Opinion ID: 2605280
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Use of 1978 Death Penalty Law Guidelines

Text: The majority next holds that the trial court committed reversible error in inadvertently instructing the jury in the language of the 1978, rather than the 1977, death penalty law. In my view, any such error was patently harmless in this case. Under the 1977 law, the jurors shall consider, take into account and be guided by the aggravating and mitigating circumstances ... and shall determine whether the penalty shall be death or life imprisonment without ... parole. (Former Pen. Code, § 190.3.) The 1978 law, supposedly in contrast to the 1977 law, requires the jury to consider the various aggravating and mitigating factors and impose a sentence of death if the ... aggravating circumstances outweigh the mitigating circumstances. (Pen. Code, § 190.3.) Under the 1977 law, so the argument goes, the jury merely considers the mitigating and aggravating circumstances without actually weighing them as required by the 1978 law. Thus, it is contended, the trial court should not have used the 1978 law in framing the instructions, as the defendant is generally worse off under the 1978 law. ( Ante, p. 883.) We rejected a similar argument in People v. Frierson (1979) 25 Cal.3d 142, 180 [158 Cal. Rptr. 281, 599 P.2d 587], wherein it was urged that the 1977 law was deficient in failing to require the jury to weigh the aggravating and mitigating factors in making its decision. We interpreted the language of the 1977 law as essentially equivalent to the provision in the valid Florida statute requiring the sentencing authority to `weigh' those factors in reaching its decision. (Italics added; accord People v. Jackson, supra, 28 Cal.3d 264, 315.) Thus, reasonably construed, both the 1977 and 1978 laws tell the penalty phase jurors the same thing: Base your decision upon a weighing of the good with the bad. It is true that, unlike the 1978 law, the 1977 law does not expressly tell the jury that its death penalty decision depends on whether or not the bad factors outweigh the good ones, but that is the obvious and only reasonable implication of requiring the jurors to consider, take into account and be guided by all these factors. The majority suggests that the 1978 law contains a mandatory aspect not present in the 1977 law, namely, a requirement that the jury impose the death penalty if it finds the aggravating circumstances outweigh the mitigating ones. Yet as we have seen, the 1977 law likewise requires such a weighing process. It is simply inconceivable to me that a different result would have obtained had the jury been instructed under the 1977 law. Finally, the majority observes that under the 1977 law, defendant's prior counterfeiting felony would have been inadmissible as an aggravating factor. The majority speculates that some jurors might have relied upon this prior conviction in fixing the penalty at death. With due respect to my colleagues, I find it difficult to believe that on this record defendant, a convicted double murderer for hire and arsonist, was prejudiced by the jury hearing that he had admitted to a previous conviction of counterfeiting. I think it reasonable to believe that the jury had its mind on other matters. A personal aversion toward the death penalty is both understandable and widely shared, but the sovereign people have placed the law on the books. It is our responsibility to enforce it in the absence of reversible error. We face an overwhelming and constantly increasing backlog of automatic appeals which only can be aggravated by needless reversals, retrials and renewed appeals. I am fully sensitive to the awesome implications of our resolution of the issues in a death penalty case, and the great care with which we must examine those issues. Nonetheless, our role is to review the claims of procedural error with an eye toward identifying and resolving only those which reasonably can be said to have affected the verdict adversely. We should not transform the slightest procedural irregularity into reversible error merely because the death penalty is invoked. Our close scrutiny of the appellate record, properly heightened because of the irrevocable consequences of our judgment, however, goes no further than to determine whether after an examination of the entire cause, including the evidence, the court shall be of the opinion that the error complained of has resulted in a miscarriage of justice. (Cal. Const., art. VI, § 13.) Even in death penalty cases we are under a constitutional mandate not to convert procedural fly specks into reversible errors. Bearing in mind that judges, lawyers and jurors are human, I think it fair to conclude that few, if any, trials, civil or criminal, contain records so immaculate or free of fault as to survive every arguable or imaginative claim of error. Just 10 years ago, the United States Supreme Court expressed a common sense principle which is equally binding upon us: `[A] defendant is entitled to a fair trial but not a perfect one,' for there are no perfect trials. [Citations.] ( Brown v. United States (1973) 411 U.S. 223, 231 [36 L.Ed.2d 208, 215, 93 S.Ct. 1565], italics added.) Believing as I do that the defendant received a fair trial at the penalty phase, I would affirm the judgment.