Opinion ID: 2353264
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 12

Heading: Jury Instruction on Mitigating and Aggravating Circumstances

Text: In another layered claim of ineffectiveness, Appellant argues that the trial court erred in instructing the jury concerning aggravating and mitigating circumstances, thus preventing the jury from considering and giving full effect to relevant mitigation evidence. Specifically, he complains of the following portion of the jury instructions: Generally speaking, aggravating circumstances are things about the killing and the killer which makes a first degree murder case more terrible and deserving of the death penalty. While mitigating circumstances are those things which make the case less terrible and less deserving of death. N.T., 10/11/1994, at 52. In addition, the trial court charged the jury as follows: The law requires that your sentence depends upon what you find about aggravating and mitigating circumstances. The sentencing code defines aggravating and mitigating circumstances, things that make a first degree murder case more terrible or less terrible. N.T., 10/12/1994, at 36. Appellant argues that this instruction improperly restricted the weight the jury would give to mitigating evidence that did not affect the terribleness of the offense. Appellant contends trial counsel and appellate counsel were ineffective for failing to raise and litigate this issue. The PCRA court found this claim waived and without merit. Once again there is no need to remand for further development of appellate counsel's ineffectiveness because the underlying issue lacks merit. The instructions, read as a whole, were proper. The trial court is allowed considerable discretion in phrasing instructions as long as they adequately convey the law. Prosdocimo, 525 Pa. 147, 578 A.2d 1273. In fact, Pennsylvania Standard Criminal Jury Instruction 15.2502F(1) describes aggravating and mitigating circumstances as things that make a first-degree murder case either more terrible or else less terrible. Additionally, we have rejected the claim Appellant now advances, declining to find that the trial court instructions, as a whole, interfered with the jury's evaluation of the specific mitigation evidence presented by Appellant or their assessment of his personal moral culpability. These instructions merely expressed to the jury, in laymen's terms, the purpose for the distinction between aggravating and mitigating circumstances in a capital penalty phase. Commonwealth v. Johnson, 572 Pa. 283, 815 A.2d 563, 588 (2002); Commonwealth v. Stevens, 559 Pa. 171, 739 A.2d 507, 526-27 (1999).