People v. Wyatt
Annotate this CaseWhile in Defendant's care, Defendant's young son died of shock and hemorrhage due to blunt force trauma. A jury convicted Defendant of involuntary manslaughter and assault on a child causing death. As relevant here, the court of appeal reversed the conviction upon finding the trial court erroneously failed to instruct the jury, sua sponte, on simple assault as a lesser included offense. The Supreme Court reversed and remanded with directions to reinstate the conviction, holding that the trial court had no sua sponte duty to instruct on that lesser offense, as (1) such instructions are required only when there is substantial evidence that, if the defendant is guilty at all, he is guilty of the lesser offense, but not the greater; and (2) here, it would be speculative at best to construe the trial evidence in this case as supporting a verdict of only simple assault.
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