Opinion ID: 1167454
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Instruction, evidence and argument as to Adult Authority's ible grant of parole.

Text: [1b] Although the Legislature has, through the Adult Authority, sought to provide for the rehabilitation of criminal defendants, it has coincidentally retained the death penalty and left its administration to the unguided discretion of the jury. In the general field of criminal law the Legislature has abandoned the ancient notion of categorical punishment, the infliction of fixed terms for certain crimes, and substituted the indeterminate sentence, leaving to the Adult Authority the judgment of the period of incarceration. [8] The Authority does not fix that period pursuant to a formula of punishment, [9] but in accordance with the adjustment and social rehabilitation of the individual analyzed as a human composite of intellectual, emotional and genetic factors. Hence the jury, in this whole field of crime, does not determine the penalty; the task of deciding the term of incarceration lies with an expert body. Yet in the instance of capital crime the jury must perform the function of defining punishment, which, in this case, includes the tremendous sanction of the death penalty. The jury's task assumes formidable proportions because it far transcends the usual function of finding whether or not certain events occurred and certain consequences resulted from them. The jury in this instance performs no such circumscribed task; it must in each particular case, depending wholly on the kind of defendant and nature of facts before it, decide the issue of life or death. In reaching its crucial decision, although Penal Code section 190.1 states it may consider facts in aggravation or mitigation of the penalty, the jury has no guidelines, no standards, no criteria. The Legislature has reposed in the jury a wide and onerous task, aggravated by this conflict in function and philosophic background. ( People v. Hamilton (1963) ante, pp. 105, 136 [32 Cal. Rptr. 4, 383 P.2d 412].) The objective situation is difficult enough without blurring the functions. [3] The function of the jury is to consider the facts surrounding the crime and defendant's background, and upon that basis, reach its decision. The jury should not be invited to decide if the defendant will be fit for release in the future; it should not at all be involved in the issue of the time, if any, when the defendant should be released; it should not be propelled into weighing the possible consequences of the Authority's administrative action. The vice of placing such issues before the jury reaches deeper than the promulgation of confusion; it frames questions that no human mind can answer, and it, in substance, transposes the task of the Adult Authority to the jury. The questions are unanswerable because they rest upon future events which are unpredictable. The jury's attention may be focused, as it was here, upon whether the Authority will release the defendant into society at some uncertain date in the future, such as eight, nine, ten years from now. Based upon what defendant may then be, the jury is asked whether it thinks defendant should at that time be released to society. Premised upon the unknown, the question asks for an answer that cannot be intelligently rendered. The jury is precipitated into a judgment upon the imponderable. To propose such questions to the jury is to present to it problems that the Legislature has entrusted for solution to the Adult Authority. The Legislature established the Authority as a specialized body, aided by a trained staff, to decide such questions. It reaches its decisions after the prisoner has received treatment at a corrective institution, has been carefully supervised and has been afforded an opportunity to attempt to understand his maladjustment. From years of annotated observation of the defendant the Authority can render an informed prognosis as to his potential. The jury, on the other hand, must plunge into a judgment based upon conjecture; it must attempt to perform a function which the Legislature expressly granted to another institution and impliedly denied to it. The final and most dangerous error of permitting the jury to consider the Authority's possible grant of parole is to induce it to pass judgment upon the very issue foreclosed to it and to prevent the proper body from deciding the issue at the proper time. The jury can conclude that the Authority will improperly grant defendant parole in the future; it may fear that the Adult Authority will permit a dangerous defendant to walk the streets; it may then foreclose the authority from ever granting parole by imposing the death penalty. The jury would thus improperly preempt the whole parole system and defeat the legislative design. The jury would then utilize the death penalty for fear that the Adult Authority will not properly perform the function that the Legislature has specifically delegated to it. [10] The vices which we have described above find dramatic illustration in the prosecutor's argument to the jury in the instant case: And I frankly believe, based on the evidence that we have heard here, that he is never going to change. Twelve years from now, or seven, eight, nine, ten years from now, when he comes up for consideration do you honestly think that he is going to have changed one little bit? Do you honestly feel that if he gets the thought in his mind that he would like to kill somebody that he is going to be any different? ... It is true that when they consider him for parole they are going to consider the fact that he killed two people. No question about that. But that's no guarantee that he is not going to be back on the street in the average time, or even less than the average time. That's what we have got to face. That's the reality. We have pointed out that the majority of other jurisdictions hold that the possibility of parole is not a proper matter for the jury's consideration in the instant situation. We turn to an exposition of the reasoning of some of these cases. The leading case on the subject demonstrates that we would not be the first jurisdiction to reconsider its earlier position on the point. In a learned opinion by Chief Justice Weintraub the New Jersey Supreme Court in State v. White (1958) 27 N.J. 158 [142 A.2d 65], overruled a body of settled law that had been reaffirmed in numerous cases during an interim of over 40 years. The court in White stated that upon a re-appraisal of the problem, we cannot escape the conclusion that the course heretofore approved is erroneous. (P. 72 [142 A.2d].) On the merits of the issue White held that [T]he Legislature committed to the jury the responsibility to determine in the first instance whether punishment should be life or death. It charged another agency with the responsibility of deciding how a life sentence shall be executed. The jurors perform their task completely when they decide the matter assigned to them upon the evidence before them. What happens thereafter is no concern of theirs. It is no more proper for a jury to conclude that death be the penalty because a life sentence may be commuted or the defendant paroled, than it would be for a trial judge in other criminal causes deliberately to impose an excessive sentence to frustrate the statutory scheme committing parole to