Opinion ID: 2590700
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 9

Heading: Challenge to Capital Sentencing Procedures

Text: Defendant claims that California's death penalty scheme violates the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution by not genuinely narrowing the class of death-eligible defendants. (See Lowenfield v. Phelps (1988) 484 U.S. 231, 244, 108 S.Ct. 546, 98 L.Ed.2d 568.) He also asserts that the sentencing scheme is unconstitutional because it does not provide for intercase proportionality review, and it gives prosecutors complete discretion to seek the death penalty. Finally, he claims the scheme has built-in capriciousness based on the purportedly confusing and ineffective penalty instruction, CALJIC No. 8.85. We disagree. We have consistently rejected such constitutional challenges to our death penalty scheme. (See, e.g., People v. Combs (2004) 34 Cal.4th 821, 868, 22 Cal.Rptr.3d 61, 101 P.3d 1007; People v. Kipp (2001) 26 Cal.4th 1100, 1137, 113 Cal.Rptr.2d 27, 33 P.3d 450.) Defendant offers no basis for us to reconsider our decisions. And we have rejected defendant's claim based on CALJIC No. 8.85. (See ante, 30 Cal.Rptr. at pp. 555-556, 114 P.3d at pp. 794-795.)