Opinion ID: 1300630
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Flannel instruction at penalty retrial.

Text: Defendant urges that the penalty judgment must be reversed because the trial court violated his Sixth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights by failing to give, sua sponte, a Flannel instruction at the penalty retrial. (6) He further claims that the failure to so instruct precluded the jury from considering the evidence adduced at the penalty retrial which was suggestive of an unreasonable belief in the need for self-defense. We may quickly reject this latter contention. The jury was instructed that a defendant's reasonable belief in moral justification was a mitigating circumstance (ง 190.3, factor (f); see former ง 190.3, factor (e)), thus possibly raising the negative inference that an unreasonable belief was not a proper consideration. However, the jury was also instructed to consider in mitigation [a]ny other circumstance which extenuates the gravity of the crime even though it is not a legal excuse for the crime. (ง 190.3, factor (k); see former ง 190 .3, factor (j).) Had the jury believed defendant's evidence that he harbored an honest but unreasonable belief in the need for self-defensive action, the instructions permitted consideration of that information as a mitigating factor under factor (j)-(k). ( People v. Ghent (1987) 43 Cal.3d 739, 776 [239 Cal. Rptr. 82, 739 P.2d 1250].) [6] In addition, we remain unpersuaded that a trial court has a constitutional duty to instruct sua sponte on unreasonable self-defense at the penalty phase of a capital trial. As stated ante, the court gave the factor (j)-(k) instruction which, coupled with the arguments of counsel, adequately informed the jury that they could consider such evidence as a mitigating factor. The trial court thus fulfilled its legal obligation to instruct the jury on the general principles of law applicable to the penalty trial. (Cf. People v. Wickersham (1982) 32 Cal.3d 307, 323 [185 Cal. Rptr. 436, 650 P.2d 311] [concerning whether the trial court had a sua sponte duty to instruct on lesser degree of homicide].) Defendant suggests that Fifth and Eighth Amendment concerns particularly required a penalty phase Flannel instruction in this case, since he had been convicted of capital murder without proper instructions on unreasonable self-defense. He urges that the importance of lingering doubts about his guilt, as a bar to execution, was therefore great. But this argument assumes premises we have already rejected. At defendant's pre- Flannel guilt trial, the jury was fully instructed on the definitions of malice and the degrees of homicide. The lack of further instructions explaining the particular theory of unreasonable self-defense neither denied him basic fairness nor undermined the fundamental reliability of the guilt judgment. The factor (j)-(k) instruction given at the second penalty trial allowed the sentencer to consider any lingering doubts about the culpability of defendant's conduct. No error appears.