People v. Morales CA4/3 ( 2013 )

Filed 12/20/13 P. v. Morales CA4/3
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN OFFICIAL REPORTS
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IN THE COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA
FOURTH APPELLATE DISTRICT
DIVISION THREE
THE PEOPLE,
Plaintiff and Respondent, G046967
v. (Super. Ct. No. 08CF1695)
GABRIELA MARIANA MORALES, OPINION
Defendant and Appellant.
Appeal from a judgment of the Superior Court of Orange County, William
R. Froeberg, Judge. Affirmed in part and reversed in part, with a limited remand.
Nancy J. King, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, for Defendant
and Appellant.
Kamala D. Harris, Attorney General, Dane R. Gillette, Chief Assistant
Attorney General, Julie L. Garland, Assistant Attorney General, A. Natasha Cortina and
Sean M. Rodriguez, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.
* * *
A jury convicted Gabriela Mariana Morales of second degree murder
(count 1; Pen. Code, § 187, subd. (a); all further statutory references are to this code),
assault on a child under eight years old with force likely to produce great bodily injury
resulting in death (count 2; § 273ab), and willful child abuse (count 3; § 273a) for killing
her four-year-old son Brandon Morales, either as the direct perpetrator or as an aider and
abettor or in conspiracy with her boyfriend, Alberto Guzman. The jury also found true as
to count 3 an enhancement that Morales caused or permitted a child to suffer unjustifiable
pain and injury that resulted in death. (§ 12022.95.) Morales raises a host of claims
attacking the jury instructions. We agree the instructions were inadequate to convict
Morales of murder based on a conspiracy theory and, because it is impossible to
determine whether the jury found Morales guilty of murder on that theory or as a direct
perpetrator or aider and abettor, we reverse the murder conviction. As we explain, her
other contentions are without merit and we therefore affirm the remainder of the
judgment, remanding for the limited purpose of a possible retrial on the murder count, at
the prosecutor’s election.
I
FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND
On May 30, 2008, paramedics and firefighters responded to an emergency
call that a child had fallen from a bunk bed in a Santa Ana apartment complex. Finding
four-year-old Brandon cold, pale, and without a pulse, cardiac activity or discernible
breathing, they noticed bruising of various sizes, color, and age covering Brandon’s head,
face, and body. The fire captain believed Brandon’s injuries were inconsistent with a
fall from a bunk bed and called for a police evaluation. He considered the apartment to
be a crime scene.
2
Paramedics transported Brandon to a hospital where the emergency room
physician unsuccessfully attempted to revive him, concluding he had been dead for at
least an hour before his arrival. The doctor found Brandon’s bruising too extensive to
have been inflicted during medical intervention. A forensic pathologist observed
Brandon was slightly undernourished when he died, and concluded severe blunt force
head trauma caused Brandon’s death. Specifically, his head injuries caused fatal swelling
in his brain, cutting off blood flow to vital areas responsible for heartbeat and respiration.
Brandon’s dead body revealed over 30 bruises from head to toe. Twelve separate injuries
to his head and face marked unique head and brain injury impact sites. The pathologist
tested seven of those sites, finding all but one occurred within 24 hours before his death.
He also had hemorrhages on his brain dating back at least a few weeks, and new injuries
lay over older ones.
Morales changed her story of what happened to Brandon several times as
she spoke with an officer at the hospital, and her story continued to change in two further
interviews with detectives. Eventually, Morales admitted she and Guzman frequently hit
Brandon in the seven months since he arrived to live with them after staying with her
mother in Mexico most of his early life. Morales described Brandon as having
behavioral and communication problems, and she believed they never bonded because he
had been raised by his grandmother.
At first, she claimed she had stopped hitting Brandon lately, and instead
resorted to punishing the four year old with writing exercises. Then she said that the
morning of Brandon’s death she heard Guzman hitting Brandon as he bathed him.
Guzman was upset at Brandon for eating from the trash. Investigators, however, found
feces in the bathtub, and wet pajamas containing feces in the trash can. A large trash bag
3
in the kitchen contained a towel, tissue, and a woman’s blouse coated in blood. DNA
testing showed the blood was Brandon’s.
