Opinion ID: 1249738
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Effect of Reversal of the Patch Conviction.

Text: (40) Defendant contends that if we reverse his conviction of the murder of Officer Patch and invalidate the accompanying multiple-murder special circumstance, we must remand his case for a new penalty trial. The question is close, but we disagree. We have determined that defendant's conviction for the murder of Patch must be reversed for instructional error, and that the accompanying multiple-murder special circumstance must be invalidated. The question thus is whether there is a reasonable possibility the jury would have recommended a sentence of life imprisonment without possibility of parole for Gardner's murder alone. (See People v. Brown (1988) 46 Cal.3d 432, 448 [250 Cal. Rptr. 604, 758 P.2d 1135].) After careful consideration we conclude there is no reasonable possibility that the jury would have recommended the lesser sentence. First and most significant, the jury recommended a sentence of death for the murder of Gardner and the violation of section 4500, but of life imprisonment for the murder of Patch. It is clear that the jury attached greater moral significance to defendant's murder of Gardner than it did to the subsequent death of Patch. Defendant's acts were the direct cause of that murder; his liability for that killing is unaffected by our discussion of proximate cause. Second, the instruction required the jury, in fixing the penalty for the murder of Gardner, to take into account all of the evidence ... received during any part of the trial of this case[,] including The circumstances of the crime ... and the existence of any special circumstances found to be true. Thus in evaluating defendant's moral culpability for the killing of Gardner, the jury was to take into account the evidence that Patch also was killed as a result of the melee. Although the jury would not have been able to take into account the multiple-murder special circumstance, we find that difference to be relatively minor in light of the other special circumstances found true. The jury would have had before it the special circumstances of lying in wait and of a previous conviction of first degree murder  the offense for which defendant was in prison when he killed Gardner. While we are reluctant to ascribe too much emphasis to the lying-in-wait special circumstance, we do not believe it is reasonably possible that the jury would have decided to vote for life imprisonment without possibility of parole absent defendant's conviction for Patch's murder. The jury would still have been faced, at the penalty phase, with a defendant who had personally killed another inmate, whose acts in concert with those of Menefield had led to the death of a prison guard, and who was already serving time for the killing of a high school security guard. For defendant's sentence to be reversed there must be a reasonable possibility  not just any possibility  that the outcome would have been more favorable to him. We see no such reasonable possibility, and therefore decline to reverse the penalty judgment on this ground.