People v. Galindo

Summary

The court held that the trial court committed a mode-of-proceedings error by omitting a material question from the jury's note concerning the meaning of operating a vehicle, depriving the defense of meaningful notice and requiring dismissal of the unlicensed-operation charge. The court declined to reach the challenge to the specific operation instruction and upheld the separate consumption conviction because the jury-note error did not independently affect that charge. The order was therefore modified to dismiss the unlicensed-operation charge and affirmed as modified.