Opinion ID: 2567349
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Permitting consideration of sympathy for victims and their families

Text: Defendant contends that CALJIC No. 8.88, as given in this case, improperly allowed the jury to base its penalty determination on an emotional reaction unrelated to his personal culpability, namely sympathy for the families of the victims. He observes that the instruction told jurors to assign whatever moral or sympathetic value [they] deem[ed] appropriate to each and all of the various factors [they were] permitted to consider, which included section 190.3, factors (a) (circumstances of the offense) and (b) (other violent criminal conduct). Although a jury must never be influenced by passion or prejudice, at the penalty phase of a capital case a jury may properly consider in aggravation, as a circumstance of the crime, the impact of a capital defendant's crimes on the victim's family, and in so doing may exercise sympathy for the defendant's murder victims and for their bereaved family members. ( People v. Pollock (2004) 32 Cal.4th 1153, 1195, 13 Cal.Rptr.3d 34, 89 P.3d 353.) Consequently, CALJIC No. 8.88 is not flawed in permitting the jury to do so. We see nothing in the instruction or prosecutorial argument in this case that invited the jury to decide the penalty on the basis of passion or prejudice. We therefore reject defendant's contention.