How have courts dealt with the issue of making a criminal threat?

appellant's conviction for making a criminal threat, but gives short shrift to wife's testimony that she was not actually fearful, which is the testimony on which the attempted charge hinges. When competing versions of events exist, we let the jury sort out the facts. (People v. Lacefield (2007) 157 Cal.App.4th 249, 260.) The jury sorted such facts in weighing the evidence of appellant's other crimes involving his physical attacks of wife, sometimes finding him guilty of the charged offense, such as corporal injury to a spouse, and other times acquitting him of the charged offense and finding him guilty of a lesser offense, such as misdemeanor battery; in fact, the jury convicted appellant on a lesser charge for five of the 17 domestic violence counts against him.

Nevertheless, we conclude any error was harmless. As a theoretical proposition the jury could have believed wife when she said that she was not in fear of her life. But in assessing the prejudice attached to an error of this nature, we must ask: Is it reasonably probable the jury would have reached a result more favorable to the defendant if the absence of error? (People v. Watson (1956) 46 Cal.2d 818, 836.) Or in this case: If the jury had been instructed on the lesser offense of attempted criminal threats was it reasonably probable the jury would have acquitted defendant of criminal threats and convicted him of the lesser offense?