According to Morales, Guzman had hit Brandon on the mouth, causing him
to bleed, and Guzman became more upset when Brandon bloodied the towel. Morales
warned Guzman to leave Brandon alone, and cleaned up Brandon’s bleeding lip.
After his bath, Morales made Brandon do writing exercises and when he
failed to do them correctly, she struck him once on the head, causing him to hit his head
on his chair and fall. She picked him up and placed him in the chair, and he continued
writing. After she went to the sofa to sit down, she heard him fall again about five
minutes later. Checking on him, she noticed he looked disoriented. She took him to the
bathroom, placed him in a cold bath, and later put rubbing alcohol on his chest to revive
him. But she needed to pick up her other children from school, so she dressed him and
carried him with her. Realizing when she returned that he was not doing any better, she
went to her neighbor’s house for help.
Morales initially told investigators Guzman left the apartment at 10:30 a.m.
that day, but video surveillance in her complex showed him leaving around 1:00 p.m.
She also told the investigators Brandon seemed “a little weak” when it was time to get
her other children from school, but she did not think it was serious. The video footage,
however, showed her leaving her apartment with a limp child in her arms before
returning with her other children 35 minutes later.
Morales and Guzman described in their interviews several instances in
which they struck Brandon to discipline him. Morales recounted a similar incident two
weeks earlier, in which she heard Guzman beating Brandon in the bathroom. Brandon
fainted and Guzman carried him to the bed, where Morales revived him with ice and
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rubbing alcohol, concluding he was well enough for her to leave for work. According to
Morales, Guzman also struck Brandon around this time for urinating on the bed. On
another occasion, Guzman hit Brandon with a toilet plunger so hard he broke the plunger.
According to Morales, she disciplined Brandon by hitting him with an open hand, and by
making him take cold baths, while Guzman often disciplined Brandon by hitting him with
his fist and belt. Morales claimed Guzman never threatened her, but she felt as though he
was compelling her to withdraw from her friends and family.
Morales and Guzman were tried in separate trials. After the jury returned
its verdict against Morales in May 2012, the trial court imposed a mandatory term of
25 years to life for count two, assault on a child resulting in death (child homicide), and
stayed under section 654 a term of 15 years to life for count 1. The court dismissed the
child abuse conviction in count 3 as a lesser included offense, and Morales now appeals.
II
DISCUSSION
A. The Trial Court Did Not Err in Failing to Give a Unanimity Instruction
Morales argues the trial court erred by instructing the jury it need not agree
unanimously on a particular murder theory, only that Morales committed murder. The
court instructed the jury: “The defendant has been prosecuted for murder under three
theories: 1) as a perpetrator with malice aforethought[,] 2) as an aider and abettor and
3) as a co-conspirator. [¶] Each theory of murder has different requirements, and I have
instructed you on all three. [¶] You may not find the defendant guilty of murder unless
all of you agree that the People have proved that the defendant committed murder under
at least one of these theories. You do not all need to agree on the same theory.”
(CALCRIM No. 548.) Morales claims the trial court compounded its error because, “[i]n
5
addition to not requiring agreement on the theory of liability, the jury was not given any
instruction requiring unanimous agreement on any single event or act leading to
Brandon’s death.” The trial court did not err.
California law requires a unanimous verdict for criminal convictions.
(People v. Russo (2001) 25 Cal.4th 1124, 1132 (Russo); Cal. Const., art. I, § 16.) All
12 jurors must agree the defendant has committed a felonious offense, but a unanimity
instruction is not always required. Where appropriate, the instruction “‘is intended to
eliminate the danger that the defendant will be convicted even though there is no single
offense which all the jurors agree the defendant committed.’” (Russo, at p. 1132.) Put
another way, the instruction aims “‘to prevent the jury from amalgamating evidence of
multiple offenses, no one of which has been proved beyond a reasonable doubt, in order
to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that a defendant must have done something
sufficient to convict on one count.’” (Ibid., original italics.)
But as the Supreme Court has explained, “where the evidence shows only a
single discrete crime but leaves room for disagreement as to exactly how that crime was
committed or what the defendant’s precise role was, the jury need not unanimously agree
on the basis or, as the cases often put it, the ‘theory’ whereby the defendant is guilty.”
