Opinion ID: 1225502
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Error in Instructions Regarding Aggravating and Mitigating Circumstances

Text: (20) Meeting with the prosecutor and trial judge to discuss penalty phase jury instructions, defendant's attorneys sought an instruction to the effect that in selecting a penalty, the jury could consider factors (d) (offense committed under extreme mental or emotional disturbance), (e) (victim was coparticipant or consented to homicidal act), (f) (moral justification or extenuation for defendant's act), (g) (extreme duress or domination by another), and (h) (capacity impaired by mental defect or disease, or intoxication) of the sentencing statute  section 190.3  only as factors in mitigation. Counsel also asked for a related instruction that the jury was not to regard the absence of a particular mitigating factor as an aggravating factor. The trial court declined to give the jury the instructions sought by the defense. Instead, it read to the jurors the instructions set forth in CALJIC No. 8.85. Because it failed to explain to the penalty jury which of the enumerated statutory factors were aggravating and which were mitigating, the section 190.3-based instruction actually given by the trial court was error, defendant argues, for it allowed the jury complete discretion to decide whether and for what reason [defendant] should be put to death, since it left them without meaningful and principled guidance. That omission, defendant concludes, rendered the state's capital sentencing scheme arbitrary, capricious and vague. As we understand defendant's argument, it rests on a misunderstanding of what might be described as the architecture of California's death penalty scheme. Contemporary American capital jurisprudence commonly divides the death penalty process into bifurcated phases, often referred to as the eligibility or guilt phase and the selection or penalty phase. (See, e.g., Tuilaepa v. California (1994) 512 U.S. 967, 971-972 [114 S.Ct. 2630, 2634-2635, 129 L.Ed.2d 750, 759]; People v. Bacigalupo (1993) 6 Cal.4th 457, 470-477 [24 Cal. Rptr.2d 808, 862 P.2d 808]; Gregg v. Georgia (1976) 428 U.S. 153, 193 [96 S.Ct. 2909, 2394-2395, 49 L.Ed.2d 859]; Furman v. Georgia (1972) 408 U.S. 238 [92 S.Ct. 2726, 2743-2744, 33 L.Ed.2d 346].) Although it is constitutionally permissible for a state to provide for the death eligibility decision to be made at the penalty selection phase (as Mississippi and Texas, two so-called weighing states, appear to do), California's capital scheme allocates that narrowing function to the antecedent guilt phase. It is there that the jury decides whether a defendant charged with a capital crime is a death eligible murderer. The California capital scheme accomplishes this narrowing classification at the guilt phase through the jury's determination whether the charge of first degree murder and the qualifying special circumstance alleged by the People are, respectively, proven and true. If the jury so finds, the case proceeds to the penalty selection phase. But the office of that latter segment of a bifurcated capital trial has no role in the required narrowing or death-qualifying function mandated by the Eighth Amendment. That culling process has already occurred in the guilt phase with the jury's finding that the special circumstance alleged is true and the charge of first degree murder proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Or, as we explained in People v. Bacigalupo, supra, 6 Cal.4th 457, [t]he `narrowing' aspect of a state's death penalty law that defines the conduct that brings a defendant within the class of persons subject to the death penalty must, to comport with the Eighth Amendment, include `some narrowing principle' so as to limit the members of that class. [Citations.] But, when a capital punishment statute adequately narrows the class of death-eligible murderers, the Eighth Amendment does not require a further round of `narrowing' at the sentence selection stage. (6 Cal.4th at p. 475.) Partly for that reason, the focus of the penalty selection phase of a capital trial is more normative and less factual than the guilt phase. The penalty jury's principal task is the moral endeavor of deciding whether the death sentence should be imposed on a defendant who has already been determined to be death eligible as a result of the findings and verdict reached at the guilt phase. In such a penalty selection undertaking, the Eighth Amendment's strictures are less rigid, more open-ended than the narrowing function of the capital sentencing scheme that has already occurred. It is in light of this bifurcated schema and its differing objectives that defendant's claim under this rubric appears misplaced. The gist of defendant's argument  that the trial