Opinion ID: 2621639
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Consideration of Special Circumstances

Text: Defendant contends that the felony-murder special-circumstance findings in this case do not adequately narrow the class of death-eligible defendants, and therefore the jury's consideration of those special circumstances at the penalty phase as a penalty factor under section 190.3, factor (a), violated defendant's rights under the Fifth, Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution and parallel provisions of the state Constitution. This court has consistently rejected the claim that the statutory special circumstances, including the felony-murder special circumstance, do not adequately narrow the class of persons subject to the death penalty. ( People v. Gurule, supra, 28 Cal.4th at p. 663, 123 Cal.Rptr.2d 345, 51 P.3d 224; People v. Kraft, supra, 23 Cal.4th at p. 1078, 99 Cal.Rptr.2d 1, 5 P.3d 68; People v. Frye, supra, 18 Cal.4th at pp. 1028-1029, 77 Cal.Rptr.2d 25, 959 P.2d 183; People v. Musselwhite (1998) 17 Cal.4th 1216, 1265, 74 Cal.Rptr.2d 212, 954 P.2d 475.) We have also held, contrary to defendant's argument here, that the jury at the penalty phase may properly consider as aggravating the existence of one or more felony-murder special circumstances. ( People v. Seaton, supra, 26 Cal.4th at pp. 690-691, 110 Cal.Rptr.2d 441, 28 P.3d 175; People v. Marshall (1990) 50 Cal.3d 907, 945-946, 269 Cal.Rptr. 269, 790 P.2d 676.) Finally, we are unpersuaded by defendant's contention that the existence of two robbery-murder special circumstances and two burglary-murder special circumstances improperly and artificially inflated the factors in aggravation for what was essentially a single incident. The jury was properly instructed that the weighing of aggravating and mitigating circumstances does not mean a mere mechanical act of counting the number of factors on each side of an imaginary scale or the arbitrary assigning of weight to any particular factor. There is no reasonable likelihood that a jury so instructed would be unduly influenced by the mere number of special circumstances, without regard to the character or quality of the conduct on which they were based. Accordingly, defendant's claim is lacking in merit.