Can a jury be found to have been prejudiced by a judge who made a nonstandard comment to the jury during jury selection?

Were we nevertheless to overlook such forfeiture and address the merits of the claim, we would find no error. As we explained in another case in which the trial court made some nonstandard comments to the venirepersons during jury selection: "The trial court . . . was not instructing the jury at the time it made the comments in question. Indeed it was conducting voir dire of prospective jurors. Its ' comments "were not intended to be, and were not, a substitute for full instructions at the end of trial." ' [Citation.] ' "The purpose of these comments was to give prospective jurors, most of whom had little or no familiarity with courts in general and penalty phase death penalty trials in particular, a general idea of the nature of the proceeding." ' [Citation.] In the context of voir dire, the trial

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court's comments in this case were proper." (People v. Romero (2008) 44 Cal.4th 386, 423.)¹⁶