Opinion ID: 2584893
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: Assertedly Improper Closing Argument

Text: Defendant raises a number of challenges to portions of the prosecutor's closing arguments as constituting misconduct. [38] First, he contends the prosecutor improperly argued that defendant's general background and personal history could be considered evidence in aggravation. In discussing mitigating evidence under the catchall provision of section 190.3, factor (k), the prosecutor argued that if the jury determined that items of mitigating evidence make up for [defendant's] past life, and is a reason to spare him the death penalty, you're free to accept that position. After the defense objected, [39] the trial court advised the prosecutor that the reference to making up for defendant's past was potentially misleading, because only specific areas of defendant's past conduct could be considered in aggravation (that is, the circumstances of the crimes of conviction and his prior violent criminal conduct and felony convictions). The prosecutor then clarified for the jury that only those three aspects of defendant's past could be considered as evidence in aggravation and that any other aspects of defendant's life history could be considered by the jury only as mitigating evidence. There was no misconduct: the prosecutor used somewhat imprecise language about defendant's past in the earlier statements and then properly clarified his intended meaning when the error was called to his attention. Moreover, due to the clarification, there is no reasonable possibility the jury misconstrued the remarks. (16) Defendant next challenges the prosecutor's argument that the jury could consider the scope of the investigation of Bowie's murder as evidence in aggravation. The prosecutor mentioned the large scale search operations, the delay in identifying the murderer due to defendant's flight, the difficulty in identifying Bowie's remains after they were discovered, and the many law enforcement agencies that had been involved with the case, summarizing this evidence as showing the present case was extraordinary compared to a typical murder investigation. Defendant later objected to this argument on the ground that the manner in which the investigation of a murder progresses does not reflect on the defendant's culpability or the severity or gravity of the crime. On appeal, defendant also argues that the prosecutor's statement was improper because it was not based upon the evidence adduced at trial, as there was no testimony concerning what a typical murder investigation entails. This latter ground has been forfeited because it was not raised below. In any event, there was no misconduct in the prosecutor's making these observations. Although the prosecutor did not fully explain the relevance of the difficulties law enforcement officers faced in solving Bowie's murder, as we previously have recognized, law enforcement activities in investigating a murder and attempting to apprehend the suspect may be relevant evidence under section 190.3, factor (a), to the extent that this evidence gives rise to reasonable inferences concerning the circumstances of the crime and defendant's culpability. (See People v. Edwards (1991) 54 Cal.3d 787, 831-832 [1 Cal.Rptr.2d 696, 819 P.2d 436] [evidence of extensive manhunt after the murder that failed to apprehend the defendant was relevant to demonstrate defendant's planning and lack of remorse].) The prosecutor's argument in the present case reasonably could be construed as proper comment on defendant's choice to murder Bowie in a secluded location, where the murder likely would not be observed and discovery of her body likely would be delayed, and on his flight after the crime as evidence of planning and lack of remorse. The prosecutor's reference to a typical investigation did not appear to refer to anything more than a commonsense comparison that would be within the jurors' common knowledge, but even if this constituted an improper allusion to evidence outside the record, we discern no possibility of prejudice. Defendant contends next that the prosecutor committed misconduct when he told the jury that pursuant to section 190.3, factor (a), the [c]ircumstance of the crime you can consider as an aggravating factor, that is, the defendant was convicted and sits before you convicted of murder in the first degree, armed robbery, and violations of 211 of the Penal Code, auto theft in violation of VC 10851, with a special circumstance of murder committed during the course of a robbery found true. Defendant argues that this comment invited the jury to view the simple fact that defendant was convicted as an aggravating factor. This is not the objection he raised in the trial court, however. There, defendant argued (without much clarity) that the prosecutor's comment constituted improper dual use of an aggravating factor, specifically citing our decision on that