Opinion ID: 2517801
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 9

Heading: Appeals to community vengeance, collective conscience, and social contract

Text: Most of the prosecutor's closing penalty argument, covering some 33 pages in the reporter's transcript, was an attempt to persuade the jury that the balance of aggravating and mitigating evidence warranted the death penalty. At the conclusion of his argument, however, the prosecutor said he wanted to talk for a few minutes about the philosophy of capital punishment. In this regard, the prosecutor indicated that the purpose of the death penalty is collective vengeance, defined simply as punishment or retribution for a wrong. He urged that such vengeance is a vital expression of the community's outrage, and that the vigor of society's values is nourished by use of the criminal justice system to impose punishments that reflect the community's controlled indignation. He asserted that a society incapable of imposing such punishment where warranted is decadent and emasculated, and that the jury serves as the community's conscience in implementing this sanction. The prosecutor also invoked John Locke's concept of the social contract, whereby each individual surrenders the personal right of vengeance in favor of state-controlled retribution. The jury's failure to implement the death penalty, he argued, would violate this contract, for if society were unable or unwilling to impose even the most drastic punishment in appropriate cases, individuals, having lost faith in state justice and protection, might return to vigilantism and personal vengeance. Defendant did not object at trial. However, he now claims the prosecutor's plea that the jurors act as the community's conscience and avenger, and that they apply collective and societal values rather than focusing on a case-specific determination of the appropriate punishment, diminished their personal sense of sentencing responsibility, and deprived him of an independent, individualized, and constitutionally reliable penalty determination, in violation of the Eighth Amendment. Because an admonition would have cured any harm, defendant's failure to object below forfeits the argument on appeal. In any event, it lacks merit. The prosecutor never invited the jurors to abrogate their personal responsibility to determine the appropriate punishment. Nor did he not commit misconduct merely by describing the jurors, accurately ( Witherspoon, supra, 391 U.S. 510, 519-520, 88 S.Ct. 1770, 20 L.Ed.2d 776), as the conscience of the community ( People v. Lucero (2000) 23 Cal.4th 692, 734, 97 Cal. Rptr.2d 871, 3 P.3d 248 ( Lucero ); People v. Jones, supra, 15 Cal.4th 119, 185-186, 61 Cal.Rptr.2d 386, 931 P.2d 960; see also Lang, supra, 49 Cal.3d 991, 1041, 264 Cal. Rptr. 386, 782 P.2d 627) or by noting the jury's important role in the criminal justice system ( Lang, supra, at p. 1041, 264 Cal. Rptr. 386, 782 P.2d 627; Fierro, supra, 1 Cal.4th 173, 248, 249, 3 Cal.Rptr.2d 426, 821 P.2d 1302). Furthermore, the prosecutor did not err by devoting some remarks to a reasoned argument that the death penalty, where imposed in deserving cases, is a valid form of community retribution or vengeance i.e., punishmentexacted by the state, under controlled circumstances, and on behalf of all its members, in lieu of the right of personal retaliation. Retribution on behalf of the community is an important purpose of all society's punishments, including the death penalty. (E.g., Spaziano v. Florida (1984) 468 U.S. 447, 462, 104 S.Ct. 3154, 82 L.Ed.2d 340; see also § 1170, subd. (a)(1) [the purpose of imprisonment for crime is punishment].) And the prosecutor was entitled to direct some argument, as he clearly intended, against the possibility that one or more jurors harbored lingering reservations about capital punishment as equivalent to the State murdering. Our modern cases have suggested that prosecutorial references to community vengeance, while potentially inflammatory, are not misconduct if they are brief and isolated, and do not form the principal basis for advocating the death penalty. (E.g., Hinton, supra, 37 Cal.4th 839, 907, 38 Cal.Rptr.3d 149, 126 P.3d 981; Davenport, supra, 11 Cal.4th 1171, 1222, 47 Cal. Rptr.2d 800, 906 P.2d 1068; Wash, supra, 6 Cal.4th 215, 262, 24 Cal.Rptr.2d 421, 861 P.2d 1107; People v. Ghent (1987) 43 Cal.3d 739, 771, 239 Cal.Rptr. 82, 739 P.2d 1250.) Concern about extended comment on this issue appears traceable to People v. Floyd (1970) 1 Cal.3d 694, 83 Cal.Rptr. 608, 464 P.2d 64 ( Floyd ). There we noted that [a]lthough this court has never held that it is improper for a prosecutor in closing argument in a penalty trial to ask the jury to impose the death penalty for reasons of retribution or vengeance, we have stated in other contexts that `There is no place in the [sentencing] scheme for punishment for its own sake, the product simply of vengeance or retribution.' [Citation.] ( Id. at pp. 721-722, 83 Cal.Rptr. 608, 464 P.2d 64.) Floyd also pointed to another earlier statement of this court, i.e., that `[w]hatever may have been the fact historically, retribution is no longer considered the primary objective of the criminal law [citation] and is thought by many not even to be a proper consideration [citations].' ( Floyd, supra, 1 Cal.3d 694, 722, 83 Cal. Rptr. 608, 464 P.2d 64.) Intervening changes in penal philosophy (see discussion, ante ) make these statements suspect, and thus ameliorate concerns about the inflammatory irrelevance of such prosecutorial argument. Here, the prosecutor's comments were not brief or isolated, but neither did they form the principal basis of his argument. Moreover, his remarks were not inflammatory. They did not seek to invoke untethered passions, or to dissuade jurors from making individual decisions, but only to assert that the community, acting on behalf of those injured, has the right to express its values by imposing the severest punishment for the most aggravated crimes. This case, the prosecutor was at pains to suggest, was one of those that deserved such severe punishment. No misconduct occurred.