Opinion ID: 1237936
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 49

Heading: Challenges to Death Penalty Law and Denial of Modification Motion

Text: To preserve issues for collateral review in federal courts, defendant challenges our death penalty law on various grounds under the Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the federal Constitution. He concedes this court has previously rejected each of these challenges. Thus, we have held that the jury may consider, as a circumstance in aggravation at the penalty phase, evidence of the defendant's prior unadjudicated criminal activity. ( People v. Medina, supra, 51 Cal.3d 870, 906-907, and cases cited.) The prosecution may rely on evidence of prior unadjudicated criminal activity even though prosecution for those acts would be barred by the statute of limitations. ( People v. Robertson, supra, 48 Cal.3d 18, 42-44.) The jury need not employ the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard in determining whether or not aggravating circumstances other than violent criminal conduct (see People v. Caro (1988) 46 Cal.3d 1035, 1057 [251 Cal. Rptr. 757, 761 P.2d 680]) are present or whether death is the appropriate penalty. ( People v. Bell, supra, 49 Cal.3d 502, 553; People v. Williams, supra, 45 Cal.3d 1268, 1322.) The jury is not required to make written findings or to agree unanimously on the presence of individual aggravating circumstances. ( People v. Duncan (1991) 53 Cal.3d 955, 979 [281 Cal. Rptr. 273, 810 P.2d 131].) The trial court need not clarify the standard jury instruction (CALJIC No. 8.84.1) to explain that the circumstances of the crime in the present proceeding (§ 190.3, factor (a)) and criminal activity involving violence (§ 190.3, factor (b)) are mutually exclusive factors. ( People v. Duncan, supra, at p. 979.) The jury may use defendant's commission of a felony to elevate a killing to first degree murder, to find a special circumstance, and as a factor in aggravation. ( Id. at p. 980.) He provides no persuasive reason to reconsider these holdings. (130) Defendant also urges us to set aside the trial court's ruling denying defendant's automatic motion to modify the penalty verdict (§ 190.4, subd. (e)) because the court considered various documents revealed at hearings during the trial, a presentence report, and a statement by the mother of murder victim Elizabeth Hickey. We disagree. The record shows that the victim's mother made her statement after the court had denied the modification motion; that statement could not have influenced the trial court's ruling. Although the court was exposed during the course of trial to documents and testimony that were ultimately not received in evidence, the record does not rebut the presumption that the court understood and fulfilled its obligation to decide the modification motion solely on the basis of the evidence presented to the jury. The court mentioned, before it denied the modification motion, that it had considered the presentence report, but it did not allude to the report or its contents, or to anything not presented to the jury, during the detailed explanation it gave for denying the modification motion. Under these circumstances, we presume that the court considered the presentence report only for the purpose of sentencing on the noncapital offenses, and that it did not influence the court's decision to deny the modification motion. ( People v. Lang, supra, 49 Cal.3d 991, 1044.)