(Russo, supra, 25 Cal.4th at p. 1132.) The Supreme Court explained by example in
Russo that, “to convict a defendant of first degree murder, the jury must unanimously
agree on guilt of a specific murder but need not agree on a theory of premeditation or
felony murder.” (Id. at p. 1133.)
Similarly, the jury here was not required to settle unanimously upon one of
the three theories under which Morales committed murder, whether as a direct
perpetrator, aider and abettor, or coconspirator. “‘There may be a reasonable doubt that
6
the defendant was the direct perpetrator, and a similar doubt that he was the aider and
abettor, but no such doubt that he was one or the other.’” (Russo, supra, 25 Cal.4th at
p. 1136.) In such instances, “‘there is no unanimity requirement as to the theory of guilt,
[and] the individual jurors themselves need not choose among the theories, so long as
each is convinced of guilt.’” (Ibid.)
Consequently, when a single homicide is charged, “unanimity as to exactly
how the crime was committed is not required.” (Russo, supra, 25 Cal.4th at p. 1135.) A
murder constitutes a single criminal event, and a defendant is not entitled to a unanimous
verdict as to the particular manner or the precise moment during which the murder
occurred. (People v. Pride (1992) 3 Cal.4th 195, 249-250.) In other words, because the
evidence did not “suggest[] two discrete crimes, i.e., two discrete conspiracies” or, here,
two discrete murders, but rather “merely . . . the possibility the jury may divide, or be
uncertain, as to the exact way the defendant is guilty of a single discrete crime” (Russo, at
p. 1135), a unanimity instruction was not appropriate.
This is particularly true when, as here, “‘the acts alleged are so closely
connected in time as to form part of one transaction.’ [Citations.]” (People v. Jennings
(2010) 50 Cal.4th 616, 679.) “[W]here . . . the evidence establishes a pattern of physical
trauma inflicted upon a child within a relatively short period of time, a single course of
conduct is involved,” and no unanimity instruction is required. (People v. Napoles (2002)
104 Cal.App.4th 108, 116, original italics.) No instruction is required because the nature
of the evidence calls for the jury to decide whether all the acts or none occurred, not any
particular act. In other words, where there is no evidence from which the jury could have
found the defendant guilty of one abusive act, but not others — such as where different
defenses are asserted as to each — there is no danger that different jurors would find the
7
defendant guilty of different offenses. (People v. Riel (2000) 22 Cal.4th 1153, 1199.)
Morales’s unanimity claims therefore fail.
B. The Trial Court Did Not Err in Instructing the Jury on a Conspirator’s Liability
Morales contends the trial court erred by instructing the jury a conspirator
may be liable for the completed offense or offenses that formed the object of an
uncharged conspiracy (CALCRIM Nos. 416 & 417). Morales insists coconspirators may
only be convicted of the independent criminal offense of conspiring to commit a crime
(§ 182), not the underlying offenses themselves. Here, the prosecutor did not charge
Morales with a conspiracy to commit child abuse or murder or any other offense, but
based on the trial court’s instructions, the prosecutor argued the jury could find Morales
guilty of the substantive offenses of murder (count 1) or child homicide (count 2) if she
perpetrated those offenses herself, aided and abetted Guzman in committing them, or
conspired with Guzman to commit child abuse amounting to murder or an assault likely
to cause great bodily injury to Brandon.
According to Morales, the trial court erred in identifying conspiracy as a
basis of liability because “the Legislature has, by statute, limited criminal liability to
those who actually perpetrate a crime and those who aid and abet the actual perpetrators
of a crime, but not to those who conspire to commit a crime.” Specifically, Morales
claims that because section 31 includes as “principals” in a crime those who “directly
commit the act constituting the offense” and those who “aid and abet in its commission”
— without also expressly identifying conspiracy as a basis for liability as a principal —
the Legislature did not intend to punish conspirators for successfully completed offenses,
but only for the substantive crime of conspiracy, as defined in section 182.
