Opinion ID: 1199801
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Instruction on Pity, Sympathy, and Mercy

Text: At the guilt phase, the court had instructed the jury, in relevant part, as follows: As jurors you must not be influenced by pity for a defendant or by prejudice against him.... [¶] You must not be swayed by mere sentiment, conjecture, sympathy, passion, prejudice, public opinion or public feeling. Both the People and the defendant have a right to expect that you will conscientiously consider and weigh the evidence and apply the law of the case, and that you will reach a just verdict regardless of what the consequences of such verdict may be. At the penalty phase, defendant requested the court to give the jury, among others, Special Instruction `16,' which as pertinent here would have told the jurors that [i]n this part of the trial you may consider pity, sympathy or mercy for the defendant in deciding on the appropriate penalty for him. If a mitigating circumstance or an aspect of the defendant's background or his character, called to you[r] attention by the evidence or your observation of the defendant ... arouses sympathy or compas[s]ion such as to persuade you that death is not the appropriate penalty, you shall act in response thereto and impose a punishment of life without parole on that basis. The court refused. It made plain its view that Special Instruction `16' was legally correct. It determined, however, that the special instruction was duplicative of certain other instructions that it intended to give. Defense counsel Peterson was in accord. Defense would agree.... [W]e would invite the Court to refuse this instruction on the basis that the Court has already done substantially what is being proposed. The court subsequently gave, among others, the following instruction, which it had itself drafted, in accordance with its expressed intent. [Y]ou were previously instructed not to consider penalty in the guilt or innocence phrase of the trial, and of course, that is your consideration in this phase. That instruction would be totally inapplicable. [¶] You will also be instructed at this time that you can consider sympathy for the defendant in deciding this continuing issue, and that was, of course, precluded from the guilt or innocence phase of the trial. As pertinent here and noted above (see pt. IV.C., ante ), the court told the jurors that in determining penalty they were to consider several specified factors, if applicable, including [a]ny ... circumstance which extenuates the gravity of the crime even though it is not a legal excuse for the crime and any sympathetic or other aspect of the defendant's character or record that the defendant offers as a basis for a sentence less than death, whether or not related to the offense for which he is on trial. You must disregard any jury instruction given to you in the guilt or innocence phase of this trial which conflicts with this principle. (Brackets omitted.) The court also told the jurors that in determining penalty, you shall consider, take into account and be guided by the applicable factors of aggravating and mitigating circumstances upon which you have been instructed. [¶] The weighing of aggravating and mitigating circumstances does not mean a mere mechanical counting of factors on each side of an imaginary scale, or the arbitrary assignment of weights to any of them. You are free to assign whatever moral or sympathetic value you deem appropriate to each and all of the various factors you are permitted to consider. In weighing the various circumstances you simply determine under the relevant evidence which penalty is justified and appropriate by considering the totality of the aggravating circumstances with the totality of the mitigating circumstances. To return a judgment of death, each of you must be persuaded that the aggravating evidence is so substantial in comparison with the mitigating circumstances that it warrants death instead of life without parole. (28) Defendant now contends that, by instructing the jury as it did, the court erred under the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. In support, he effectively asserts that the instructions quoted above told the jury that in determining penalty it could not consider or give effect to pity, sympathy, or mercy, or at least did not tell it that it could. We reject the claim out of hand. A reasonable juror would have understood and employed the instructions in question to allow him to consider and give effect to pity, sympathy, and mercy to the extent he deemed appropriate in this case  and indeed to require him to do so. There is no reasonable likelihood that the jury misconstrued or misapplied the instructions in violation of the Eighth or Fourteenth Amendment or any other legal provision or principle.