Opinion ID: 1379313
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: evidence of codefendants' culpability and sentences

Text: (24) Defendant complains that the trial court excluded evidence of the dispositions of the charges against the other participants in the murders. Rutherford was sentenced to life imprisonment without possibility of parole for the murder of Stacy, the same sentence the jury imposed on defendant for that crime. Rutherford was acquitted of the murder of Patty, at which crime he had not been present. Forrester was acquitted of Patty's murder; Soria pleaded no contest to second degree murder; and the complaint against Geddling was dismissed for lack of evidence. Such evidence, however, is irrelevant to the penalty determination, which focuses on whether the defendant before the jury should be sentenced to death. ( People v. Carrera, supra, 49 Cal.3d 291, 343.) In response to the dissent's view that it is irrational to subject only defendant to the death penalty, and not the others involved in these crimes, we note that, unlike some of the others, defendant was an active participant in both murders of this case, and he alone committed the brutal murder in Missouri. Defendant also contends the court should have admitted testimony of Soria (given in a prior proceeding) that (1) Rutherford and Geddling discussed a plot to kill an individual named Bill Quick and (2) Soria wrote a poem after her arrest that seemed to express pride in the two murders. Defendant argues the evidence pertained not only to relative culpability but also to Rutherford's and Soria's foul character, justifying defendant's fear for his life. Defendant, however, was not present during the discussion involving Quick. The poem arguably showed Soria's state of mind after the crimes, but that was not relevent to determining defendant's culpability. The court did not abuse its discretion in excluding the evidence. Defendant next complains that in Rutherford's trial, the jury was instructed that it may rather than shall impose the death penalty if aggravating outweighed mitigating circumstances. He also asks us to judicially notice still another penalty phase trial in the same county in which the court allegedly told the jury it could consider the fact that an equally culpable codefendant was allowed to plead guilty to being an accessory, for which the codefendant was sentenced to only two years in jail. However, neither trial court ruling established a rule of law for this case. The propriety of the instructions of this case must be considered on its own merits, not by comparison to instructions in some other case. We have repeatedly upheld trial courts' refusals to inform penalty trial juries of the punishments imposed on the defendant's accomplices. ( People v. Malone (1988) 47 Cal.3d 1, 53-54 [252 Cal. Rptr. 525, 762 P.2d 1249]; People v. Belmontes (1988) 45 Cal.3d 744, 811-813 [248 Cal. Rptr. 126, 755 P.2d 310]; People v. Dyer (1988) 45 Cal.3d 26, 69-71 [246 Cal. Rptr. 209, 753 P.2d 1]; see also People v. Gallego (1990) 52 Cal.3d 115, 201 [276 Cal. Rptr. 679, 802 P.2d 169].) (The propriety of the court's use of the word shall is discussed below.)