Opinion ID: 1442323
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: Overemphasizing Defendant's Prior Crimes

Text: (31) Defendant observes that the court's penalty phase instructions included 22 pages devoted to the elements, burden of proof and evaluation of evidence of his prior criminal activity. Although he made no objection to the number or content of these instructions (see § 1259), he now asserts their sheer bulk may have unduly focused the jury's attention on the other crimes issues, distracting it from its primary duty to weigh the aggravating and mitigating factors. (Cf. People v. Phillips (1985) 41 Cal.3d 29, 72-73, fn. 25 [222 Cal. Rptr. 127, 711 P.2d 423].) The instructions given by the court were presumably deemed necessary to assist the jury in properly evaluating the aggravating aspects of defendant's prior criminal activity, and in assisting it to determine whether such offenses were established beyond a reasonable doubt. (Cf. People v. Ghent, supra, 43 Cal.3d 739, 773.) Defendant does not suggest that any of these instructions was incorrect or misleading, and we cannot base error solely on speculation regarding the jury's inability to digest that material without undue distraction from its sentencing task.