California, United States of America
The following excerpt is from People v. Martinez, 242 Cal.Rptr.3d 860, 31 Cal.App.5th 719 (Cal. App. 2019):
Defendant argues the trial court erred by instructing the jury on self-defense and by declining to give the jury instructions on the lesser-related offense of being an accessory after the fact. Although we can understand why the trial court thought it should instruct on self-defense in light of defendants police interview statements, it was error to give self-defense instructions that defendant did not request and that were contrary to his theory of the case at trial. The error, however, was harmless because the self-defense instructions the court gave did not contribute to the verdict obtained, particularly in light of (a) other instructions given by the trial court that warned the jury of the possibility that not all of the instructions were necessarily applicable, and (b) the absence of any reference to self-defense in the defense closing argument. As for defendants contention that the court should have instructed on the lesser related offense of being an accessory after the fact, the trial court did not err when it declined to give such an instruction in the absence of the prosecutions consent, as binding authority holds ( People v. Birks (1998) 19 Cal.4th 108, 77 Cal.Rptr.2d 848, 960 P.2d 1073 ( Birks ) ).
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