Opinion ID: 1386274
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Failure to Give a Collins Instruction

Text: (56) Defendant contends that the trial court erred by failing to instruct the jury sua sponte in accordance with People v. Collins (1976) 17 Cal.3d 687 [131 Cal. Rptr. 782, 552 P.2d 742]. Recall that in the midst of the penalty phase, before deliberations had commenced, the court had discharged a juror at the juror's request and replaced him with an alternate. In Collins, we construe[d] [Penal Code] section 1089 to provide that the court instruct the jury to set aside and disregard all past deliberations and begin deliberating anew. (17 Cal.3d at p. 694.) We declared that in support of such an instruction, the court should ... further advise[ ] the jury that one of its members has been discharged and replaced with an alternate juror as provided by law; that the law grants to the People and to the defendant the right to a verdict reached only after full participation of the 12 jurors who ultimately return a verdict; that this right may only be assured if the jury begins deliberations again from the beginning; and that each remaining original juror must set aside and disregard the earlier deliberations as if they had not been had. ( Ibid. ) The trial court's failure to give a Collins instruction sua sponte was not error. California law does not demand such an instruction under the circumstances here. Collins requires the trial court to instruct the jurors to begin deliberation anew if substitution becomes necessary after the jury has begun its deliberations. [Citation.] Here, the alternate juror joined the panel of jurors ... before the penalty phase deliberations began. ( People v. Brown, supra, 46 Cal.3d at p. 461; accord, People v. Wright, supra, 52 Cal.3d at p. 420.) Neither does the United States Constitution demand such an instruction in the present situation. Certainly  contrary to defendant's assertion  the Sixth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments have nothing significant to say about a Collins -like instruction in a case of this sort.