California, United States of America
The following excerpt is from People v. Bradford, C077516 (Cal. App. 2019):
Defendant argues the trial court erred in giving the instruction because it did not instruct the jury that the evidence could not be used to find defendant had a bad character. Because the trial court was not obligated to provide a limiting instruction, defendant forfeited the issue by failing to request a correction of the given instruction.2 (People v. Chism (2014) 58 Cal.4th 1266, 1308.) As defendant has raised an ineffective assistance of counsel argument, we conclude that, while defendant is correct that evidence of specific acts are inadmissible to prove her disposition to commit such acts, the instruction given was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt, and defendant suffered no prejudice from the trial court's failure to limit the uses of the evidence. (Chapman v. California (1967) 386 U.S. 18, 24 [17 L.Ed.2d 705].)
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