Opinion ID: 2632884
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Prosecution's Pretrial Offer

Text: The court refused to admit, as potentially mitigating evidence, that fact that the prosecutor, prior to trial, had offered defendant a sentence of life imprisonment without possibility of parole in exchange for a guilty plea. Our prior cases have rejected similar claims on the basis that rejected plea bargains such as this do not bear on the defendant's character, his prior record, or the circumstances of the crime, and therefore would not constitute proper mitigating evidence. (See People v. Zapien, supra, 4 Cal.4th at pp. 988-990, 17 Cal.Rptr.2d 122, 846 P.2d 704; People v. Fauber (1992) 2 Cal.4th 792, 857, 9 Cal.Rptr.2d 24, 831 P.2d 249.) The trial court in this case also observed that pretrial offers of plea bargains in capital cases can be motivated by many factors (e.g., expenditures of time, effort, and resources) unrelated to the appropriateness of the death penalty in a particular case. We find no error.