. If the prosecutor, a professional trained and experienced in criminal law, incorrectly believed that the instruction applied to attempted murder, it is difficult to fathom the majority’s conclusion that a jury of lay individuals would correctly apply to the facts in this case the complex legal principles contained in the instruction on transferred intent.
Second, although the majority is right that the instruction on transferred intent applies to a charge of murder, here the facts did not warrant applying the instruction to the murder of Wilson. To apply the instruction to the Wilson murder, the jury would have had to believe that defendant intended to kill Morgan and Simon, who were wounded, but that he did not intend to *342kill Wilson, who died from gunshot wounds. The evidence, however, was just the opposite, suggesting that defendant wanted to kill Wilson, a member of a rival gang, but not Morgan and Simon, who did not belong to any gang.
Third, in closing argument the prosecutor did not ask the jury to apply the instruction on transferred intent to the charge of murder of Wilson. Instead, he argued that it applied to the two counts of attempted murder when responding to the defense argument that defendant was not guilty of those charges because he did not intend to kill Wilson’s two passengers, Morgan and Simon.
That the jury must have applied the doctrine of transferred intent to the charges of attempted murder follows from its question to the trial court, during deliberations, whether a finding of premeditation as to the murdered Wilson would “follow over” to the wounded Morgan. One can reasonably conclude that the jury did not inquire about defendant’s intent to kill Wilson, because it believed it already knew the answer: that under CALJIC No. 8.65, it could transfer that intent to Morgan and Simon, the two alleged victims of attempted murder.
The trial court’s directive to the jury to reread CALJIC No. 8.65, the instruction on transferred intent, must have reinforced, albeit erroneously so, the jury’s belief that it should apply that instruction to the charges of attempted murder, as the prosecutor, in closing argument, had asked the jury to do.
The trial court’s instruction on the doctrine of transferred intent was ambiguous. Not at all clear was whether it applied only to the charge of murder of Wilson, or whether it also applied to the attempted murder charges pertaining to the injured Morgan and Simon. When a trial court’s instructions are ambiguous, a reviewing court must determine whether there is “a reasonable likelihood that the jury misconstrued or misapplied the words” of the instruction. (People v. Clair (1992) 2 Cal.4th 629, 663 [7 Cal.Rptr.2d 564, 828 P.2d 705].) In this case, for the reasons given above, it is a virtual certainty that the jury misapplied CALJIC No. 8.65, the instruction on transferred intent, to the charges of attempted murder.
The majority cursorily concludes that any instructional error was harmless because “the evidence here virtually compelled a finding that, even if defendant primarily wanted to kill Wilson, he also, concurrently, intended to kill the others in the car” because he “intended to create a kill zone.” (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 333.) Not so. Defendant had a motive to kill Wilson because he knew the latter to be a member of a rival gang, but Wilson’s two *343passengers, Morgan and Simon, were not gang members and Wilson said so to defendant; the prosecution offered no evidence that defendant had any motive to kill the two passengers. Although the jury certainly could have concluded that defendant intended to kill all of the occupants in the car, I cannot say “beyond a reasonable doubt” (Chapman v. California (1967) 386 U.S. 18, 24 [87 S.Ct. 824, 828, 17 L.Ed.2d 705, 24 A.L.R.3d 1065]) that the jury would necessarily have reached such a conclusion.
Ill
Subdivision (d) of Penal Code section 12022.53 provides that any defendant who, in the commission of specified felonies, “intentionally and personally discharged a firearm and proximately caused great bodily injury ... or death, to any person other than an accomplice” (italics added) must be sentenced to a term of 25 years to life in prison. The trial court here instructed the jury on this sentence enhancement but did not define the term “proximately” for the jury. I disagree with the majority that the trial court’s failure to do so was harmless error.