subject in People v. Clark, supra, 3 Cal.4th 41, 168, where the prosecutor improperly urged the jury to consider the current offenses under section 190.3, factor (b). Defendant, therefore, has forfeited the particular claim he now raises on appeal. In any event, no misconduct appears. As to the trial objection, the prosecutor did not argue that the instant offenses could also be considered under factor (b); he, in fact, explicitly informed the jury that it could not make dual use of the circumstances of the instant crimes. As to the appellate claim, initially, we point out the statute provides that the jury shall take into account . . . [¶] . . . the existence of any special circumstances found to be true. (§ 190.3, factor (a).) Moreover, as the prosecutor's next remark made clear, the reference to the circumstances of the crime concerned the evidence that led to defendant's conviction, not simply the fact of conviction: So you can certainly take into consideration, and I'm not going to relitigate the first [phase] for you, but I am going to ask you that when you do deliberate you think back on the evidence and don't forget that evidence that we had in that [phase]. There was nothing improper about the prosecutor's remarks. (17) Defendant next contends that three portions of the prosecutor's arguments improperly attempted to exploit the jury's emotions regarding a general fear of crime or sympathy for the victim's family. First, in arguing to the jury what weight it should give to Diana Bowie's testimony about the victim's background, the prosecutor argued that the circumstances of the crime were aggravating because this murder was unlike, for example, one occurring between drug dealers during a robbery, due to the fact that Jamie Bowie was an innocent bystander who was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. The prosecutor went on to state, Could be any of us, could be any of our children, it could be anybody that we know that doesn't deserve it. [¶] Scary. [¶] It's really scary what happens out there on our highways. And it's even more scary because we know we got a predator sitting right here in the courtroom with us. It is time that we take control of the situation and do what is right. Defendant argues that these comments urge[d] the jury to personalize the killing and also, in effect, send a message to others. He raised no objection at trial to the prosecutor's statements and therefore has forfeited this challenge. Even had this claim been preserved, it is without merit because the randomness of the crime was a relevant consideration, and the prosecutor's comments, even to the extent that they referred to generalized fears aroused by random violence, were not unduly inflammatory. ( People v. Sanders (1995) 11 Cal.4th 475, 551 [46 Cal.Rptr.2d 751, 905 P.2d 420] [`at the penalty phase . . . considerable leeway is given for emotional appeal so long as it relates to relevant considerations'].) Second, in describing Diana Bowie's reason for testifying, the prosecutor told the jury that she had decided to testify because, in her words, `The person that murdered Jamie had killed before and would kill again and I couldn't let this happen to someone else's child.' The prosecutor continued, Ladies and gentlemen, I encourage you to tell Mrs. Bowie, `You're right. We thank you, Mrs. Bowie, and we're going to back it up, too. We're not going to allow this to happen again, and we will pursue it, and we will pursue it to the very end.' Defendant contends on appeal that couching an argument regarding defendant's future dangerousness in the context of the victim's mother's fears was improper. Defendant did not object to these comments, and accordingly has forfeited his appellate challenge to them. In any event, as with the previous claim, there was no misconduct because the argument concerning future dangerousness, while perhaps appealing to the emotions of the jury, was relevant and not unduly inflammatory. Third, in discussing the possibly mitigating effect of defendant's personal history, the prosecutor acknowledged defendant's [r]ough, rough rearing, but argued, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Unfortunately, that doesn't do anything to help Mrs. Bowie. [¶] I'm sure that that is not much consolation or sola[ce] for Mrs. Bowie when she goes out and visits her daughter at the grave site. `Jamie, he led a deprived childhood.' Defendant later objected to the comments about helping Mrs. Bowie on the ground that it invited the jury to impose the death penalty in order to make the victim's family feel better. On appeal, defendant refines that argument somewhat, contending that the prosecutor's argument told the jury, through a purely emotional appeal, that it could consider sympathy for the victim's family as an aggravating factor. Assuming this modified claim was preserved, we conclude it is without merit. Although phrased in an emotional manner, the prosecutor's