People v. Hendrix

• Decision Date: 22 August 2022
• Docket Number: S265668,B298952
• Parties: THE PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. ISAIAH HENDRIX, Defendant and Appellant.
• Court: California Supreme Court

THE PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. ISAIAH HENDRIX, Defendant and Appellant.

S265668, B298952

Supreme Court of California

August 22, 2022

Ventura County Superior Court 2017025915, 2018037331, Paul W Baelly Judge

Adrian Dresel-Velasquez, under appointment by the Supreme Court, for Defendant and Appellant.

Xavier Becerra and Rob Bonta, Attorneys General, Lance E. Winters Chief Assistant Attorney General, Susan Sullivan Pithey Assistant Attorney General, Michael R. Johnsen, Idan Ivri and John Yang, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.

Justice Kruger authored the opinion of the Court, in which Chief Justice Cantil-Sakauye and Justices Corrigan, Liu, Groban, Jenkins, and Guerrero concurred.

KRUGER, J.

Early one October morning, defendant Isaiah Hendrix walked up to a house in Oxnard, knocked on the door, and rang the doorbell. Hearing no response, Hendrix walked around the house to the backyard, opened a screen door, and attempted to open the locked glass door behind it. Then, failing that, Hendrix sat down on a bench and stayed there. Hendrix was sitting on the bench when police arrived. Hendrix told police he was there to visit his cousin, but Hendrix's cousin did not, in fact, live in the house. Hendrix was charged with burglary.

At trial, the court gave the jury a standard mistake of fact instruction, which informed jurors that they should not convict Hendrix if they determined he lacked criminal intent because he mistakenly believed a relevant fact - namely, that the house belonged to his cousin and not to a stranger. But the instruction specified that the mistake in question had to be a reasonable one. All parties now acknowledge this was error: To negate the specific criminal intent required for burglary, a defendant's mistaken belief need not be reasonable, just genuinely held. The question before us is whether the instructional error was prejudicial and thus requires reversal. The Court of Appeal, concluding Hendrix's claim of mistake was not credible in any event, answered no. We reach a different conclusion. The instructional error effectively precluded the jury from giving full consideration to a mistake of fact claim that was supported by substantial evidence, where resolution of the issue was central to the question whether Hendrix possessed the criminal intent necessary for conviction. Whether that claim is credible is a matter for a jury to decide. We reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeal and remand for further proceedings.

I. A.

The case before the jury turned on a single question: what was Isaiah Hendrix doing at the house in Oxnard?

Surveillance video captured Hendrix there around 7:00 a.m. The video showed Hendrix pacing back and forth in front of the house, then walking up to the front door, where he knocked and pressed the video doorbell. He then walked around the house and opened a side gate into the yard. He pushed open the backyard screen door, then attempted to open the glass sliding door behind it.

Artrose Tuano, who lived in the house, was home at the time. Tuano testified that he had never seen Hendrix before; that the screen door into the house was locked; and that he called the police when Hendrix tried to "jimmy" it open. When police arrived, they found Hendrix sitting on a bench in the backyard. Officer Christian Aldrete of the Oxnard Police Department testified that when he confronted Hendrix in the backyard, Hendrix was sitting calmly and looked "surprised" to see him. Officer Randi Vines testified that a search of Hendrix revealed no burglary tools; Hendrix was carrying only a water bottle.

Hendrix immediately offered an explanation for his presence at the Oxnard house: He claimed to be looking for his cousin Trevor at the house, and asserted that a friend told him Trevor had moved there. Trevor did not, in fact, live at the address. Officer Vines, who, as a matter of chance, knew cousin Trevor from high school, testified at trial that Trevor lived several blocks away. Hendrix was arrested and charged with first degree burglary. (Pen. Code, §§ 459, 460.)^[1]

At trial, the prosecution introduced evidence to cast doubt on Hendrix's explanation for his presence at the Oxnard house. It played a recording of a call from Ventura County Jail in which Hendrix asked his mother to come up with somebody who could testify they had given him the wrong address. She responded: "Oh. No. You need to do - one of your friends [to] do that crap. I ain't getting nobody caught up or doing any type of drama or lying." The conversation moved on from there. On another recorded call, Hendrix's uncle stated that Hendrix had been doing some "crazy shit," including "breaking in people's houses," and asked "what were you doing?" Hendrix responded by muttering "I don't know," then laughing and chiding his uncle for "talking smack." Nicole Rodriguez, a supervisor at the Oxnard Costco, testified that Hendrix had previously stolen from the store by deploying an excuse that he was looking for a relative. Hendrix, she explained, had appeared at the Costco without a membership card, claiming to be looking for his mother. Rodriguez agreed to accompany Hendrix while he searched for her. But upon arriving at the alcohol section, Hendrix grabbed a bottle of tequila and left the store without paying.

