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People v. Mayfield1/2/1997
t and that are necessary for the jury's understanding of the case. ( People v. Cummings (1993) 4 Cal. 4th 1233, 1311 [18 Cal. Rptr. 2d 796, 850 P.2d 1].) Under this rule, it was necessary to define for the jury the meaning of "official act" for purposes of extortion and kidnapping for extortion because, as we said in Norris, that term does not have a plain, unambiguous meaning ( People v. Norris, (supra) , 40 Cal. 3d 51, 54), and because in this context it carries a particular and restricted meaning including only actions taken in an official capacity that "make some use of public office" ( id. at p. 56). (See People v. Howard (1988) 44 Cal. 3d 375, 408 [243 Cal. Rptr. 842, 749 P.2d 279] [trial court obligated on its own initiative to define terms having a technical meaning peculiar to the law].) Here, the only part of the instruction in any way clarifying the meaning of "official act" was the statement that it would include actions by the officers "resisting and stopping the criminal acts, kidnapping, escape and assault then taking place." As Norris explains, not every such action by the police officers and sheriff's deputies who were present at the Haverstick residence or assisted in the hostage negotiations with defendant would be an "official act" under sections 209 and 518, because not every such action would require "some use" of their official status as law enforcement officers. Actions such as tapping into William Haverstick's telephone line or placing defendant under arrest are actions taken in an official capacity and by use of the officer's official status. Other actions by the officers, however, such as their attempts to persuade defendant to surrender or their merely stationing themselves along defendant's possible escape routes, although performed by on-duty law enforcement officers for the purpose of "stopping the criminal acts . . . then taking place," were not actions that only officers could perform or that necessarily required some use of their official status. Accordingly we conclude that the instruction was not a reliable guide to the meaning of "official act" under the circumstances of this case.
An instruction that omits a required definition of or misdescribes an element of an offense is harmless only if "it appears 'beyond a reasonable doubt that the error complained of did not contribute to the verdict obtained.' " ( People v. Harris (1994) 9 Cal. 4th 407, 424 [37 Cal. Rptr. 2d 200, 886 P.2d 1193], quoting Chapman v. California (1967) 386 U.S. 18, 24 [17 L. Ed. 2d 705, 710-711, 87 S. Ct. 824, 24 A.L.R.3d 1065].) "To say that an error did not contribute to the verdict is . . . to find that error unimportant in relation to everything else the jury considered on the issue in question, as revealed in the record." ( Yates v. Evatt (1991) 500 U.S. 391, 403 [114 L. Ed. 2d 432, 449, 111 S. Ct. 1884].)
Under the instruction that defendant here challenges, the jury would have understood that it was to determine whether defendant had held or detained William Haverstick with the intent to cause a public officer to perform, or to refrain from performing, an official act, and it would have understood that "official acts" included acts of "resisting stopping the criminal acts . . . then taking place." To determine defendant's intent or purpose in holding or detaining Haverstick, the jury would have considered evidence of the demands that defendant directed to law enforcement officers during this time. That evidence showed a number of demands, including that the officers themselves "back off," that they provide defendant with a car, that they hang up the telephone to free the line so that defendant could call out, that they have the sheriff's helicopter removed from the area, and that t
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