Opinion ID: 2570148
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Proposed Mitigation Instructions

Text: (16) Defendant challenges the court's refusal to instruct the jury that mitigating factors are not required to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. [25] However, we have held that [t]he jury need not be instructed that it does not have to find mitigating factors unanimously or beyond a reasonable doubt. ( People v. Zambrano, supra, 41 Cal.4th at p. 1186.) Defendant's arguments on this point are based on the decisions in Apprendi v. New Jersey, supra, 530 U.S. 466, and Ring v. Arizona (2002) 536 U.S. 584 [153 L.Ed.2d 556, 122 S.Ct. 2428]. We have repeatedly explained that these precedents do not apply to California's capital sentencing scheme. (E.g., People v. Abilez (2007) 41 Cal.4th 472, 535 [61 Cal.Rptr.3d 526, 161 P.3d 58]; People v. Prieto (2003) 30 Cal.4th 226, 262-263, 272 [133 Cal.Rptr.2d 18, 66 P.3d 1123].) Defendant also contends the court improperly rejected his proposed instruction that unlike the guilt phase of this trial, feelings of compassion, mercy, sympathy or pity for the defendant and his family are appropriate and such feelings may alone support a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. The court modified this instruction to state, Unlike the guilt phase of this trial, feelings of compassion, mercy, sympathy or pity for the defendant and his family may be considered by you in determining the appropriate penalty. The jury was also informed that a judgment of death . . . is never mandated. A juror may always exercise his or her discretion to select the penalty of life without the possibility of parole instead of the penalty of death. Defendant claims he was entitled to an instruction that sympathy or compassion alone could justify rejection of the death penalty. We have never held that such an instruction is required. (See People v. Hinton (2006) 37 Cal.4th 839, 911-912 [38 Cal.Rptr.3d 149, 126 P.3d 981]; People v. Taylor (1990) 52 Cal.3d 719, 745-746 [276 Cal.Rptr. 391, 801 P.2d 1142].) Here, in addition to the instructions quoted above, the jury was told that the weighing of aggravating and mitigating circumstances does not mean a mere mechanical counting of factors on each side of an imaginary scale and that you are free to assign whatever moral or sympathetic value you determine appropriate to each and all of the various factors. The instructions as a whole accurately informed the jury of the role that sympathy and compassion could play in its deliberations.