What is the test for erroneous or erroneous jury instructions in the context of implied-malice murder?

California, United States of America


The following excerpt is from People v. Nieto Benitez, 13 Cal.Rptr.2d 864, 4 Cal.4th 91, 840 P.2d 969 (Cal. 1992):

In determining whether an instruction is erroneous or not, we ascertain whether there is a reasonable likelihood that the jury misconstrued the words in the context of an individual case. (People v. Clair (1992) 2 Cal.4th 629, 662-663, 688, 7 Cal.Rptr.2d 564, 828 P.2d 705.) Though there was no such likelihood here, in another case a reasonable likelihood may arise. Consider a situation in which, in a remote part of a rural county, a hunter, for no apparent reason, fired a bullet into the air at a 45-degree angle, causing a human death on the ground some distance away. The act was illegal because it "could result in injury or death"( 246.3), and was somewhat dangerous even though performed in a thinly populated area. But let us further hypothesize that death as a result was a freak occurrence: there was uncontested evidence that the bullet was far more likely to strike the ground or a tree than a human being. There was no high probability that the act would result in death; the act's natural consequences were not dangerous to human life. But the "natural consequences dangerous to life" language is vague enough to those unschooled in the nuances of the law of homicide that a lay jury might nevertheless vote to convict the hunter of implied-malice murder. If a reviewing court concluded there was a reasonable likelihood the jury misconstrued the instruction, the judgment of conviction would be reversed.

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