California, United States of America
The following excerpt is from People v. Lopez, No. G040350 (Cal. App. 4/20/2010), No. G040350. (Cal. App. 2010):
In addition, other cases have held a defendant convicted as an aider and abettor under a natural and probable consequences theory is entitled to have the jury instructed he or she may be found guilty of a lesser crime than the perpetrator of the charged offense. People v. Woods (1992) 8 Cal.App.4th 1570 found the trial court erred when it expressly instructed the jury that a defendant charged with first degree murder for an accomplice's intentional shooting of an innocent bystander as they fled from an armed assault and theft could not be found guilty of the lesser crime of second degree murder. After extensively reviewing the history of the common law principle that one who aids and abets another in committing a crime can be found guilty of any reasonably foreseeable offense committed by the person assisted (id. at pp. 1581-1586), the court ruled "[w]hile the perpetrator is liable for all of his or her criminal acts, the aider and abettor is liable vicariously only for those crimes committed by the perpetrator which were reasonably foreseeable under the circumstances. Accordingly, an aider and abettor may be found guilty of crimes committed by the perpetrator which are less serious than the gravest offense the perpetrator commits . . . ." (Id. at pp. 1586-1587.)
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