Opinion ID: 2320238
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: Instructions on Aggravating and Mitigating Circumstances

Text: Appellant next claims that the trial court failed to instruct the jury properly as to the nature and use of aggravating and mitigating circumstances. Specifically, according to Appellant, the trial court's description of those circumstances as `mak[ing] a first degree murder case either more terrible or less terrible' diverted the focus of the jury's life or death deliberation from a reasoned determination as to the defendant's personal culpability to an amorphous and unguided consideration of how `terrible' `the case' was. (Brief of Appellant at 40). The excerpt that serves as the basis for the instant claim reads as follows: The sentencing that you impose will depend on whether you find any of the things that the Pennsylvania Sentencing Code calls aggravating or mitigating circumstances. Aggravating circumstances are things about the killing and the killer which make a First Degree Murder case more terrible and deserving of the death penalty. Mitigating circumstances are those things that make the case less terrible and less deserving of death. ( Id. at 39-40 (quoting N.T., 5/19/95, at 905-906); see also id. at 40 (quoting N.T., 5/19/95, at 952 for a similar excerpt from the trial court's closing charge)). As we noted in discussing Appellant's other penalty phase instruction claim, our standard of review of penalty phase jury instructions is no different from that which guides us in reviewing a jury charge given during the guilt phase of a trial. In particular, we recall that [a] trial court has broad discretion in phrasing its instructions to the jury and can choose its own wording so long as the law is clearly, adequately and accurately presented to the jury for consideration. Commonwealth v. King, 554 Pa. 331, 721 A.2d 763, 778 (1998) (citing Commonwealth v. Hawkins, 549 Pa. 352, 701 A.2d 492, 511 (1997)). In Commonwealth v. Stevens, 559 Pa. 171, 739 A.2d 507, 527 (1999), we deemed meritless a similar challenge based on a portion of penalty phase instructions that is materially identical to that upon which Appellant relies. As we stated in Stevens, the trial court's explanation of aggravators and mitigators as aspects of the killing and the killer that make a first-degree case either more or less terrible appropriately expressed to the jury, in laymen's terms, the purpose for the distinction between aggravating and mitigating circumstances in a capital penalty phase. Id. Although we decided Stevens subsequent to Appellant's sentencing, Appellant fails to cite any earlier authority holding that explaining aggravating and mitigating circumstances in these terms constitutes reversible error. Therefore, the underlying claim of the instant issue lacks merit, and counsel cannot be deemed ineffective for failing to raise it. Hall, 701 A.2d at 203.