California, United States of America
The following excerpt is from People v. Ramirez, 270 Cal.Rptr. 286, 50 Cal.3d 1158, 791 P.2d 965 (Cal. 1990):
In addition to contending that the failure to instruct under CALJIC No. 4.21 tainted the first degree murder conviction--a contention we have just rejected--defendant also contends that the failure to give CALJIC No. 4.21 undermined the jury's special circumstance findings. At trial, the jury was instructed--in accordance with the then-existing state of the law (see Carlos v. Superior Court (1983) 35 Cal.3d 131, 197 Cal.Rptr. 79, 672 P.2d 862)--that specific intent to kill was an element of both the rape-murder and sodomy-murder special circumstances. In finding the special circumstances to be true, the jury necessarily found that defendant had acted with the specific intent to kill. Defendant contends, however, that the special circumstance findings must be reversed because the trial court's failure to give CALJIC No. 4.21 left the jury without the knowledge that it could consider defendant's intoxication in determining whether he acted with the specific intent to kill.
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