California, United States of America
The following excerpt is from People v. Morales, 257 Cal.Rptr. 64, 48 Cal.3d 527, 770 P.2d 244 (Cal. 1989):
Further, the trial court's error was prejudicial. In People v. Odle (1988) 45 Cal.3d 386, 410-415, 247 Cal.Rptr. 137, 754 P.2d 184, the court held that failure to instruct on an element of a special circumstance is subject to harmless-error analysis under the harmless-beyond-a-reasonable-doubt test of Chapman v. California (1967) 386 U.S. 18, 87 S.Ct. 824, 17 L.Ed.2d 705. 1 As noted above, the trial court, in practical effect, failed to instruct on physical concealment. Having reviewed the record in its entirety, I am simply unable to declare a belief, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the jury would have found physical concealment had they been properly instructed. The reason is manifest: the evidence establishes without dispute that defendant was not physically concealed from the victim.
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