Opinion ID: 2575291
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Alleged improper limitation upon closing argument

Text: Defendant contends the trial court erred by prohibiting defense counsel from arguing that defendant's crimes were less serious than those of other capital defendants, in violation of his rights under the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. [31] No error appears. During closing argument, defense counsel stated, We need to look at this case and compare this case with other special circumstance killings . . . . At a sidebar conference, defense counsel repeatedly asserted he did not intend to comment on what case got what penalty. Rather, counsel sought to argue that this is not . . . the worst of the worst . . ., there are far worse cases, by referring to such defendants as Richard Ramirez, David Carpenter, and Ramon Salcido, and discussing the circumstances of their crimes. The court ruled that counsel would not be permitted to engage in a comparative analysis of other death penalty cases or other murder cases . . . . Counsel was not allowed to mention specific cases, specific names, specific penalties, but he was permitted to say that this is not a child torture case or something like that. Following the sidebar conference, defense counsel argued to the jury that defendant, whose crimes involved a single incident brought on by severe emotional and personal stress and who did not kill as many individuals as he might have or seize hostages, was less deserving of the death penalty than a person who kills with the thought of avoiding capture, tortures victims, acts for mercenary reasons, or kills on multiple occasions over a long period of time. Defendant now contends [t]he fact that a particular defendant's crime is less aggravated than the crimes of others who have received the death penaltyor especially that it is less aggravated than the crimes of persons who did not receive the death penaltyis nonetheless a proper consideration for the sentencing body in deciding what sentence to impose. As set forth above, however, trial counsel repeatedly stated he did not seek to refer to the penalty imposed in any particular case. Therefore, this claim is forfeited. Defendant's claim also is without merit. On numerous occasions, we have upheld a trial court's refusal to allow defense counsel to compare the subject crime to other well-known murders ( People v. Hughes (2002) 27 Cal.4th 287, 400 [116 Cal.Rptr.2d 401, 39 P.3d 432]), or to note the penalty imposed in such cases ( People v. Sakarias (2000) 22 Cal.4th 596, 640 [94 Cal.Rptr.2d 17, 995 P.2d 152]), while allowing argument that there were other murderers worse than he ( People v. Benavides (2005) 35 Cal.4th 69, 110 [24 Cal.Rptr.3d 507, 105 P.3d 1099]). [M]eaningful comparisons with other well-publicized crimes cannot be made solely on the basis of the circumstances of the crime . . . without consideration of the other aggravating and mitigating circumstances. ( People v. Roybal (1998) 19 Cal.4th 481, 529 [79 Cal.Rptr.2d 487, 966 P.2d 521]; Marshall, supra, 13 Cal.4th at pp. 854-855.) Here, counsel's central point was that defendant's murders were not the worst of the worst. He was not precluded from making such an argument, and ably did so.