Opinion ID: 2567349
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: Preinstruction during voir dire

Text: During voir dire, the trial court distributed to prospective jurors a printed instruction regarding the penalty phase, which stated: In the penalty phase of the trial both counsel are permitted to introduce mitigating and aggravating evidence about the defendant. Aggravating circumstances may involve other bad acts, different from the offense(s) charged. Mitigating circumstances could be psychiatric testimony or other sympathetic factors in a defendant's life. If you[] are selected as a juror in this case you must, by law, consider these mitigating and aggravating factors along with the facts of the case in making a decision about the penalty to be imposed. Defendant contends this instruction was prejudicially inaccurate. He observes that its description of possible mitigating circumstances was incomplete, in that mitigation can encompass any and all factors that jurors perceive as extenuating a defendant's conduct. Indeed, he contends the mitigating evidence presented to the jury included abundant evidence falling outside the narrow categories enumerated by the trial court, including his asserted intoxication at the times of the offenses, the mental disease or defect he asserts caused him to become assaultive when intoxicated, and his confession to the crimes, which assisted police investigations and brought closure to the victims' families. The underinclusiveness of the instruction, he contends, violated his rights under the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments because it effectively precluded the sentencer from considering as mitigating any circumstance of the offense proffered as a reason for a sentence less than death. ( Lockett v. Ohio, supra, 438 U.S. at p. 601, 98 S.Ct. 2954.) Although defendant did not object to this preinstruction or request clarification, we do not deem forfeited any claim of instructional error affecting a defendant's substantial rights. (§ 1259; People v. Coffman and Marlow, supra, 34 Cal.4th at p. 104, fn. 34, 17 Cal.Rptr.3d 710, 96 P.3d 30.) On the merits, however, we conclude the preinstruction did not prejudice defendant. As we said in assessing a similar claim in People v. Livaditis, supra, 2 Cal.4th 759, 9 Cal.Rptr.2d 72, 831 P.2d 297: The comments were not the actual complete jury instructions. The full instructions came at the end of the trial.... [¶] `The purpose of these comments was to give prospective jurors, most of whom had little or no familiarity with courts in general and penalty phase death penalty trials in particular, a general idea of the nature of the proceeding. The comments were not intended to be, and were not, a substitute for full instructions at the end of the trial.' ( Id. at p. 781, 9 Cal.Rptr.2d 72, 831 P.2d 297.) Likewise here, at the conclusion of the penalty phase the trial court read the complete standard instructions on aggravating and mitigating factors and determining penalty. (CALJIC Nos. 8.85, 8.88.) The court also instructed the jury to disregard all other instructions given in other phases of the trial. Thus, there is no reasonable likelihood ( People v. Clair, supra, 2 Cal.4th at p. 663, 7 Cal.Rptr.2d 564, 828 P.2d 705) the jury understood the instruction given during the voir dire process as restricting the range of mitigating evidence it could consider in deliberating on penalty.