Tate

It is a practice of the trial court in ordering community service as a condition of probation to require the agency receiving the service, or an administering agency, to complete a work referral form. The defendant probationer is required to submit the completed form to the court in order to establish satisfaction of the probation condition. Failure to satisfy the condition generally amounts to a violation of a probation term, subjecting the defendant to imposition of a period of incarceration.

These combined cases present a single common issue: whether a false referral form, purportedly completed and indicating defendant’s completed hours of service, is an “instrument” for purposes of Penal Code section 115, subdivision (a), which punishes offering a false instrument for filing. In the published portion of this opinion we conclude that it is. That conclusion requires affirmance of one of the cases before us. Reversal is required in the other because of serious misconduct of the trial judge in answering a substantive jury question in the jury room, without notifying counsel and in discussing it without a reporter and without the consent of the parties to proceed in this…