Opinion ID: 2507854
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Denial of the Motion for Modification of the Verdict

Text: Defendant contends the trial court prejudged defendant's section 190.4, subdivision (e) motion for modification of the verdict and thereby deprived him of rights secured by the Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments and their state analogues. The sole basis for this claim is the trial court's failure expressly to mention the motion for modification in response to a juror's postverdict inquiry into the appellate process. We find no error. After the verdict was announced, the trial judge, as was his usual practice, invited the jurors into chambers to relax before making a decision whether to speak to the attorneys or the press. During the in-chambers question-and-answer session, one juror asked the judge, I just was curious. What happens now in terms of is it automatically appealed? The court replied as follows: Pretty much everything is automatic. There's an automatic motion for new trial that is conducted. If the court grants a new trial, for one reason I might have fouled up during the course of the trial myself and I would have to give a new trial, it would be done over again. If the motion for new trial is not granted then he is sentenced by the court; and then from there on that is automatic. [¶] In other words, the appellate process goes right straight to the Supreme Court of California. If he wins there the trial is done again. If it's not, then it's automatically sent to the United States Supreme Court. If he wins there the case is either done over, down graded, or something of that nature. If he doesn't win any of these kinds of appellate process or a series of what we call writ attacks, in other words things that were done in the background that aren't a matter of record, could also result in the case not resulting in death. But if all of that fails, then ultimately the man gets executed. Nothing in the foregoing constituted, as defendant puts it, the judge's premature announce[ment] that he would deny any motion to modify the death verdict. The juror's question addressed only the appellate process. That the court focused its answer on the appellate process and gave only an abbreviated and incomplete description of the steps before that process could commence was hardly improper. Moreover, the court's comments in denying the motion for modification reveal that it had reviewed its notes, the transcripts, and the exhibits before finding that the evidence of defendant's guilt was overwhelming. The court recited both the facts of the crimes and the penalty phase evidence and concluded that the aggravating factors overwhelmingly outweighed the mitigating factors. The record thus demonstrates that the trial court conscientiously discharged its duty. Tellingly, defendant nowhere claims that the denial of the motion was an abuse of discretion. Finally, it would appear that the court's reference to an automatic motion for new trial in response to the juror's inquiry must have contemplated the automatic motion for modification of the verdict under section 190.4, subdivision (e), since it is the only automatic postverdict motion. (See also People v. Allison (1989) 48 Cal.3d 879, 915, 258 Cal.Rptr. 208, 771 P.2d 1294 [harmonizing section 190.4, subdivision (e) with section 1181, subdivision (7)].) The court was not required to use a particular nomenclature in an informal, postverdict debriefing with the jurors on pain of being found to have prejudged the automatic motion for modification.