court's penalty phase instructions failed to guide the jury in reaching a penalty decision, allowing it complete discretion  is correct. But as this court and the United States Supreme Court have pointed out, with respect to the process of selecting from among that class those defendants who will actually be sentenced to death, [w]hat is important ... is an individualized determination on the basis of the character of the individual and the circumstances of the crime. ( Zant v. Stephens (1983) 462 U.S. 862, 879 [103 S.Ct. 2733, 2743-2744, 77 L.Ed.2d 235].) It is not a mechanical finding of facts that resolves the penalty decision, `but ... the jury's moral assessment of those facts as they reflect on whether defendant should be put to death....' ( People v. Brown (1985) 40 Cal.3d 512, 540 [220 Cal. Rptr. 637, 709 P.2d 440].) Indeed, the United States Supreme Court has said that even unbridled jury discretion at the penalty selection phase does not run afoul of the Eighth Amendment. In Zant v. Stephens, supra, 462 U.S. 862, the court, after noting the defendant's claim that the Eighth Amendment's mandate ... is violated by a scheme that permits the jury to exercise unbridled discretion in determining whether the death penalty should be imposed after it has found that the defendant is a member of the class made eligible for that penalty by statute said that such an argument could not be accepted without overruling our specific holding in Gregg. For the Court approved Georgia's capital sentencing statute even though it clearly did not channel the jury's discretion by enunciating specific standards to guide the jury's consideration of aggravating and mitigating circumstances. ( Id. at p. 875 [103 S.Ct. at p. 2742], fn. omitted; see also People v. Bacigalupo, supra, 6 Cal.4th at pp. 476-477 [It would be inconsistent with the purpose and function of the section 190.3 sentencing factors to require those factors to satisfy the Eighth Amendment.... [¶] ... Because they do not perform a `narrowing' function, they are not subject to the standard that the United States Supreme Court articulated in Godfrey v. Georgia [(1980)] 446 U.S. 420 [100 S.Ct. 1759, 64 L.Ed.2d 398], and in Maynard v. Cartwright [(1988)] 486 U.S. 356 [108 S.Ct. 1853, 100 L.Ed.2d 372].) Here, the penalty selection instructions based on section 190.3 read to the jury were both correct and adequate. As we said in People v. Sanders (1995) 11 Cal.4th 475 [46 Cal. Rptr.2d 751, 905 P.2d 420], `[T]he factors listed in ... section 190.3 properly require the jury to concentrate upon the circumstances surrounding both the offense and the offender, rather than upon extraneous factors having no rational bearing on the appropriateness of the penalty. We believe that the aggravating or mitigating nature of these various factors should be self-evident to any reasonable person within the context of each particular case.' ( Id. at p. 564, quoting People v. Zapien, supra, 4 Cal.4th at p. 990; see also People v. Bacigalupo, supra, 6 Cal.4th at p. 477.) The trial court, being under no obligation to instruct the jury that factors (d) through (h) of section 190.3 could only be considered in mitigation of sentence, did not err in declining to do so. Finally, other penalty instructions given by the trial court functionally satisfied defendant's claim that the jury should have been instructed that the absence of a factor in mitigation could not be considered as a factor in aggravation. The jurors were told that only factors (a), (b), and (c) of section 190.3 could be considered in aggravation of the sentence, the plain implication to any reasonable person of that instruction being that the other factors could not be so employed. And, if that were not sufficient, both counsel in their respective closing arguments advised the jurors that the absence of a mitigating factor could not be considered in aggravation. (E.g., [The prosecutor:] You are not to assume that because one factor is not applicable, that that's an aggravating factor. That would be incorrect. [Defense counsel:] [Y]ou're going to be instructed that there are only three kinds of information that can be considered as aggravating, only three. [¶] Those three basically are the facts and the circumstance of this particular offense involving the death of Norma Painter; the second basically is the record that he has in the past of other criminal felony convictions; the third is other violent conduct. [¶] ... [¶] [T]he law limits your consideration as to only those classes of conduct or events as aggravated, and then talks to you about the kinds of things that you can consider as mitigating. We conclude the trial court properly instructed the jury at the penalty phase of defendant's trial regarding its assessment of aggravating and mitigating factors.