Opinion ID: 1133622
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: The Prosecutor's Argument Concerning Sympathy for Defendant's Family

Text: During closing argument at the penalty phase, the prosecutor stated: Something else that I think needs to be discussed at this juncture is the sympathy that you are entitled to consider. [¶] What you have to do in this case is separate sympathy you may feel for the Defendant's family from sympathy you should consider for the Defendant. The sympathy that should be considered by you is sympathy for the Defendant, not for any of the Defendant's family members. [¶] And, of course, you naturally feel sympathy for the brothers and sisters who come in and have one of their loved ones charged and convicted with an offense like this, and facing the possible penalties that he's facing, [¶] It's only normal to consider that sympathy. But that is not the sympathy that plays into your weighing of aggravating and mitigating factors in this case, [¶] ... [¶] ... [I]t's very, very hard, I would imagine, for family members to realize that one of their loved ones has been convicted of this. [¶] So you feel sympathy for them, and you feel sympathy, of course, for the family members who have tried to help [defendant,] who have given [him] the opportunity to straighten his life out. [¶] He's turned his back on them as well. You can't help feeling sympathy for them, but it's not that sympathy, but sympathy for the Defendant that could come into play in this case.... The prosecutor then stated that the law requires the jury to consider sympathy for defendant, but that the jurors individually must decide how much weight to give such sympathy. The prosecutor proceeded to discuss various aggravating factors. Defendant contends that the prosecutor committed misconduct by informing the jury it could not consider sympathy for defendant's family. According to defendant, this misconduct precluded the jury from considering relevant mitigating evidence of defendant's character or record, in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments and section 190.3, factor (k). (See Lockett v. Ohio (1978) 438 U.S. 586, 604, 98 S.Ct. 2954, 57 L.Ed.2d 973 [the sentencer ... [may] not be precluded from considering, as a mitigating factor, any aspect of a defendant's character or record and any of the circumstances of the offense that the defendant proffers as a basis for a sentence less than death (original italics, fns. omitted) ]; People v. Williams (1997) 16 Cal.4th 153, 280-281, 66 Cal.Rptr.2d 123, 940 P.2d 710 [when instructing on section 190.3, factor (k), the court should inform the jury that it may consider in mitigation any other aspect of the defendant's character or record].) Noting that the jury may consider sympathy for the victim's family as aggravating evidence ( Payne v. Tennessee (1991) 501 U.S. 808, 827, 111 S.Ct. 2597, 115 L.Ed.2d 720; People v. Edwards, supra, 54 Cal.3d at p. 835, 1 Cal.Rptr.2d 696, 819 P.2d 436), defendant maintains that sympathy for the defendant's family is relevant as well and should be considered as mitigating evidence. Defendant contends that the prosecutor's comments essentially directed the jury to ignore the testimony of defendant's siblings regarding the difficult circumstances of their childhood, which were relevant to defendant's character and record as well. [18] We recently held that sympathy for a defendant's family is not a matter that a capital jury can consider in mitigation, but that family members may offer testimony of the impact of an execution on them if by so doing they illuminate some positive quality of the defendant's background or character. ( People v. Ochoa (1998) 19 Cal.4th 353, 456, 79 Cal.Rptr.2d 408, 966 P.2d 442.) We explained in Ochoa that when considering mitigating evidence in determining the penalty, the relevant factor is a defendant's background and character  not the distress of his or her family. A defendant may offer evidence that he or she is loved by family members or others, and that these individuals want him or her to live. But this evidence is relevant because it constitutes indirect evidence of the defendant's character. ( Ibid. ) Thus, we determined that the trial court did not err in refusing the defendant's requested instruction that would have invited the jury to consider in mitigation sympathy for the defendant's family. Such an instruction impermissibly would have allowed the jurors to return a verdict of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole solely because they wished to spare the defendant's family the emotional distress of an execution. Therefore, the prosecutor's argument in the present case properly directed the jury not to consider sympathy for defendant's family as mitigating evidence. His comments did not preclude the jury from considering the testimony of defendant's family to the extent it might have been relevant to sympathy for defendant. Indeed, the prosecutor expressly told the jurors that the law required them to weigh sympathy for defendant in making their penalty determination. Contrary to defendant's assertion, the prosecutor's argument did not have the effect of inviting the jury to disregard all the testimony of defendant's family that was related to mitigating evidence of defendant's background. We find no prosecutorial misconduct and no constitutional violation.