Section 2578 | CALCRIM (Jury Instructions)

2. [Putting out someone’s eye or injuring someone’s eye in a way
that so significantly reduces his or her ability to see that the eye
is useless for the purpose of ordinary sight.]]
[A disfiguring injury may be permanent even though it can be repaired
by medical procedures.]
[An explosive is any substance, or combination of substances, (1) whose
main or common purpose is to detonate or rapidly combust and (2)
which is capable of a relatively instantaneous or rapid release of gas and
heat.]
[An explosive is also any substance whose main purpose is to be
combined with other substances to create a new substance that can
release gas and heat rapidly or relatively instantaneously.]
[
<insert type of explosive from Health & Saf. Code, § 12000>
is an explosive.]
[A destructive device is
<insert definition from Pen. Code,
§ 16460>.]
[
<insert type of destructive device from Pen. Code, § 16460>
is a destructive device.]
[The term[s] (explosive/ [and] destructive device) (is/are) defined in
another instruction.]
[An act causes (death[,]/ mayhem[,]/ [or] great bodily injury) if the
(death/injury) is the direct, natural, and probable consequence of the act,
and the (death[,]/ mayhem[,]/ [or] great bodily injury) would not have
happened without the act. A natural and probable consequence is one
that a reasonable person would know is likely to happen if nothing
unusual intervenes. In deciding whether a consequence is natural and
probable, consider all of the circumstances established by the evidence.]
[There may be more than one cause of (death[,]/ mayhem[,]/ [or] great
bodily injury). An act causes (death/injury) only if it is a substantial
factor in causing the (death/injury). A substantial factor is more than a
trivial or remote factor. However, it need not be the only factor that
causes the (death/injury).]
New January 2006; Revised February 2012, September 2020
BENCH NOTES
Instructional Duty
The court has a sua sponte duty to give this instruction defining the elements of the
crime.
If causation is at issue, the court has a sua sponte duty to instruct on proximate
WEAPONS
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465

cause. (See People v. Bernhardt (1963) 222 Cal.App.2d 567, 590–591 [35 Cal.Rptr.
401] [causation issue in homicide].) If the evidence indicates that there was only
one cause of injury, the court should give the “direct, natural, and probable”
language in the first bracketed paragraph on causation. If there is evidence of
multiple causes of injury, the court should also give the “substantial factor”
instruction and definition in the second bracketed paragraph. (See People v. Autry
(1995) 37 Cal.App.4th 351, 363 [43 Cal.Rptr.2d 135]; People v. Pike (1988) 197
Cal.App.3d 732, 746–747 [243 Cal.Rptr. 54].)
Depending on the device or substance used, give the bracketed definitions of
“explosive” or “destructive device,” inserting the appropriate definition from Penal
Code section 16460, unless the court has already given the definition in other
instructions. In such cases, the court