Opinion ID: 1122968
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: requested jury instruction relating to the ultimate issue

Text: Defendant also assigns error to the trial court's refusal to give his requested instruction concerning the ultimate issue of whether defendant should receive the death penalty. The requested instruction was as follows: Under the Oregon death penalty law, you jurors make the ultimate decision as to whether [defendant] will live or die. As part of your role in deciding this question[ ], you must make a decision about the appropriateness of the punishment of death in this case. That means that in addition to deciding the answer to the four questions I have just read to you, you must also decide whether or not death is appropriate in [defendant]'s case. Therefore, I instruct you that you may answer the four question[s] `no' in good conscience if you feel that the answer to the question is `yes,' but the circumstances of this case lead you to a personal belief that death is not the appropriate sentence for [defendant]. Although the trial court did not give that instruction, it did instruct the jury that it must answer the first three questions under ORS 163.150(1)(b) yes if the state met its burden of proof on those questions and that, if the jury also answered the fourth question in the affirmative, the sentence will be death. The court also instructed the jury that, if it answered no to any of the four questions, the sentence would be either life imprisonment without the possibility of parole or imprisonment with a minimum 30-year term. We disagree with defendant that the trial court erred in refusing to give his requested instruction. In Tucker, 315 Or. 321, 845 P.2d 904, this court rejected a similar assignment of error concerning a requested instruction that related to the jury's `ultimate decision' whether [the] defendant would live or die. 315 Or. at 332, 845 P.2d 904. The following reasoning from Tucker also applies in this case: The trial court instructed the jury that, if it answered the questions in the affirmative, ` the law requires that the penalty shall be death' (emphasis added) and that, if it answered [any or all] of the questions in the negative, `the law requires that the penalty shall be life imprisonment.' Those instructions accurately conveyed to the jury its role in determining [the] defendant's sentence. That was enough.    The trial court did not err in refusing to give defendant's requested jury instructions concerning the jury's role in determining defendant's sentence. Ibid. (emphasis in original; citations omitted). We hold that the trial court neither erred nor abused its discretion in refusing to give the requested instruction.