Court Opinion

ID: 9718715
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 07:31:35.751684+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:01.877664
License: Public Domain

BRAUER, J.
I concur in the judgment.
*634I agree with the scholarly dissent of the late Justice Sims in People v. Dagnino (1978) 80 Cal.App.3d 981, 990 [146 Cal.Rptr. 129] that the harmless error rule should apply to unauthorized communications between judge and jury. But even by that yardstick, reversal is compelled because the judge on his own submitted a self-defense theory to the jury which undermined the defendant’s contention that the officer was injured accidentally and by inadvertence.
As to part III of the opinion, which deeply engages the attention of my brethren, defense counsel neither in his brief nor at oral argument upon repeated invitation could point to the slightest prejudice to the defendant; indeed, he conceded that the latter is ordinarily benefited by an instruction that the jury focus and make a specific finding on the most hotly contested element of the offense, here, whether violence was used. I would therefore shrug off this entire subject by alluding to the maxim “De minimis non curat lex.”