## Facts

- Sixteen-year-old Anh‑Tuan Dao Pham participated in a drive-by shooting in which multiple shots were fired into a crowd outside a house, wounding two people.
- Earlier that day, Pham had an altercation with two Black teenagers whom he believed had damaged his mother’s van by throwing a rock.
- Pham told police his purpose in the later shooting was to kill those two teenagers, but neither was actually present in the group that was shot at.
- Ballistics evidence also linked Pham’s gun to a homicide about an hour earlier; Pham denied involvement in that earlier killing.
- At trial, Pham recanted his police statements and claimed he was only the driver and that a friend fired the shots; the jury found Pham was the shooter.
- Pham was convicted of second-degree murder, two counts of attempted murder, and discharging a firearm at an inhabited dwelling, and was sentenced to an aggregate term of 79 years to life.

## Issues

1. Whether sufficient evidence supported the attempted-murder convictions when Pham intended to kill two specific individuals who were not present, but instead wounded two other victims.
2. Whether sustaining the attempted-murder convictions would improperly apply transferred intent, or could properly rest on concurrent intent (kill-zone) reasoning.

## Decision

- The Court of Appeal affirmed the attempted-murder convictions.
- The court held the evidence supported a finding that Pham harbored the specific intent to kill the victims he wounded under a concurrent-intent (kill-zone) theory.
- The court rejected the argument that the convictions depended on an impermissible transferred-intent theory for attempt crimes.
- The overall judgment was affirmed.

## Legal Principles

- Attempted murder requires (1) a specific intent to kill and (2) a direct but ineffectual act toward accomplishing the killing.
- Transferred intent generally applies to completed murder when an unintended victim is killed; it does not supply the intent element for attempted murder.
- Under concurrent intent (kill-zone) theory, a factfinder may infer an intent to kill others in the immediate zone of fatal harm when the defendant uses a method designed to ensure the death of a primary target (e.g., firing multiple shots into a group).
- A defendant’s mistake about whether the intended targets are present does not preclude attempted-murder liability where the defendant’s conduct and purpose support an inference of intent to kill persons within the zone of attack.

## Conclusion

The court upheld Pham’s attempted-murder convictions, concluding that firing multiple shots into a group to kill perceived targets permitted the jury to infer a concurrent intent to kill those in the zone of danger, even though the specific intended targets were not present and different victims were wounded.


People v. Pham, 192 Cal. App. 4th 552, 121 Cal. Rptr. 3d 458 (Cal. Ct. App. 2011)