8
As Morales recognizes, however, the Supreme Court rejected this
contention in People v. Valdez (2012) 55 Cal.4th 82, 149-150 (Valdez), and she merely
preserves it for potential future review. We will not delve into the issue. (Auto Equity
Sales, Inc. v. Superior Court (1962) 57 Cal.2d 450, 455.) As the Supreme Court
explained in Valdez, ample precedent has “‘long and firmly established that an uncharged
conspiracy may properly be used to prove criminal liability for acts of a coconspirator.
[Citations.] “Failure to charge conspiracy as a separate offense does not preclude the
People from proving that those substantive offenses which are charged were committed
in furtherance of a criminal conspiracy [citation]; nor, it follows, does it preclude the
giving of jury instructions based on a conspiracy theory [citations].” [Citation.]’
[Citations.]” (Valdez, at p. 150.) Such instructions “‘correctly state[] the law concerning
conspiracy as an alternative theory of liability. [Citations.] Accordingly, there was no
error.’” (Ibid.)
C. The Instructions Were Inadequate to Convict Morales of Murder on a Conspiracy
Theory
Morales argues the trial court erroneously instructed the jury it could
convict her of murder (count 1) or child homicide (count 2) based on a conspiracy theory
even if she and Guzman only agreed to commit involuntary manslaughter and she or
Guzman only committed involuntary manslaughter. Morales also argues the court’s
conspiracy instruction diluted the prosecutor’s burden of proof and thereby violated due
process because it “allowed [her] to be convicted of murder and child abuse causing
death, even if neither of those crimes was actually committed by either [her] or by
Guzman.” “In other words, the jury was instructed [Morales] could be convicted of the
greater offenses if she conspired to commit a lesser offense and a coconspirator actually
committed the lesser offense . . .” of involuntary manslaughter. As we explain, Morales
9
misreads the conspiracy instructions (CALCRIM Nos. 416 & 417) in two keys ways, but
we nevertheless agree the instructions’ contemplation of involuntary manslaughter as a
natural and probable consequence of the conspiracy did not furnish a basis for convicting
Morales of murder.
Contrary to Morales’s claim, the instructions did not state she could be
convicted of murder (count 1) and child homicide (count 2) if she conspired to commit
the lesser offense of involuntary manslaughter. To the contrary, CALCRIM No. 417
clearly stated that “[t]o prove that the defendant is guilty of the crimes charged in
Counts 1 and 2 under a conspiracy theory, the People must prove that: [¶] 1. The
defendant conspired to commit the crime of child abuse likely to cause great bodily harm
. . .” (italics added) and not, as Morales erroneously asserts, the lesser crime of
involuntary manslaughter.
Morales is also mistaken in suggesting the jury may have found under the
instructions merely that “Guzman committed involuntary manslaughter,” and therefore
she could not be convicted of either of the “greater offenses” of murder or child abuse
resulting in death. She is mistaken because Guzman could not commit involuntary
manslaughter given the crime consists of criminal negligence in failing to meet a legal
duty to protect a child, and Guzman had no parental or other relationship with Brandon
giving rise to such a duty. (§ 192, subd. (b); CALCRIM No. 582.) The trial court gave
CALCRIM No. 582 properly instructing the jury on the necessity of a legal duty to
protect Brandon for involuntary manslaughter to apply. No evidence suggested Guzman
had a parental relationship or other source of duty to Brandon, and therefore we will not
suppose the jury considered the conspiracy instructions with Morales’s erroneous premise
10
that Guzman may have committed involuntary manslaughter. Only Morales could
commit that offense.1
Nevertheless, Morales’s central point remains her attack on the notion “that
the crime of involuntary manslaughter,” even if she rather than Guzman committed it,
“can lead to the conviction of greater offenses based on an uncharged conspiracy theory.”
Morales acknowledges “California’s natural and probable consequences doctrine”
provides one may be liable not only for the target offense one intends to commit, “‘but
also for any other offense (nontarget crime) committed by the confederate as a natural and
probable consequence . . . .’” (Quoting People v. Prettyman (1996) 14 Cal.4th 248, 254,
italics added.) Accordingly, if a member of the conspiracy commits “only” involuntary
manslaughter, and no confederate in the conspiracy commits murder or child abuse
causing death, Morales is correct the conspirators cannot be liable for these greater
offenses as a natural and probable consequence of their intended crime. Simply put, if no
greater offense is committed, a defendant cannot be liable for it as the natural and
probable consequence of a lesser intended offense.