In support of its conclusion, the majority quotes this statement by a majority of this court in Mitchell v. Gonzales (1991) 54 Cal.3d 1041, 1050 [1 Cal.Rptr.2d 913, 819 P.2d 872]: “It is reasonably likely that when jurors hear the term ‘proximate cause’ they may misunderstand its meaning or improperly limit their discussion of what constitutes a cause in fact.”2 Seizing on the last half of this statement, the majority observes that if the trial court’s failure to define proximate cause caused the jury to “improperly limit” (Mitchell, at p. 1050) the scope of proximate cause, defendant could not have been injured. The majority explains: “[Tjurors who improperly limit their discussion of what constitutes proximate cause will not find causation where it does not exist. The correct definition of proximate causation is broader, not narrower, than jurors might assume.” (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 338.) I agree with the majority that if the jury thought proximate cause had a more limited meaning than the correct definition of that term, the trial court’s failure to define it did not prejudice defendant. But, as I shall explain, that is not the only way in which the jury may have misconstrued the meaning of proximate cause.
In Mitchell, this court described an experiment, conducted as part of “a scholarly study of 14 jury instructions,” in which “ ‘the term “proximate *344cause” was misunderstood by 23% of the subjects,’ ” who thought it meant “ ‘ “approximate cause,” “estimated cause,” or some fabrication.’ ” (Mitchell v. Gonzales, supra, 54 Cal.3d at p. 1051.) The words “approximate” and “estimated” both imply a level of certainty that is less than the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard required in criminal cases. Like the subjects in the just described experiment, the jury here may have similarly misunderstood the word “proximately.”
CALJIC No. 17.19.5 (2002 rev.) (6th ed. 1996) correctly defines a proximate cause of great bodily injury or death as “an act or omission that sets in motion a chain of events that produces as a direct, natural and probable consequence of the act or omission the great bodily injury or death and without which the great bodily injury or death would not have occurred.” That is how the trial court in this case should have instructed the jury. If the jury had been so instructed, could it have had a reasonable doubt as to whether defendant “proximately” caused not only Wilson’s death but also the injuries to Morgan and Simon? The answer is “yes.”
If defendant did fire the bullets that struck the three victims, it necessarily follows that he “proximately caused great bodily injury ... or death.” (Pen. Code, § 12022.53, subd. (d).) But both defendant and his companion fired shots, and the evidence does not show whose shots caused the injuries. Thus, the jury could not have found beyond a reasonable doubt that defendant shot the three victims. Even if defendant’s accomplice was the one who shot them, defendant proximately caused their injuries if he “set[] in motion a chain of events” that as a “direct, natural and probable consequence,” led to the shooting. (CALJIC No. 17.19.5.) That scenario would have required defendant to shoot first, with his accomplice following suit. It is not at all clear, however, who fired first. Morton and Simon testified it was defendant. But defendant, in a tape-recorded statement to the police that was played at trial, claimed it was his companion who began the shooting and defendant then joined him in support. Under this scenario, if the accomplice’s bullets rather than defendant’s struck the three victims, defendant did not proximately cause their injuries, because the accomplice started shooting on his own initiative, not in response to an act by defendant.
Because of these conflicting accounts, the jury may have been uncertain who fired first and whose shots hit Wilson, Morton, and Simon. Given that uncertainty, the jury, had it been properly instructed on the meaning of proximate cause, might well have decided that it could not find beyond a reasonable doubt that defendant proximately caused great bodily injury or death to the three victims. Thus, the trial court’s failure to define that term was prejudicial error. (See Chapman v. California, supra, 386 U.S. 18, 24 [87 S.Ct. 824, 828].)
*345IV
For the reasons given above, I would affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeal, which reversed defendant’s convictions for attempting to murder Morgan and Simon and also reversed the sentence enhancements for use of a firearm that proximately caused the death of Wilson as well as the injuries to Morgan and Simon.
Moreno, J., concurred.

English courts have applied the transferred intent doctrine to murder for over four centuries. (See The Queen v. Saunders & Archer (1576) 75 Eng.Rep. 706, 708.) For almost a century, this court has consistently held that the doctrine applies to California’s murder statute. (See People v. Scott (1996) 14 Cal.4th 544, 549-550 [59 Cal.Rptr.2d 178, 927 P.2d 288]; People v. Suesser (1904) 142 Cal. 354, 366 [75 P. 1093].)

In Mitchell, I disagreed with the majority’s disapproval of BAJI No. 3.75, a standard jury instruction defining proximate cause. (See Mitchell v. Gonzales, supra, 54 Cal.3d at pp. 1056-1062 (dis. opn. of Kennard, J.).) The majority’s observation there that jurors are likely to misunderstand the term “proximate cause” unless its meaning is defined for them was not a point of disagreement.