Cedric Roshawn Harmon v. Charles D. Marshall, Warden of Pelican Bay State Prison Daniel E. Lungren, Attorney General of the State of California
Opinion
Opinion
Charles D. Marshall, Warden of Pelican Bay State Prison, appeals the district court’s grant of Cedric Roshwan Harmon’s habeas corpus petition. Harmon challenges two of the twelve counts of which he was convicted because no instruction was given to the jury defining the elements of the offense constituting those two counts. Marshall concedes that the failure to instruct amounts to constitutional error, but contends that the error was harmless. The district court held that the failure to instruct on any of the elements of an offense cannot be analyzed by harmless error principles and requires automatic reversal. We affirm.
I.
We review de novo the district court’s grant of a petition for habeas corpus. Adams v. Peterson, 968 F.2d 835, 843 (9th Cir.1992) (en banc), cert. denied, — U.S. -, 113 S.Ct. 1818 , 123 L.Ed.2d 448 (1993).
II.
The Supreme Court has long emphasized the constitutional right to have a jury, rather than a judge, find the existence of each element of a charged offense beyond a reasonable doubt. See, e.g., In re Winship, 397 U.S. 358, 364 , 90 S.Ct. 1068, 1072-73 , 25 L.Ed.2d 368 (1970); Sandstrom v. Montana, 442 U.S. 510, 520 , 99 S.Ct. 2450, 2457 , 61 L.Ed.2d…