Opinion ID: 1201769
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Denial of Automatic Modification Motion

Text: (33) In stating its reasons for denying the automatic motion to modify the death penalty, the trial court recited its own findings that the murder of Amelia P. was intentional, premeditated, deliberate, willful, and committed with malice aforethought, and that the murder was committed in the course of a rape. Defendant contends that it was improper for the trial court to base its denial of the modification motion upon findings of intentional murder and rape that the jury never made. We disagree. In ruling on the automatic motion for modification, the trial judge shall review the evidence, consider, take into account, and be guided by the aggravating and mitigating circumstances referred to in Section 190.3, and shall make a determination as to whether the jury's findings and verdicts that the aggravating circumstances outweigh the mitigating circumstances are contrary to law or the evidence presented. (ง 190.4, subd. (e).) Among the aggravating circumstances specified in section 190.3 is the circumstances of the crime of which the defendant was convicted in the present proceeding (ง 190.3, factor (a)). Here, the trial judge did no more than to evaluate the circumstances of defendant's capital crime. (See People v. Turner (1990) 50 Cal.3d 668, 716-717 [268 Cal. Rptr. 706, 789 P.2d 887].) In this regard, the absence of express jury findings is not significant. The jury never made express findings on rape or intentional murder because these issues were never submitted to the jury, not because it resolved these issues in defendant's favor. In the absence of any express jury findings on these issues, the trial judge was permitted, and indeed required, to make whatever findings he deemed necessary to properly evaluate the circumstances of the offense in order to independently determine whether the weight of the evidence supported the verdict of death.