How have the courts interpreted jury instructions in determining whether a razor blade is a deadly weapon under section 4574 of the Criminal Code?

Defendant argues that whether the detached razor blades were deadly

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weapons within the meaning of section 4574 was a question of fact for the jury to decide, and that the trial court's instructions were erroneous insofar as they stated that detached razor blades were deadly weapons as a matter of law. We will assume, without deciding, that defendant is correct. (See People v. Rodriquez (1975) 50 Cal.App.3d 389, 396, 123 Cal.Rptr. 185 [stating that whether a razor blade is a deadly weapon is a question of fact].) Defendant was not prejudiced, however, by the jury instructions. To find prejudice, we would need to infer that the jurors, or some of them, (1) thought the razor blades did not have a reasonable potential to inflict great bodily injury or death, and (2) despite such finding, gave the evidence of defendant's possession of the razor blades such weight that it affected the penalty determination. As in People v. Hughes, supra, 27 Cal.4th 287, 116 Cal.Rptr.2d 401, 39 P.3d 432, we consider this combination too unlikely to constitute prejudice. As we said there: "It is quite unlikely that the jury would find the object to be ... not a deadly weapon. But if the jury made that improbable finding, thus minimizing the seriousness of the evidence, it is also quite unlikely that it would then consider the evidence to be so important as to control, or even have a significant impact upon, the penalty determination. The combination of these circumstances (unlikelihood that a properly instructed jury would have disregarded the evidence because it would not believe the shank was deadly plus the unlikelihood that a jury so finding nonetheless would give the evidence significant weight) convinces us that the error was harmless." (Id. at p. 384, 116 Cal.Rptr.2d 401, 39 P.3d 432, fn. omitted.)

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