Can a jury find defendant guilty of making terrorist threats if it determined that the elements of the crime were satisfied under any theory?

Under the information and the jury instruction, the jury could find defendant guilty of making terrorist threats if it determined that the elements of the crime were satisfied under any theory. To reach guilty verdicts, the jury was not required to find that a threat by defendant involved gasoline or even a threat to set the victims afire. The Attorney General argues that the evidence can be read as a threat to shoot or burn the victims. In response, defendant cites People v. Melhado (1998) 60 Cal.App.4th 1529 for the proposition that the trial court should have given the jury a unanimity instruction, requiring that it agree unanimously as to what particular act or acts constituted the threat forming the basis of the section 422 violation.

Melhado is distinguishable. In Melhado, the defendant made three separate threats on the same day, each several hours apart. (People v. Melhado, supra, 60 Cal.App.4th at p. 1533.) However, he was charged with only one violation of section 422, and the jury was not specifically informed by the court or the prosecutor as to which "event" the prosecution elected to rely upon as the basis for the charge. (Id. at pp. 1534-1536.) Because more than one "event" could have qualified as a violation of section 422, the Melhado court found prejudicial error in the lack of either a unanimity instruction or the prosecutor directly informing the jurors of his election. (Id. at p. 1536.) Melhado involved separate threatening events, between which the defendant departed and later returned. Here, there was a single event, in which defendant's threats and actions were wound together in a single uninterrupted incident. No unanimity instruction or election of a particular threat by the prosecutor was required.