In People v. Gonzalez, the Supreme Court today upholds three first degree felony murder convictions that carry life without parole sentences, concluding that a superior court’s failure to give certain lesser-included-offense instructions, even if erroneous, was not prejudicial. Applying the most lenient standard for determining prejudice (whether it’s “reasonably probable” that an absence of the error would have led to a more favorable result for the defendants), the court’s opinion by Justice Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar bases its harmless error holding on a robbery-murder special circumstance finding made by the jury.
Justice Goodwin Liu dissents, joined by Justice Leondra Kruger. He sees things differently under the reasonably-probable standard, concluding the “jury findings do not give me confidence that felony murder was proven and found beyond a reasonable doubt.”
The court affirms the Second District, Division Four, Court of Appeal. Although the Court of Appeal expressly disagreed with another Court of Appeal’s decision, the Supreme Court finds it unnecessary to determine whether that other opinion was correctly decided.
