California, United States of America
The following excerpt is from People v. Mendez, B272175 (Cal. App. 2017):
Defendant, however, seeks to avoid application of the forfeiture doctrine by asserting these asserted errors affected his substantial rights. (Pen. Code, 1259 ["Upon an appeal taken by the defendant, the appellate court may, without exception having been taken in the trial court, review any question of law involved in any . . . instruction . . . which affected the substantial rights of the defendant"]; People v. Covarrubias (2016) 1 Cal.5th 838, 904-905 ["To the extent defendant claims the instructions affected his substantial rights, we may review his claim under section 1259 despite his failure to raise the issue below"]; Rundle, supra, 43 Cal.4th at p. 151 ["We agree that defendant's failure to request that the trial court further define the meaning of the term "sexual intercourse," which is the element set forth in the statute ( 261, subd. (a)), forfeited his claim on appeal. . . . [] Of course, despite defendant's failure to preserve this issue for appeal, we may review his claim of instructional error to the extent his substantial rights were affected"].) We agree we may review unobjected-to instructional errors insofar as the errors affect a defendant's substantial rights, but we forego a detailed exploration of these two contentions in favor of brief discussions
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of why we believe defendant's substantial rights were not affected. (See generally People v. Andersen (1994) 26 Cal.App.4th 1241, 1249 ["[T]he failure to object to an instruction in the trial court waives any claim of error unless the claimed error affected the substantial rights of the defendant, i.e., resulted in a miscarriage of justice, making it reasonably probable the defendant would have obtained a more favorable result in the absence of error"].)
B. No Instruction Defining "Conspire" or "Conspiracy" Was Necessary
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