In what circumstances will a jury overturn a defendant's robbery conviction?

comment goes directly to element 5 of the robbery instruction given here"when the defendant used force or fear to take the property, he intended to deprive the owner of it permanently." However, in response to the jury question whether it could convict defendant if he "surrendered" the goods before using force, the trial court gave a blanket instruction suggesting that the theft was in progress while defendant was "confronted by the security guards" and "item 4 [use of force] of the instruction 1600 applies to the confrontation in the parking lot." In doing so, the court, not the jury, determined that defendant used force with the intent to retain possession of the property. Furthermore, because the evidence here is susceptible to a contrary finding, as evidenced by the jury's prefatory comments to its question (see ante), we cannot say the error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt (Chapman v. California (1967) 386 U.S. 18, 24), or there is no reasonable probability the verdict would have been different in the absence of the error, (People v. Watson (1956) 46 Cal.2d 818, 836).

Similarly, defendant's requested pinpoint instruction, relating to whether defendant's use of force in the parking lot elevated his theft into robbery, went to crux of defendant's theory of the case. And, as subsequently demonstrated by the jury question at issue, the essence of the refused instruction was not adequately conveyed by other instructions in this case. (People v. Adrian, supra, 135 Cal.App.3d at pp. 341-342.) Thus, the trial court's failure to give defendant's requested pinpoint instruction was prejudicial also. (Ibid.)

In sum, on account of the prejudicial instructional errors discussed above, defendant's robbery conviction must be reversed.