California, United States of America
The following excerpt is from People v. Crawford, A134564 (Cal. App. 2013):
Error by the court in the execution of its duties must be proven affirmatively in the record. (People v. Sullivan (2007) 151 Cal.App.4th 524, 548.) "[T]he defendant . . . bears the burden to provide a record on appeal which affirmatively shows that there was an error below, and any uncertainty in the record must be resolved against the defendant." (Id. at p. 549.) Mere silence by the record is not, in these circumstances, sufficient to support an affirmative conclusion the trial court failed to respond to the jury's notes. Particularly because the minutes are inconsistent in their treatment of earlier jury communications for which a transcript is available, the absence of a notation in the minutes that the trial court responded to this note does not permit an inference nothing was done. To conclude affirmatively that no action was taken on the note would require a reporter's transcription of the events in court that morning, showing receipt of the note
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