California, United States of America
The following excerpt is from People v. Solis, 20 Cal.App.4th 264, 25 Cal.Rptr.2d 184 (Cal. App. 1993):
People v. Mouton, supra, 15 Cal.App. 4th 1313, 19 Cal.Rptr.2d 423 develops a contrary philosophy. The facts of that case bear some similarity to the facts of this case. After previous argumentative confrontations three men, including the defendant, returned to the scene of the confrontation. The defendant had no weapon, but one of his companions was armed with a gun. After a face-off with adversaries the companion fired shots which killed a bystander. The evidence suggested, and the prosecution admitted, that the group may have returned to the scene simply to make a show of force. The prosecutor identified the predicate crime, of which the defendant could have been found a participant in planning, to be any one or more of the following: carrying a concealed weapon, brandishing a weapon, perpetrating an assault with a deadly weapon, or shooting at an apartment.
The error found by the appellate court was in the trial court's failure to specify and define the potential predicate offenses (or "target" offenses as referred to in the opinion). (People v. Mouton, supra, 15 Cal.App.4th at p. 1318, 19 Cal.Rptr.2d 423.) The court reasoned that in order to determine the natural and probable consequences of an originally contemplated crime the jury had to determine what the predicate crime was; and that the jury would be unable to come to a conclusion as to the predicate crime unless it had received instructions on its elements. Specifically, the court noted that one of the suggested predicate crimes was assault with a deadly weapon, one of the elements of which is an intent to commit a battery. Since the jury was not instructed on this element, it "could have determined the target crime was assault with a deadly weapon, without making the necessary determinations [20 Cal.App.4th 275] first, that [the perpetrator] intended to
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