Opinion ID: 2588509
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Transportation-Worker Special Circumstance

Text: Defendant contends the penalty phase verdict is invalid because one of the special circumstances found by the jury, the murder of a transportation worker, does not support a sentence of death, only life imprisonment without parole. (§ 190.25.) He contends this error violated the heightened reliability requirement imposed in capital prosecutions by the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. To render a defendant eligible for the death penalty, the jury must find true at least one of the special circumstances listed in section 190.2. Once it does so, the jury must then decide in a penalty phase whether the defendant should be sentenced to death or to life imprisonment without possibility of parole. The jury weighs the factors listed in section 190.3 in making this determination. The jury below found three special circumstances: (1) defendant committed multiple murders (§ 190.2, subd. (a)(3)); (2) the murder was committed during a robbery (§ 190.2, subd. (a)(17)(A)); and (3) the victim was a transportation worker (§ 190.25). Although the transportation-worker special circumstance is not a special circumstance that supports a death sentence thereby leading to a penalty phase, the two section 190.2 special circumstances properly rendered the defendant death-eligible, subject to the penalty phase, where the jury would apply the section 190.3 factors. ( People v. Hamilton (1988) 45 Cal.3d 351, 364, fn. 7, 247 Cal. Rptr. 31, 753 P.2d 1109.) Defendant claims, however, It does not make any difference whether the other special circumstances were proved because we have no way of telling for sure whether it was special circumstance [No.] 1, or 2, or 3, or some combination ... which caused the jury to return the death verdict. But once the jury has found a section 190.2 special circumstance, the determination of whether to sentence the defendant to death or life imprisonment without the possibility of parole depends on the section 190.3 factors. Among these factors is factor (a): The circumstances of the crime of which the defendant was convicted in the instant proceeding and the existence of any special circumstances found to be true pursuant to Section 190.1. Accordingly, there was nothing improper about the prosecutor's emphasizing that defendant murdered McDermott while he was doing his job as a taxicab driver, as this was a circumstance of the charged crime. Section 190.25, subdivision (c) specifically provides, Nothing in this section shall be construed to prohibit the charging of any [other] special circumstance. While the statute does not authorize the death penalty, it does not prohibit that penalty if other special circumstances are proved. (3 Witkin & Epstein, Cal.Criminal Law (3d ed. 2000) Punishment, § 459, p. 612.) If we were to accept defendant's argument, it would turn the circumstance of killing a taxi driver on duty, a fact the Legislature has deemed worthy of special sanction (albeit less than some other special circumstances), into a shield from liability. If the Legislature had never enacted section 190.25, the prosecutor still would have been free to argue that the circumstances of the killing, which included the killing of a taxi driver doing his job, supported a death verdict. (§ 190.3, factor (a).) There would be no basis for reversal, as both the multiple-murder and robbery-murder special-circumstance findings were valid. By contrast, according to defendant, because the Legislature decided the killing of a taxi driver supported a sentence of life imprisonment without parole, we must now reverse. We decline to infer such an exculpatory effect from the Legislature's decision to increase the penalty for murdering transportation workers in cases where there are no other special circumstances.