The question here is whether under the instructions given, the prosecutor
necessarily proved one or more of the greater offenses was committed. According to the
Attorney General, “even if the jurors relied on the conspiracy theory with involuntary
manslaughter as the non-target offense, the instructions still required the jurors to find
1 Morales does not acknowledge or base any claim of error in this distinction.
She and Guzman were tried separately, and we presume an instruction based on the
conspiracy theory was not given in his trial. (Cf. 12 Cal.Jur.3d (2008) Civil Conspiracy,
§ 5, p. 226 [“the doctrine of conspiracy does not impose liability on persons who owe no
duty to the plaintiff”]; Klistoff v. Superior Court (2007) 157 Cal.App.4th 469, 479-480
[private business and its president not legally capable of violating statute prohibiting
public officials from having an interest in public contracts, and therefore could not be
liable for conspiracy to violate statute].) Neither party here suggests the distinction
makes any difference as to Morales.
11
beyond a reasonable doubt the required elements for second degree murder [count 1] and
child homicide [count 2].” The Attorney General is correct on the latter count, but not
the murder count.
The trial court instructed the jury in pertinent part: “To prove that the
defendant is guilty of the crimes charged in Counts 1 and 2 under a conspiracy theory, the
People must prove that: [¶] 1.The defendant conspired to commit the crime of child
abuse likely to cause great bodily harm; [¶] 2. A member of the conspiracy committed
murder, involuntary manslaughter, or assault on a child with force likely to produce great
bodily injury resulting in death to further the conspiracy; [¶] AND [¶] 3. Murder,
involuntary manslaughter, or assault on a child with force likely to produce great bodily
injury resulting in death were natural and probable consequences of the common plan or
design of the crime that the defendant conspired to commit,” i.e., child abuse likely to
cause great bodily harm (count 2).2 (CALCRIM No. 417, bold and italics added.)
Put another way, the conspiracy theory contemplated (1) a conspiracy to
commit child abuse likely to cause great bodily injury, (2) that a conspirator committed at
2 The trial court’s instructions defined the elements of involuntary
manslaughter as follows: “To prove that the defendant is guilty of this crime, the People
must prove that: [¶] 1. The defendant had a legal duty to protect Brandon Morales from
harm; [¶] 2. The defendant failed to perform that legal duty; [¶] 3. The defendant’s
failure was criminally negligent; [¶] AND [¶] 4. The defendant’s failure caused the death
of Brandon Morales.” (CALCRIM No. 582.)
The instruction also explained that “[a] parent has a legal duty to make
reasonable efforts to protect her child from being attacked. A parent does not have to risk
her own life or risk great bodily injury to herself to protect a child.” (CALCRIM
No. 582.) It additionally explained, “Criminal negligence involves more than ordinary
carelessness, inattention, or mistake in judgment. A person acts with criminal negligence
when: [¶] 1. She acts in a reckless way that creates a high risk of death or great bodily
injury; [¶] AND [¶] 2. A reasonable person would have known that acting in that way
would create such a risk.” (Ibid.)
12
least involuntary manslaughter if not also murder or child abuse resulting in death, and
(3) that involuntary manslaughter was a foreseeable consequence of the agreement to
commit child abuse likely causing great bodily injury. According to these conspiracy
instructions, proving the foregoing three elements sufficed to “prove that the defendant is
guilty of the crimes charged in Counts 1 and 2 . . . .”
As to count 2, “[t]he elements of assault on a child, resulting in death, are:
(1) A person, having the care or custody of a child under the age of eight; (2) assaults this
child; (3) by means of force that to a reasonable person would be likely to produce great
bodily injury; (4) resulting in the child’s death.” (People v. Malfavon (2002)
102 Cal.App.4th 727, 735 (Malfavon); § 273ab.) The first and last elements are
indisputably satisfied given Brandon was four years old, in his mother’s care, and the
injuries he received resulted in his death; no reasonable juror could fail to reach this
conclusion, and it is therefore of no consequence the jury was not asked in the conspiracy
or involuntary murder instructions to determine these two elements. (People v. Bell
(2009) 179 Cal.App.4th 428, 439 [harmless error in omission of an element necessarily
resolved adversely to the defendant].)
