Opinion ID: 2633370
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Consideration of Guilt Phase Evidence at the Sanity Phase

Text: At the close of the sanity phase of the trial, the trial court instructed the jury as follows: In your consideration of the issue of legal insanity or legal sanity, you are limited to the evidence produced in this phase of the trial. [¶] You may not consider the evidence produced in the guilt phase of the trial. The trial court gave this instruction at defense counsel's request. Defendant contends the instruction was erroneous and deprived him of his federal constitutional due process right to present a defense. ( Crane v. Kentucky (1986) 476 U.S. 683, 690, 106 S.Ct. 2142, 90 L.Ed.2d 636 [the Constitution guarantees criminal defendants `a meaningful opportunity to present a complete defense'].) He is correct to the extent that he claims the instruction is contrary to law: section 190.4, subdivision (d) provides: In any case in which the defendant may be subject to the death penalty, evidence presented at any prior phase of the trial, including any proceeding under a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity pursuant to Section 1026[,] shall be considered a[t] any subsequent phase of the trial, if the trier of fact of the prior phase is the same trier of fact at the subsequent phase. Although the instruction was erroneous under section 190.4, subdivision (d), the record reveals counsel made a deliberate choice to request the instruction; hence, the error was invited. Consequently, we need not decide whether the instruction deprived defendant of his constitutional right to present a defense: The doctrine of invited error bars a defendant from challenging an instruction given by the trial court when the defendant has made a `conscious and deliberate tactical choice' to `request' the instruction. ( People v. Lucero (2000) 23 Cal.4th 692, 723, 97 Cal. Rptr.2d 871, 3 P.3d 248, quoting People v. Wader (1993) 5 Cal.4th 610, 658, 20 Cal. Rptr.2d 788, 854 P.2d 80.) Even were we to assume the error was not invited, defendant's due process right to present a defense was not infringed. Defendant presented a thorough and detailed defense at the sanity phase and was not prevented from reintroducing those portions of the guilt phase evidence he believed could be beneficial to his case at the sanity phase. Accordingly, he was not denied a meaningful opportunity to present a defense. Defendant argues that, to the extent Mrs. Huffman's decision to request the instruction bars consideration of the issue, she was ineffective under the state and federal Constitutions. Counsel's deficient performance was exacerbated, defendant claims, by her failure to reintroduce critical guilt phase evidence at the sanity phase to permit the jury to consider it as a factual basis for the opinions of the various expert witnesses who testified. In particular, he directs our attention to guilt phase evidence that he blanked out when Levoy bit him, that when he was young his mother would discipline him by biting him, that he hears voices in his head, that he abused amphetamines to stay awake while driving, and that he had not slept in 10 days when he came upon Radford and Levoy on the highway. We reject the claim defense counsel was ineffective, because defendant suffered no possible prejudice from counsel's choice to request a jury instruction limiting the jury's consideration to evidence presented in the sanity phase only. In light of the overwhelming negative evidence against defendant presented in the People's case-in-chief at the guilt phase, including gruesome details of the actual crimes, we conclude defendant could not have been prejudiced by counsel's decision. To the extent defendant's appellate counsel argues the instruction limiting consideration of evidence to that presented at the sanity phase, combined with the instruction requested by the prosecution that evidence of antisocial acts alone cannot comprise evidence of insanity ( ante, pt. II.B.10.), deprived defendant of a viable defense at the sanity phase, we reject that claim as well because there was ample evidence of defendant's alleged insanity apart from his antisocial acts from which the jury could have concluded he was legally insane.