Opinion ID: 1454621
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Trial Court's Remarks to the Jury About the Number of Capital Cases Reversed by the California Supreme Court

Text: At the beginning of voir dire, the court explained the pending charges and the voir dire procedure, including the need to inquire into each potential juror's attitudes about the death penalty. Its explanation included the following statement: As far as the process is concerned, let me explain a little about that. You need not, and will not, have to worry about the death penalty in the event that you find, first of all, that there was not a murder or that the murder wasn't in the first degree.... You may never get to that point, but we still have to talk to you about how you feel about the death penalty. The supreme court, for the last 56 cases that they have decided about the death penalty, and I'm sure all of you read about the supreme court. There have been 56 cases, ladies and gentlemen, since 1972, I believe, that have talked about death penalty cases. Fifty-three of them were reversed, three of them were affirmed. In those cases, we were given guidelines. I, as a trial judge, was given guidelines as to how we talk to you about this matter. Those guidelines are still in effect. I'm still bound by them and so are you. None of us are above the law. So I have to talk to you about how you feel about the death penalty. Defense counsel called the trial court's attention to the portion of its statement dealing with the large proportion of appellate reversals in death penalty cases and expressed concern that its remarks might cause some jurors to regard their consideration of the death penalty as an academic exercise. Counsel asked for an admonition to the jury, expressing the view that with the new composition of this court brought about by the judicial retention elections of 1986, death may mean exactly that. The trial court agreed and gave the following corrective instruction: Ladies and gentlemen, I have been requested to admonish you a bit about what I said in the beginning concerning the amount of cases heard by the supreme court, 56, I believe I mentioned in number and reversals thereon. The Court, me, personally, did not mean to indicate to you one way or the other how I felt about the matter. The Court only wanted to indicate to you that those 56 cases gave us guidelines, which I am obligated  and I think I told you that, that I'm obligated to follow in cases of this nature. And that's all I intended to do. I did not intend to indicate my favor or disfavor of those decisions. I only indicated it was a threshold, the comment concerning the guidelines, that we have to follow. And now I'm going to tell you about those guidelines. (2) Defendant argues that the trial court's statement minimized the jury's sense of responsibility for returning a death verdict by suggesting that 90 percent of such verdicts would likely be overturned at the appellate level. He relies on Caldwell v. Mississippi (1985) 472 U.S. 320, 341 [86 L.Ed.2d 231, 247, 105 S.Ct. 2633], in which the United States Supreme Court found that a prosecutor's comments regarding the role of appellate courts in reviewing capital cases resulted in a denial of due process. From Caldwell, he reasons that similar remarks by a trial judge are necessarily more egregious. Viewed in their context in defendant's trial, we find the trial court's remarks irrelevant and improper, but not prejudicial. Initially, we observe that the court's reference to appellate reversals was a brief and isolated one, made at the beginning of voir dire and not during the penalty phase where the death penalty and the jury's sentencing responsibility were the focus of the jury's attention. (See People v. Boyde (1988) 46 Cal.3d 212, 254 [758 P.2d 25], affd. on other grounds sub nom. Boyde v. California (1990) 494 U.S. 370 [108 L.Ed.2d 316, 110 S.Ct. 1190]; People v. Ghent (1987) 43 Cal.3d 739, 770 [239 Cal. Rptr. 82, 739 P.2d 1250].) It was a small part of a larger statement designed to explain to the jurors an aspect of trial procedure that might engender confusion and frustration, i.e., why they would be individually questioned about the death penalty at the outset, even though the penalty issue might never be reached. As such, the reference was not necessarily critical in the development of the jury's sense of responsibility for its verdict. Moreover, the trial court's corrective statement, although not specifically directed to the issue of the jury's responsibility for a death verdict, was apparently sufficient to satisfy defendant's trial counsel, who did not request a mistrial or ask for other or further admonitions or remedial steps. Under these circumstances, we are especially reluctant to infer prejudice. ( Lowenfield v. Phelps (1988) 484 U.S. 231 [98 L.Ed.2d 568, 579, 108 S.Ct. 546, 552].) Finally, the remainder of the record demonstrates that the trial court imposed and the jury accepted the full burden of responsibility for a death verdict. Both the court's instructions and the arguments of counsel emphasized the awesome character of the jury's responsibility. At the beginning of the penalty phase, the court told the jury that it would have difficult decisions to make. The penalty phase instructions emphasized that the jury must not impose the death penalty if sympathy or compassion based on mitigating circumstances persuaded it to do otherwise. They further admonished that a reasonable doubt as to the appropriate penalty required a verdict of life imprisonment without possibility of parole. With reference to the consequences of a death verdict, the final charge included the caveat: And you are instructed that a death verdict means exactly what it says. That the defendant will be executed. For you to conclude otherwise would be to rely upon speculation or conjecture and would be a violation of your oath as a juror. In light of the entire course of instructions and argument, our observation in People v. Clark (1990) 50 Cal.3d 583 [268 Cal. Rptr. 399, 789 P.2d 127], in which we upheld the verdict despite a similar claim of Caldwell error, is apropos here: The tenor of the argument and the remaining instructions made it clear to the jury that it and it alone was to decide whether defendant should live or die. Although the instruction should not have been given, it was not prejudicial. ( Id. at p. 634.) [3]