As the Attorney General explains, the jury by its guilty verdict necessarily
determined under the conspiracy and involuntary murder instructions the remainder of
the elements constituting count 2 against Morales. This is true even assuming the jury
reached its verdict on count 2 relying on the conspiracy theory, and therefore may have
relied solely on the conspiracy and involuntary manslaughter instructions instead of
turning to the child abuse instructions for count 2 pertinent to a direct perpetrator or aider
and abettor.
13
Specifically, the remaining elements to satisfy count 2 required evidence
that: (2) Brandon received his injuries by assault and not some other cause, and (3) the
assault or assaults were of such force that a reasonable person would know they would
likely cause great bodily injury. (See ante at p. 13; Malfavon, supra, 102 Cal.App.4th at
p. 735.) The gravamen of these elements is that the child is assaulted with such force a
reasonable person would know of the grave danger of serious injury. These elements are
satisfied when a jury finds as here (at a minimum) a conspiracy in which a parent and
another person agree to assault a child with force likely to cause great bodily injury and
the child is assaulted in this manner due to the parent’s failure to protect the child from
conduct she allowed or inflicted, knowing it created “a high risk of death or great bodily
injury.” (CALCRIM No. 582 (involuntary manslaughter).) Consequently, even
assuming the jury reached its verdict on count 2 only under a conspiracy theory in which
Morales committed involuntary manslaughter, and therefore did not turn to the
instructions for count 2 on a direct perpetrator or aider and abettor theory, Morales’s
claim she was convicted of a greater offense than she actually committed is without
merit.
But precisely because the conspiracy and involuntary manslaughter
instructions allow for a conviction where a defendant conspires only to inflict abuse
causing great bodily injury on a child, and may be aware in her negligence only of a
“high risk of . . . great bodily injury” (CALCRIM No. 582) instead of the “danger[] to
human life” necessary for implied malice murder (CALCRIM No. 520, italics added), we
must reverse the murder conviction. Specifically, as reflected above in the conspiracy
instruction (ante, p. 12) and the involuntary manslaughter instruction (ante, p. 12, fn. 2),
nothing in these instructions required the jury to conclude Morales knew the natural and
14
probable consequences of her actions in striking or failing to protect Brandon were
“dangerous to human life,” as required for implied malice murder. (See CALCRIM
No. 520.3)
Put another way, it is impossible to determine whether the jury concluded
Morales’s agreement to commit abuse likely causing great bodily injury (as contemplated
in the conspiracy theory instruction) — or an awareness that her negligence could cause
great bodily injury (a prerequisite for involuntary manslaughter) — presented the
necessary danger to human life to constitute implied malice murder, given they were
instructed that great bodily injury may be merely “greater than minor or moderate harm.”
(CALCRIM No. 582 [“Great bodily injury means significant or substantial physical
injury. It is an injury that is greater than minor or moderate harm”].)
Consequently, we must reverse the murder conviction because we cannot
tell whether the jury necessarily determined Morales harbored the requisite mens rea for
murder, which includes knowledge of the danger to human life. We cannot deem the
error harmless, as the Attorney General suggests, because the instructions expressly
provided for alternate theories on which to convict Morales of murder — as a
perpetrator, an aider and abettor, or on the conspiracy theory. Given that each alternate
theory purported to furnish an independent basis on which to convict Morales of murder,
we cannot eliminate the possibility the jurors relied solely on the conspiracy theory, in
3 As the trial court instructed the jury, the requisite malice for Morales to
commit murder could consist of implied malice if: “1. She intentionally committed an
act; [¶] 2. The natural and probable consequences of the act were dangerous to human
life; [¶] 3. At the time she acted, she knew her act was dangerous to human life; [¶] AND
[¶] 4. She deliberately acted with conscious disregard for human life.” (CALCRIM
No. 520, italics added.)
15
which case they never adjudicated whether she harbored the necessary mens rea for
implied malice murder.
