Opinion ID: 2569354
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 51

Heading: Whether the trial court's definition of mitigating was error.

Text: Harlan objected to Sentencing Phase Instruction No. 12 defining mitigation as any abatement or diminution of a penalty imposed by law. According to Harlan, if death is the penalty imposed by law, then there must be a presumption that death is the appropriate sentence and there must be a burden on him to persuade the jury not to impose death. While the challenged instruction is not a model, we conclude that there is no reasonable likelihood that the jurors would have read it in a constitutionally improper way. See Boyde v. California, 494 U.S. 370, 380-81, 110 S.Ct. 1190, 108 L.Ed.2d 316 (1990); Rodriguez, 794 P.2d at 981. Read together with the other instructions in the penalty phase, which put the burden of persuasion in the first step on the prosecution, not the defendant, and did not impose a burden of persuasion on either party in the second through fourth steps, the court's definition of mitigation, if error, was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.