comments permissibly contrasted the potential mitigating effect of defendant's past against the significant impact the murder had on Bowie's family. As the prosecutor pointed out in his following remark, Lots of people lead deprived childhoods and they don't resort to these kinds of activities. The argument invoked the impact of the murder on the Bowie family, a relevant factor in the penalty determination, and was not an unduly inflammatory appeal to the jury's emotions. Finally, defendant challenges the prosecutor's use during argument of a chart containing enlarged copies of 12 handwritten responses from jury questionnaires, in which then prospective jurors, some of whom were later seated on the jury, stated their views regarding the purpose served by the death penalty. Defendant objectedbefore arguments beganto use of the chart on essentially four grounds: (1) it constituted part of an improper argument to the jury concerning the general societal purposes for the death penalty, not argument specifically directed to the circumstances of defendant's case; (2) the chart improperly encouraged the jurors to place undue weight on their pretrial statements, rather than their view of the appropriateness of the death penalty after having heard the evidence presented at trial; (3) the chart's individual quotes improperly directed the argument to the juror who wrote that particular quote, rather than to the jury as a whole; and (4) use of the chart was cumulative, unnecessary and extremely prejudicial. The trial court overruled the objection and allowed the prosecutor to use the chart with two limitations: (1) before discussing the contents of the chart, the prosecutor was to remind the jury that it is not helpful for the jurors to enter deliberations with preconceived notions about what verdict they should reach; and (2) the prosecutor would not identify during the argument who on the jury gave the responses included on the chart. On appeal, defendant, citing our decision in People v. Gurule (2002) 28 Cal.4th 557, 657 [123 Cal.Rptr.2d 345, 51 P.3d 224] ( Gurule ), contends that the prosecutor's use of the chart was misconduct because it constituted an argument based upon facts not in evidence: namely, the jurors' questionnaire responses. Defendant did not object at trial to the use of the chart on this specific ground and therefore has forfeited such a claim on appeal. ( People v. Seaton (2001) 26 Cal.4th 598, 679-680 [110 Cal.Rptr.2d 441, 28 P.3d 175]; People v. Medina (1995) 11 Cal.4th 694, 744-745 [47 Cal.Rptr.2d 165, 906 P.2d 2].) Moreover, defendant has not renewed on appeal the particular objections to the chart he did raise in the trial court, thus forfeiting those claims as well. Nonetheless, even if defendant had not forfeited the various challenges he raised both on appeal and at trial, we would conclude that no reversible error occurred. [40] Initially, we must observe that the prosecutor did not explicitly make an argument that was based upon facts not in evidence at the trial. Unlike in Gurule, the prosecutor never directly referred to voir dire or the fact that the chart consisted of responses taken from the jury questionnaires. (Cf. Gurule, supra, 28 Cal.4th at p. 657 [the prosecutor asked the jury to reflect back to their responses on voir dire when they assured the court they could vote to impose the death penalty if the aggravating factors outweighed the mitigating ones].) Thus, at least on the surface, the prosecutor's use of the chart and reading its contents aloud appears more akin to the reading of a quotation from a book or other source, which is generally a permissible tactic during argument to the jury. (See, e.g., Vieira, supra, 35 Cal.4th at p. 298 [quotation from Lord Denning]; People v. Hines (1997) 15 Cal.4th 997, 1063 [64 Cal.Rptr.2d 594, 938 P.2d 388] [passage from unidentified book].) Similarly, in a strict sense, the prosecutor's use of the chart did not run afoul of our decision in People v. Freeman (1994) 8 Cal.4th 450 [34 Cal.Rptr.2d 558, 882 P.2d 249] ( Freeman ), in which we concluded it was improper for a prosecutor during argument to quote a juror's voir dire responses and identify the juror as the source of the statement. ( Id. at p. 517 [after reading a quote to the jury, the prosecutor then announced that the quote was not from an attorney or a judge, but from one of the `prospective members of the panel' during the individual death-qualifying voir dire; this prospective juror was actually a sitting juror].) The prosecutor here, as directed by the trial court, never explicitly told the jury that any of the answers in the chart were provided by any of the jurors. Of course, the quotes at issue in the present case were not merely the words of an author or jurist, but were, in fact, the statements of some of the very jurors seated in the jury box. Moreover, the jurors' answers were presented in their own handwriting, enlarged and set out for all to