Opinion ID: 844288
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: General Challenges to the Constitutionality of California's Death Penalty Law

Text: Defendant contends that [m]any features of this state's capital sentencing scheme, alone or in combination with each other, violate the United States Constitution. He concedes we have rejected these claims in previous decisions, but argues we should reconsider them. Having found no reason to do so, we reject these claims and list them here to ensure a future court will consider them fully exhausted. Accordingly, we conclude the death penalty law is not unconstitutional:  In assertedly failing to `genuinely narrow the class of persons eligible for the death penalty' generally, or more specifically because the special circumstances are so numerous or so broad ( People v. Abilez, supra, 41 Cal.4th at p. 533);  Due to the asserted overbreadth of section 190.3, factor (a), which permits the jury to consider the circumstances of the crime as an aggravating factor ( People v. Abilez, supra, 41 Cal.4th at p. 533);  In failing to require the jury to find the aggravating factors were proved beyond a reasonable doubt, that the aggravating factors outweighed the mitigating factors beyond a reasonable doubt, or that death is the appropriate penalty beyond a reasonable doubt ( People v. Abilez, supra, 41 Cal.4th at p. 533), nor is this conclusion called into question by the United States Supreme Court's decisions in Apprendi v. New Jersey (2000) 530 U.S. 466 [147 L.Ed.2d 435, 120 S.Ct. 2348] and Ring v. Arizona (2002) 536 U.S. 584 [153 L.Ed.2d 556, 122 S.Ct. 2428] ( People v. Mills, supra, 48 Cal.4th at p. 214; see also Cunningham v. California (2007) 549 U.S. 270 [166 L.Ed.2d 856, 127 S.Ct. 856]);  In failing to require jury unanimity with respect to aggravating factors ( People v. Abilez, supra, 41 Cal.4th at p. 533);  In failing to impose a burden of proof on either party, even if only proof by a preponderance of the evidence, or, alternatively, in failing to instruct the jury on the absence of a burden of proof ( People v. Cowan, supra, 50 Cal.4th at p. 509; People v. Abilez, supra, 41 Cal.4th at p. 533);  In failing to require the jury to return written findings ( People v. Abilez, supra, 41 Cal.4th at p. 533);  In failing to require intercase proportionality review ( People v. Abilez, supra, 41 Cal.4th at p. 534);  In failing to specify which factors are aggravating and which are mitigating ( People v. Abilez, supra, 41 Cal.4th at p. 534);  In prefacing several factors with the phrase `whether or not' ( People v. Abilez, supra, 41 Cal.4th at p. 534);  In treating noncapital sentencing differently from capital sentencing ( People v. Lewis and Oliver, supra, 39 Cal.4th at p. 1067 [`The statutory scheme does not deny capital defendants the equal protection of the laws or any other constitutional right insofar as it does not contain disparate sentence review (i.e., comparative or intercase proportionality review)']; People v. Manriquez (2005) 37 Cal.4th 547, 590 [36 Cal.Rptr. 3d 340, 123 P.3d 614] [`capital and noncapital defendants are not similarly situated and therefore may be treated differently without violating constitutional guarantees of equal protection of the laws or due process of law']) ( People v. Abilez, supra, 41 Cal.4th at pp. 534-535);  In failing to comply with `International Norms of Humanity and Decency' ( People v. Abilez, supra, 41 Cal.4th at p. 535); and  In light of the abolition of capital punishment in Western Europe ( People v. Abilez, supra, 41 Cal.4th at p. 535).