Opinion ID: 2599941
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Denial of New Jury for Penalty Phase

Text: Defendant asserts the trial court erred in denying his motion to impanel a new jury at the penalty phase. He contends this error violated both California law and his rights to due process and a fair and impartial jury under the federal Constitution and reduced the jury's sense of responsibility for its decision, in violation of Caldwell v. Mississippi (1985) 472 U.S. 320, 105 S.Ct. 2633, 86 L.Ed.2d 231 ( Caldwell ). In a capital case, the jury that decides guilt is required to decide the penalty unless for good cause shown the court discharges that jury in which case a new jury shall be drawn. (§ 190.4, subd. (c).) We review the trial court's ruling for abuse of discretion. ( People v. Kraft (2000) 23 Cal.4th 978, 1069, 99 Cal.Rptr.2d 1, 5 P.3d 68.) Defendant contends a new jury was required because the jury, having heard during the guilt phase that defendant previously was sentenced to death, could not impartially decide the penalty. We find no abuse of discretion. The court instructed that defendant was being retried as the result of the decision by this court that he did not receive a fair trial at his first trial, and that the jury was to disregard completely the result of that first trial in deciding upon a verdict in the present trial. We are not convinced it would be impossible for the jury to follow such an instruction. In the penalty phase as in the guilt phase, the jurors heard all the relevant evidence and were in a position to form their own conclusions based upon that evidence. There is no reason to believe they would have felt compelled to ignore the court's instruction and defer to the verdict of another jury that resulted from a prior trial. Caldwell, supra, 472 U.S. 320, 105 S.Ct. 2633, 86 L.Ed.2d 231, does not compel a different conclusion. In Caldwell, the prosecutor urged the jury not to view its role as determining whether the defendant would die, because the state Supreme Court would review the sentence for correctness. The high court reversed the death sentence, holding that such an argument creates a bias in favor of a death sentence and renders the jury verdict unreliable. In a subsequent case somewhat analogous to the present one, the high court concluded that the admission of evidence in a death penalty case reflecting that the defendant had been convicted of a prior murder and sentenced to death for that murder did not require reversal of the death judgment. ( Romano v. Oklahoma (1994) 512 U.S. 1, 114 S.Ct. 2004, 129 L.Ed.2d 1 ( Romano ).) The court rejected the petitioner's argument that evidence indicating that he previously had been sentenced to death in a different and unrelated case violated the holding of Caldwell, supra, by diminishing the jury's sense of responsibility for the sentencing decision. The court in Romano reiterated that Caldwell simply requires that the jury not be mislead into believing that the responsibility for the sentencing decision lies elsewhere. ( Romano, supra, 512 U.S. at p. 8, 114 S.Ct. 2004.) The court in Romano found Caldwell inapplicable, because the jury was not affirmatively misled regarding its role in the sentencing process. The evidence at issue was neither false at the time it was admitted, nor did it even pertain to the jury's role in the sentencing process. ( Id. at p. 9, 114 S.Ct. 2004.) In Romano, the high court recognized that evidence establishing that the defendant previously had received a death sentence for another murder was not relevant to the jury's determination under state law. Nevertheless, the court concluded that if the jurors followed the trial court's instructions, which we presume they did [citation], this evidence should have had littleif anyeffect on their deliberations. Those instructions clearly and properly described the jurors' paramount role in determining petitioner's sentence . . . . In short, the instructions did not offer the jurors any means by which to give effect to the evidence of petitioner's sentence in the [prior] murder . . . . ( Romano, supra, at p.13, 114 S.Ct. 2004.) As in Romano, the jury instructions in the present case made clear the jury's responsibility to determine defendant's penalty based upon the evidence presented to it and did not offer the jurors any means by which to give effect to the evidence of the prior proceedings.