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Cal. Penal Code § 1127c

The Trial

Applied in 52 court decisions — leading case 2 Cal. 3d 362 - People v. Terry (1970)

Most recently applied in 12 Cal. 5th 977 - People v. Bracamontes (April 2022)

Added by Stats. 1929, Ch. 875.

How often courts cite this section

19331940196019802000202240
citing decisions per year

Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.

In any criminal trial or proceeding where evidence of flight of a defendant is relied upon as tending to show guilt, the court shall instruct the jury substantially as follows:

The flight of a person immediately after the commission of a crime, or after he is accused of a crime that has been committed, is not sufficient in itself to establish his guilt, but is a fact which, if proved, the jury may consider in deciding his guilt or innocence. The weight to which such circumstance is entitled is a matter for the jury to determine.

No further instruction on the subject of flight need be given.

Official source: California Legislative Information. Reproduced from public-domain California statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.