Opinion ID: 2829984
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Trial Court Comments During Pretrial Voir Dire

Text: At the penalty phase trial, the jury was instructed pursuant to CALJIC No. 8.88 as follows: ―It is now your duty to determine which of the two penalties, death or imprisonment in the state prison for life without possibility of parole, shall be imposed on the defendant. ―After having heard all of the evidence, and after having heard and considered the arguments of counsel, you shall consider, take into account and be guided by the applicable factors of aggravating and mitigating circumstances upon which you have been instructed. ―An aggravating factor is any fact, condition or event attending the commission of a crime which increases its guilt or enormity, or adds to its 15 That instruction read as follows: ―In deciding the appropriate penalty for the defendant, you should consider the character and record of the individual offender on trial before you and the circumstances of his particular charged offenses. The sentences of the accomplices [are] not a factor in mitigation and it has no bearing on the defendant‘s character or record and it is not a circumstance of the offense. Therefore, the sentences of the accomplices should not be considered in your determination of the appropriate penalty for the defendant in this case.‖ 74 injurious consequences which is above and beyond the elements of the crime itself. ―A mitigating circumstance is any fact, condition or event which does not constitute a justification or excuse for the crime in question, but may be considered as an extenuating circumstance in determining the appropriateness of the death penalty. ―The weighing of aggravating and mitigating circumstances does not mean a mere mechanical counting of factors on each side of an imaginary scale, or the arbitrary assignment of weights to any of them. You are free to assign whatever moral or sympathetic value you deem appropriate to each and all of the various factors you are permitted to consider. ―In weighing the various circumstances you determine under the relevant evidence which penalty is justified and appropriate by considering the totality of the aggravating circumstances with the totality of the mitigating circumstances. To return a judgment of death, each of you must be persuaded that the aggravating circumstances are so substantial in comparison with the mitigating circumstances that it warrants death instead of life without parole.‖ (Italics added.) Capital defendants often argue the italicized sentence in this standard instruction, especially the phrase ―so substantial,‖ is impermissibly vague and ambiguous, but we have rejected the claim. (See, e.g., People v. Jones, supra, 57 Cal.4th at p. 980.) Defendant admits the instructional language ―is neither unclear nor ambiguous,‖ but complains that during pretrial voir dire proceedings, the trial court injected ambiguity into the trial by commenting to the prospective jurors that the phrase ―so substantial‖ in CALJIC No. 8.88 was ―fairly ambiguous.‖ Thus, for example, the trial court informed a panel of venirepersons: ―The key phrase in that instruction is: ‗are so substantial.‘ And that is a fairly ambiguous phrase. And the law intends it to be such because the law recognizes that you will be 75 engaging in the moral weighing process when you weigh that type of evidence.‖ (Italics added.) The court repeated this comment several times before different panels of venirepersons. At the outset, we conclude the issue was not preserved for appeal by a timely and specific objection to the trial court‘s comments. (People v. Monterroso (2004) 34 Cal.4th 743, 759 [claim of judicial error based on a judge‘s comments during voir dire proceedings is forfeited by failure to object].) Although defendant relies on section 1259 to excuse his failure to object, the argument cannot be sustained. That statute permits a defendant to raise on appeal a claim challenging ―any instruction . . . even though no objection was made thereto in the lower court, if the substantial rights of the defendant were affected thereby.‖ Defendant is not, however, challenging the correctness of a jury instruction; indeed, he asserts that he is ―defending CALJIC No. 8.88‘s formulation of the ‗so-substantial‘ standard against the trial court‘s misleading and erroneous ‗amplification‘ of it.‖ As is clear, his claim is one of judicial error, not misinstruction of the jury, and that claim is subject to the requirement that a defendant make a timely and specific objection in order to preserve the issue for appeal. Were we nevertheless to overlook such forfeiture and address the merits of the claim, we would find no error. As we explained in another case in which the trial court made some nonstandard comments to the venirepersons during jury selection: ―The trial court . . . was not instructing the jury at the time it made the comments in question. Indeed it was conducting voir dire of prospective jurors. Its ‗comments ―were not intended to be, and were not, a substitute for full instructions at the end of trial.‖ ‘ [Citation.] ‗ ―The purpose of these comments was to give prospective jurors, most of whom had little or no familiarity with courts in general and penalty phase death penalty trials in particular, a general idea of the nature of the proceeding.‖ ‘ [Citation.] In the context of voir dire, the trial 76 court‘s comments in this case were proper.‖ (People v. Romero (2008) 44 Cal.4th 386, 423.)16 Finally, any error was harmless. ―[A]s a general matter, it is unlikely that errors or misconduct occurring during voir dire questioning will unduly influence the jury‘s verdict in the case. Any such errors or misconduct ‗prior to the presentation of argument or evidence, obviously reach the jury panel at a much less critical phase of the proceedings, before its attention has even begun to focus upon the penalty issue confronting it.‘ ‖ (People v. Medina, supra, 11 Cal.4th at p. 741 [addressing the prosecutor‘s comments during voir dire].) This is especially true because the trial court, when informing the venirepersons that the ―so substantial‖ phrase was ambiguous, also told them it was speaking informally, and that if chosen to serve, the jurors would be given formal instructions at the 16 To the extent defendant claims ―the obfuscation of the so-substantial standard by the trial court‘s comments was exacerbated here also by the trial court‘s use of ‗good‘ and ‗bad‘ as synonyms for mitigation and aggravation,‖ this claim too was forfeited by the failure to object. In any event, this court has itself endorsed such comments as substantially correct so long as the jury is also informed that it is making a moral choice and not just a mechanical one. (See People v. Edwards (1991) 54 Cal.3d 787, 841 [―This court in the past has used the terms ‗good‘ and ‗bad‘ evidence as shorthand for mitigating and aggravating evidence.‖].) The jury in this case was so informed. We also reject, as forfeited and without merit, defendant‘s further claim that the prosecutor‘s closing argument exacerbated the trial court‘s pretrial comments characterizing the ―so substantial‖ phrase as ―fairly ambiguous.‖ The prosecutor vigorously argued the jury should reject an anticipated plea from the defense to show defendant mercy, compassion and sympathy in light of the many times defendant victimized people over the years, ending her argument by asking: ―Isn‘t that morally perverted to ask for leniency for somebody like that?‖ Defendant did not object to this line of argument, thereby forfeiting the claim, but in any event we would reject as both exaggerated and unpersuasive the claim that ―in a case in which the so-substantial standard has been severely distorted, [the prosecutor‘s] argument would tend both to reflect the [judicial] error and then refract it back only to increase the risk of misunderstanding and misapplication.‖ 77 close of evidence. Because the penalty phase jury was later properly instructed with the standard penalty phase instructions, we find that even if error occurred, it was not reasonably possible it affected the penalty verdict. (People v. Abilez, supra, 41 Cal.4th at pp. 525–526.) Finally, defendant‘s attempt to inflate the trial court‘s pretrial comments into judicial error that both violated his federal constitutional rights and is reversible per se as structural error (see Sullivan v. Louisiana (1993) 508 US. 275, 279–280 [erroneous reasonable doubt instruction requires reversal]) is baseless. As noted, the jury was properly instructed at the penalty phase and the court‘s comments during the pretrial phase could not reasonably have undermined the efficacy of those instructions.