another agency. (142 A.2d at p. 76.) Broyles v. Commonwealth (Ky. 1954) 267 S.W.2d 73 [47 A.L.R.2d 1252], involved a case in which the jury exercised the duty of fixing the sentence. The prosecutor argued to the jury that a life sentence meant the possibility of parole after eight years, that a 21-year sentence meant the possibility of parole after six years, and that defendant was eligible for parole after the expiration of one-third of any sentence of less than 10 years. In holding such an argument to be prejudicial error, the Kentucky court stated: [U]nder our theory of separation of governmental powers, it is the duty of the judiciary to obtain a conviction of those guilty of crime. But once that conviction has been obtained and sentence imposed, it is the duty of other departments of government to enforce the sentence and to determine when and under what circumstances the prisoner will be eligible for release. Therefore, when the judiciary attempts to anticipate the rules of the legislative and executive departments relating to the parole of prisoners and attempts, in effect, to circumvent those rules it infringes upon the prerogatives of other departments of government. (267 S.W.2d at p. 76.) In Williams v. State (1950) 191 Tenn. 456 [234 S.W.2d 993], the responsibility of choosing between the death penalty and life imprisonment likewise was reposed in the jury. The Tennessee Supreme Court found prejudicial error in the trial court's discussion of parole laws with the jury; the court emphasized that the jury could not properly inflict the death penalty only because it opposed the defendant's possible parole under a life sentence. (See Graham v. State (1957) 202 Tenn. 423 [304 S.W.2d 622].) The appellate court found prejudicial error in Sukle v. People (1941) 107 Colo. 269 [111 P.2d 233], a case in which the jury, after being instructed that life imprisonment meant possible parole, rendered a death penalty verdict. The court stated that the jury was encouraged to speculate on what the chief executive of the state, at some future time, acting pursuant to authority of law apart from the law under which the judiciary proceeds, might then conclude justice required at his hands. Prejudicial error is obvious. (P. 235 [111 P.2d].) In reversing a rape conviction which involved only imprisonment, and not the death penalty, as here, the court in Lawley v. State (1956) 264 Ala. 283 [87 So.2d 433], stated that [I]n arriving at a proper sentence to be imposed on a defendant, the proportionate part thereof which probably or possibly might be deducted therefrom by the Parole Board was not a proper factor to be considered by the jury, and it is error for the court to instruct the jury as to the laws or customs governing the granting of paroles.... It is reasonable to assume that the jury wished to punish the defendant by having him serve a certain number of years in the penitentiary and in order to insure that he serve that length of time, the jury was planning to add to the length of the sentence in order to compensate for a parole before the entire sentence was served. (87 So.2d at pp. 434-435.) In view of these considerations we turn to the delicate problem of delineating the function of the jury in the penalty phase of the case and determining the kind of instruction that should be given to it. We have stated that enlightened legislation in California has advanced the treatment of criminals from the stage of mechanical punishment, based exclusively upon the crime, to an appraisal of the individual wrongdoer for the purpose of his possible reformation. The emphasis must be upon the individual rather than the offense; such insistence upon the importance of the individual symbolizes a basic value of our society that contrasts with a totalitarian denigration of the individual as an appendage of the state. Our insistence upon the dignity and worth of the individual must surely be strictly and steadfastly applied in the crucial context of the individual's life or death. The jury decides whether the individual should be permitted to live upon the basis of a complete and careful analysis of that person as a human composite of emotional, psychological and genetic factors. The jury looks at the individual as a whole being and determines if he is fit to live. [4] The jury is entitled to weigh psychiatric and other testimony as to his susceptibility to rehabilitation and reformation. It should not, however, attempt to appraise whether at some future date the Adult Authority may improperly release the defendant or speculate as to when he might be released. [5] In evolving a proper instruction for the jury, we recognize that individual jurors often entertain some ideas of parole laws and might erroneously consider the effect of such laws upon a term of life imprisonment. They may ask the trial judge for information upon the subject; it is not enough for the trial court merely to refuse the request and relegate them to ignorance. To avoid such unanswered queries and to prevent latent misconceptions, we believe the trial court, at the time of rendition of all instructions, should inform the jury in general terms that life imprisonment can result in parole but that such matters are of no concern to it. [11] We set forth the following instruction for the general guidance of the trial court: A sentence of life imprisonment means that the prisoner may be paroled at some time during his lifetime or that he may spend the remainder of his natural life in prison. An agency known as the Adult Authority is empowered by statute to determine if and when a prisoner is to be paroled, and under the statute no prisoner can be paroled unless the Adult Authority is of the opinion that the prisoner when released will assume a proper place in society and that his release is not contrary to the welfare of society. A prisoner released on parole may remain on parole for the balance of his life and if he violates the terms of the parole he may be returned to prison to serve the life sentence. So that you will have no misunderstandings relating to a sentence of life imprisonment, you have been informed as to the general scheme of our parole system. You are now instructed, however, that the matter of parole is not to be considered by you in determining the punishment for this defendant, and you may not speculate as to if, or when, parole would or would not be granted to him. It is not your function to decide now whether this man will be suitable for parole at some future date. So far as you are concerned, you are to decide only whether this man shall suffer the death penalty or whether he shall be permitted to remain alive. If upon consideration of the evidence you believe that life imprisonment is the proper sentence, you must assume that those officials charged with the operation of our parole system will perform their duty in a correct and responsible manner, and that they will not parole this defendant unless he can be safely released into society. It would be a violation of your duty as jurors if you were to fix the penalty at death because of a doubt that the Adult Authority will properly carry out its responsibilities. [1c] In the light of the foregoing discussion we disapprove of CALJIC No. 306 (rev.) and the decisions set forth in footnote 2, supra, to the extent that they conflict with this opinion.