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People v. Rizo4/24/2002
y means of force likely to produce great bodily injury as the target crime for murder liability would have been proper. (Id., at p. 267; see also People v. Mendoza (1998) 18 Cal.4th 1114, 1132 [court states in dictum that person who hands weapon to another, who then fatally assaults victim, "could be charged as an aider and abettor of both assault with a deadly weapon and murder, with assault being the target offense and murder a reasonably foreseeable consequence of the target offense"].)
Since the purposes and operations of the felony-murder rule and the natural and probable consequences doctrine are different, there is no reason to apply the merger aspect of the felony-murder rule to liability based on the natural and probable consequences doctrine. We therefore reject defendants' argument.
J. Aiding and Abetting Liability Based on Subsequent Circumstances
The court in instructing on liability of an aider and abettor under the natural and probable consequences doctrine told the blue jury that whether a consequence is natural and probable "is to be decided in light of all of the circumstances surrounding the incident." The blue jury defendants contend the instruction misled the jury into believing it could consider events after the time they aided and abetted in determining whether the murder was a natural and probable consequence of their conduct. They contend the court was required sua sponte to instruct the jury to determine foreseeability at the time defendants committed the acts which constituted aiding and abetting.
A party may not complain on appeal that an instruction correct in law and responsive to the evidence was too general or incomplete unless the party requested appropriate clarifying or amplifying language. (People v. Hart (1999) 20 Cal.4th 546, 622.) A court has no sua sponte duty to give amplifying or clarifying instructions where the terms used in the instructions given are commonly understood by those familiar with the English language. (People v. Ryan (1999) 76 Cal.App.4th 1304, 1318.)
Here, the court told the jury that whether a consequence is natural and probable is based on what a reasonable person "would have expected would be likely to occur." The court also advised that a natural consequence is one which is "within the normal range of outcomes that may reasonably be expected to occur" absent unusual intervening circumstances.
In common usage, one does not assess whether something is "expected" or "likely" to occur from one's conduct by considering events occurring after the conduct. Indeed, the standard definition of a "consequence" is "something that is produced by a cause or follows from a form of necessary connection or from a set of conditions: a natural or necessary result . . . ." (Webster's 3d New Internat. Dict. (1993) p. 482.) Thus, the instructions as given made clear that, in order to determine whether the murder was a foreseeable "consequence" of the aiding and abetting, the jury had to consider whether it a reasonable person in defendants' position would have expected that outcome at the time the aiding and abetting occurred. If defendants wanted an explicit instruction to that effect, they were obliged to ask for one.
In any event, defendants are not correct in asserting the "circumstances surrounding the incident" which are to be considered may never include conduct after the act of aiding and abetting. If, for example, the aider and abettor made statements or engaged in conduct after the aiding and abetting which showed he or she had a pre-existing expectation that the actual offense might result, there is no reason the jury should not consider the statements or conduct in determinin
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