Opinion ID: 2634388
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Refusing Defendant's Instruction on the Death Penalty's Deterrent Effect and Costs of Punishments

Text: Defendant argues the trial court prejudicially erred and violated his state and federal constitutional rights in refusing to give a proposed instruction directing the jury not [to] consider for any reason the deterrent or nondeterrent effect of the death penalty or the monetary cost to the state of execution or maintaining a prisoner for life without the possibility of parole. However, as we have held, a trial court does not err in refusing to give such an instruction where neither party raise[s] the issue of either the cost or the deterrent effect of the death penalty.... ( Brown, supra, 31 Cal.4th at p. 566, 3 Cal.Rptr.3d 145, 73 P.3d 1137.) On appeal, defendant concedes that neither party mentioned the issue of deterrence at trial. He contends, however, that the prosecution raised the issue of cost by implication by arguing that were defendant sentenced to life without the possibility of parole, he would enjoy [t]hree meals a day provided to him, books and libraries, television and movies, gymnasiums to work out in, conjugal visits with his wife. From this statement, defendant asserts, it must have been obvious to the jury that the taxpayers would pay for [his] meals, movies, books, etc., if he [were] sentenced to prison for life. Defendant also contends his own counsel raised the subject of cost ... by implication, by pointing out that if [defendant were] sentenced to prison for life ..., he would be spending the next 40 years or so in prison. Defendant's arguments are unconvincing. As the People explain, the prosecution's statement was made in the context of explaining why life in prison would not be a just punishment for defendant's crimes. After rhetorically asking whether those crimes call[ed] for life without possibility of parole, the prosecutor continued: You think about life without possibility of parole, and you think about what he left the Bensons. Life without possibility of parole. Number one, he's alive. Three meals a day provided to him, books and libraries, television and movies, gymnasiums to work out in, conjugal visits with his wife. That is the same thing? That is justice? That is justice in a case like this? That is not justice, folks. That is not justice. Viewed in its proper context, the statement defendant cites does not raise the issue of cost, even by implication. The same is true of defense counsel's statement; as the People argue, defense counsel was not raising the issue of cost, but was merely trying to emphasize the severity of the punishment of a life sentence. Contrary to defendant's argument, merely noting that a life sentence would mean 40 years or so in prison does not even impliedly raise the issue of cost. (Cf. Brown, supra, 31 Cal.4th at p. 566, 3 Cal.Rptr.3d 145, 73 P.3d 1137 [cost instruction not required by prosecutor's argument that `[w]e can't put [defendant] in the prison system until he passes away at 65 or 55 and give him 30, 40 years of an opportunity to kill a guard or kill a doctor or kill someone else'].)