D. The Trial Court Properly Instructed the Jury on General and Specific Intent
In a related but unavailing argument, Morales complains the trial court’s
general instruction on specific and general intent (CALCRIM No. 252) failed to explain
or direct the jury to the particular mens rea requirements applicable to each general intent
crime she faced. “[E]ven a general intent crime ordinarily requires scienter, i.e., guilty
knowledge of the facts which make the act a crime.” (People v. Laster (1997)
52 Cal.App.4th 1450, 1468.) Only strict liability offenses dispense with a mens rea
requirement, and they are both rare and “disfavored” but include, for example, public
health penal statutes regulating the handling of hazardous wastes and poisons. (People v.
Simon (1995) 9 Cal.4th 493, 519-521.) Morales insists the trial court’s use of CALCRIM
No. 252 was erroneous because it eliminated the mens rea requirement, substituting only
the general intent necessary to commit a general intent crime.
Specifically, the trial court instructed the jury in CALCRIM No. 252: “The
following crimes and allegation require general criminal intent: involuntary
manslaughter, which is a lesser crime to murder as charged in count 1, assault on a child
with force likely to produce great bodily injury resulting in death as charged in count 2
and the lesser crimes of assault with force likely to produce great bodily injury and
simple assault, the crime of felony child abuse as charged in count three and the lesser
crime of misdemeanor child abuse and the enhancement to count 3 under Penal Code
Section 12022.95. For you to find a person guilty of these crimes or to find the
enhancement true, that person must not only commit the prohibited act, or fail to do the
required act, but must do so with wrongful intent. A person acts with wrongful intent
16
when she intentionally does a prohibited act, or fails to do a required act; however, it is
not required that she intend to break the law. The act required is explained in the
instruction for each crime and enhancement.” (Italics added.)
The instruction additionally stated: “The crime of murder requires a
specific intent or mental state. For you to find a person guilty of this crime, that person
must not only intentionally commit the prohibited act, but must do so with a specific
intent and/or mental state. The act and the specific intent and/or mental state required are
explained in the instruction for that crime.”
Morales suggests that a similar, explicit reference to the relevant mental
state in other instructions should have been given for the general intent crimes, and not
just murder. The instruction, however, is a correct statement of law properly given when
general and specific intent crimes are charged together (People v. Ibarra (2007)
156 Cal.App.4th 1174, 1189-1190), and if Morales desired clarifying or amplifying
language, her failure to request it below forfeits the challenge. (People v. Samaniego
(2009) 172 Cal.App.4th 1148, 1163.)
Additionally, the court admonished the jury to consider the instructions as a
whole (CALCRIM No. 200 [“consider them together”]), and we presume jurors are
intelligent persons capable of correlating and following the instructions. (People v.
Martin (2000) 78 Cal.App.4th 1107, 1111.) Indeed, CALCRIM No. 252 referred the
jurors to the pertinent instructions for each general intent crime for the requisite “act
required” and each instruction specified the requisite mens rea accompanying the act.
For example, CALCRIM No. 820 specified that to be convicted of an assault causing the
death of a child the defendant must act with an “aware[ness] of facts that would lead a
reasonable person to realize that her act by its nature would directly and probably result
17
in great bodily injury to the child.” While the jury may not have turned to this instruction
if it relied solely on a conspiracy theory, as discussed, the involuntary manslaughter
instruction (CALCRIM No. 582) pertinent to the conspiracy theory included the requisite
mens rea consisting of an awareness that one’s reckless and criminal negligence “creates
a high risk of death or great bodily injury.” Morales argues CALCRIM No. 252
dispensed with this knowledge requirement by simply defining general intent as the
intentional commission of an act. But reading the instructions together, as directed, the
jury would understand the offense required both an intentional act inflicting injury and an
awareness of the direct and probable danger of at least great bodily injury, if not death.
Morales’s challenge is therefore without merit, as is her related claim of
cumulative instructional error. Because the only instructional error concerns the murder
charge on a conspiracy theory, there is no error to cumulate, and we affirm the remainder
of the judgment.
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III
DISPOSITION
Morales’s murder conviction is reversed and the remainder of the judgment
is affirmed. The matter is remanded for the limited purpose of a possible retrial on the
murder count. If the prosecution elects not to retry the murder count or at the conclusion
of the retrial, the court shall resentence Morales.
ARONSON, J.
WE CONCUR:
MOORE, ACTING P. J.
THOMPSON, J.
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