How have the courts interpreted jury instructions in a murder trial?

The correctness of jury instructions is based on the whole charge to the jury, not just selected parts of one or more instructions. (People v. Patterson (1979) 88 Cal.App.3d 742, 753.) Here, the court gave the standard reasonable doubt instruction, which states the burden of proof (beyond a reasonable doubt) and identifies the prosecution as the party who must sustain that burden, and instructions on the various forms of homicide, many of which repeatedly state the People have the burden of proving all elements of the charged crimes beyond a reasonable doubt.

There is no reason to assume, as defendant does, that the jurors disregarded all instructions to the contrary and believed defendant had the burden of proving murder should be reduced to manslaughter. In fact, we must "assume that jurors are intelligent persons and capable of understanding and correlating all jury instructions which are given." (People v. Mills (1991) 1 Cal.App.4th 898, 918.) Thus, there was no error.