People v. Aledamat

*1151Yazan Aledamat (defendant) thrust the exposed blade of a box-cutter toward a man while threatening, "I'll kill you." A jury convicted him of assault with a deadly weapon and making criminal threats. Defendant argues that the assault conviction is invalid because the trial court wrongly instructed the jury that a "deadly weapon" includes an "inherently deadly" weapon when a box cutter is not an inherently deadly weapon as a matter of law. (See People v. McCoy (1944) 25 Cal.2d 177, 188, 153 P.2d 315 ( McCoy ).) Defendant is correct. Further, because this error placed a legally invalid theory…