The defense rested without presenting witnesses or evidence. In closing, the defense's central argument to the jury was that Hendrix had made a crucial mistake of fact about who lived at the house, which explained why, after knocking on the front door and trying to open the back door, Hendrix simply sat down in the backyard and waited for Trevor to arrive. The prosecution disputed there had been any mistake.

B.

Before it retired to deliberate, the jury was instructed on the elements of burglary according to CALCRIM No. 1700: "The defendant is charged with burglary. To prove the defendant is guilty of this crime, the People must prove that: One, the defendant entered a structure; and two, when the defendant entered a structure he intended to commit theft. To decide whether the defendant intended to commit theft, please refer to the separate instructions I give you on the crime."^[2]

To guide the jury's consideration of the intent element, the defense requested CALCRIM No. 3406, concerning mistake of fact. That instruction provides that the defendant is not guilty of the charged crime if he lacked the mental state required to commit the crime because of a mistaken belief or lack of knowledge. As the bench notes indicate, the instruction can be given in two ways, depending on whether the crime is one of general intent - in which case the defendant's belief must be both actual and reasonable - or specific intent, in which case the defendant need hold only an actual but mistaken belief in the relevant fact. (Judicial Council of Cal., Crim. Jury Instns. (2021) Bench Notes to CALCRIM No. 3406; see generally, e.g., People v. Lawson (2013) 215 Cal.App.4th 108, 115 (Lawson).) Although the prosecutor here did not object to the defense's request to give the mistake of fact instruction, he asked that the court give the version of the instruction applicable to general intent crimes, which requires proof of an actual and reasonable mistaken belief. The court agreed to do so. The jury was thus instructed on mistake of fact as follows:

"The defendant is not guilty of burglary if he did not have the intent or mental state required to commit the crime because he reasonably did not know a fact or reasonably and mistakenly believed a fact. [¶] If the defendant's conduct would have been lawful under the facts as he reasonably believed them to be, he did not commit burglary. [¶] If you find the defendant believed that the defendant's cousin Trevor resided at the home and if you find that belief was reasonable, the defendant did not have a specific intent or mental state required for burglary. [¶] If you have a reasonable doubt about whether the defendant had the specific intent or mental state required for burglary, you must find him not guilty of that crime." (Italics added.)

As the parties now agree, the inclusion of the italicized language was error.^[3] Burglary is a specific intent crime. (People v. Thompson (1980) 27 Cal.3d 303, 313.) It requires not only that a defendant enter a structure, but that he do so with a particular objective in mind: larceny (or any other felony). (Pen. Code, § 459; People v. Wallace (2008) 44 Cal.4th 1032, 1077; see People v. Hood (1969) 1 Cal.3d 444, 457 [specific intent refers to "defendant's intent to do some further act or achieve some additional consequence" besides commission of a proscribed act].) As the criminal jury instructions themselves make clear, an unreasonable but honest mistaken belief in a fact can negate the required showing of intent. (Judicial Council of Cal., Crim. Jury Instns., supra, Bench Notes to CALCRIM No. 3406.)

Following a series of otherwise unremarkable instructions, the case went to the jury. It found Hendrix guilty of first degree burglary and the court sentenced him to a term of 10 years.

On appeal, the People conceded the mistake of fact instruction was erroneous but argued the error was harmless. A divided Court of Appeal agreed. Applying the harmless error standard for state law error set out in People v. Watson (1956) 46 Cal.2d 818 (Watson), the majority concluded there was "no reasonable probability [Hendrix] would have obtained a more favorable result" in the absence of the instructional error. (People v. Hendrix (2020) 55 Cal.App.5th 1092, 1097 (Hendrix).)

The court took the view that Hendrix's purported belief that he was at Trevor's house was a "fabrication" that "did not make sense to the jury" and "does not...