California, United States of America
The following excerpt is from People v. Limon, C071544 (Cal. App. 2014):
Here, the instruction given on torture used the term "intent[ion]" and "purpose," not motive or motivation. There was no instruction here telling the jury that motive or motivation was an element of torture. There was no instruction that interchanged motive and intent. As a result, there is no reasonable likelihood the jury would have heard the two instructions and believed it did not have to find defendant intended to cause cruel or extreme pain, or that it did not have to find defendant inflicted such pain for the purpose of revenge, persuasion, or a sadistic purpose. Where the instructions did not use the terms motive and intent interchangeably and there is no reasonable likelihood the jury would have understood the terms to be synonymous, there is no error in giving the motive instruction. (People v. Cash (2002) 28 Cal.4th 703, 739.)
B. The Prosecutor's Statements Were Not Error
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