see. Thus, the implications behind the use of the chart were quite different from merely presenting a quote from some person unrelated to the actual trial at hand. That the chart offered facts not in evidence (some of the jurors' answers to the juror questionnaire) and quoted individual jurors in the argument to the entire jury would have been obvious, at a minimum, to those jurors whose answers were included in the chart. Accordingly, the use of the chart was improper under our decisions in Gurule and Freeman. The prosecutor's use of the chart also could have created in the jurors' minds two more subtle implications that would have been improper. First, use of the jurors' own answers in their own handwriting possibly implied that if those jurors did not vote for the death penalty in defendant's case, they would be acting inconsistently with what they had writtenunder penalty of perjuryin their questionnaires. As we stated in People v. Wash (1993) 6 Cal.4th 215, 261 [24 Cal.Rptr.2d 421, 861 P.2d 1107], regarding the use of religious authority in argument to the jury, [t]he primary vice in referring to the Bible and other religious authority is that such argument may `diminish the jury's sense of responsibility for its verdict and . . . imply that another, higher law should be applied in capital cases, displacing the law in the court's instructions.' [Citations.] Here, the chart arguably might have, in a similar manner, pressured the jurors to conform their verdict not to biblical strictures, but to their earlier answers concerning the purposes served by the death penalty. Second, because there were exactly 12 responses included in the chart, a juror who saw his or her own answer could have assumed that the remaining answers were those of the other jurors, and that the jury, therefore, was already unanimous regarding the efficacy of the death penalty. Such an assumption would have been akin to the jurors' having improperly discussed the case during the trial, before it had been submitted to them. In addition, an implication of preexisting unanimity based on the chart would have been misleading because all of the answers in the chart were not, in fact, from the 12 seated jurors. [41] For these reasons, the use of the chart was improper. Nonetheless, this impropriety was harmless under any standard. (See Gurule, supra, 28 Cal.4th at p. 657; Freeman, supra, 8 Cal.4th at p. 518.) The substance of the chart and the prosecutor's accompanying argument concerning justifications for the death penalty and the appropriateness of that sanction in the present case had some legitimate, probative value. (See People v. Zambrano, supra, 41 Cal.4th at p. 1179 [it was not misconduct for prosecutor 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].) The statements contained in the chart were not particularly inflammatory, but were essentially lay iterations of the legitimate purposes of deterrence, incapacitation and retribution. As the trial court directed, the prosecutor prefaced this portion of the argument with a reminder to the jurors that they should not begin deliberations with preconceived notions regarding the appropriate verdict, and, further, that what you may have thought one day may change over the next day but we hope that whatever decisions you make are based on the evidence, the evidence that you've seen and heard throughout this trial. The trial court also later gave instructions to the jury, pursuant to CALJIC Nos. 17.40 and 17.41, reminding the jurors that during their deliberations they should not hesitate to change an opinion if you are convinced it is wrong, nor begin deliberations with an emphatic opinion or a determination to stand for a certain verdict. Moreover, as also directed by the trial court, the prosecutor's argument was framed as a general discussion of the purposes and appropriateness of the death penalty, using the statements in the chart to highlight these issues, and did not explicitly identify any particular answer as the previously expressed view of any particular juror, although, as noted, we acknowledge this circumstance would have been obvious to at least some of the jurors. Nonetheless, the prosecutor could have made a similar and proper argument without using a chart or the juror questionnaires. In addition, the prosecutor's argument, while potentially highlighting the agreement of some of the jurors with the general justifications for the death penalty, still properly left it for the jury to decide whether those purposes would be appropriately served by the imposition of the death penalty in defendant's case. That several of the jurors were presented with their own handwritten answers in conjunction with this otherwise permissible argument was not likely to have diminished any of the jurors' sense of responsibility, displaced the court's instructions regarding the jurors' duty to enter deliberations with open minds, or otherwise influenced the verdict.