The People v. Santana CA44/1

I.

INTRODUCTION

A jury found defendant Serafin Santana guilty of attempted mayhem and two counts

of assault with a firearm, and found true multiple enhancements. Santana filed an appeal in

which he raised a number of contentions of trial court error. Specifically, Santana

contended (1) that the trial court erred in instructing the jury on the offense of mayhem, as

part of its instruction on the charged offense of attempted mayhem, by specifically telling

the jury that "a gunshot wound" could be a "serious bodily injury"; (2) that the trial court

erred in failing to instruct the jury sua sponte on the offense of attempted battery resulting

in serious bodily injury, as a lesser included offense of attempted mayhem; (3) that the trial

court erred in failing to instruct the jury on three of the four elements of the offense of

assault with a firearm; (4) that the court abused its discretion in admitting in evidence

testimony from a witness regarding a threat that a witness received from an unknown

person who told the witness to tell one of the victims not to come to court; (5) that a juror

committed misconduct by failing to promptly disclose that she knew the victim to be…