Opinion ID: 2618245
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 74

Heading: Specifying Evidence

Text: (83a) Defendants next contend the prosecutor and the trial court should have specified what evidence could be considered by the jury under factor (b). We faced an analogous situation in People v. Phillips (1985) 41 Cal.3d 29 [222 Cal. Rptr. 127, 711 P.2d 423], where the defendant claimed the trial court should have instructed sua sponte on the elements of the other crimes. We rejected that notion, explaining that a defendant for tactical considerations may not want the penalty phase instructions overloaded with a series of lengthy instructions on the elements of alleged other crimes, perhaps because he fears that such instructions could result in the jury placing undue significance on such other crimes rather than on the central question of whether he should live or die. ( Id. at pp. 72-73, fn. 25.) The same reasoning applies here: because detailed instructions delimiting the evidence the jury could consider concerning other crimes could be detrimental to defendants, a trial court is under no sua sponte duty to so instruct. Defendants also argue that by failing to identify which of their actions constituted other crimes that the jury could properly consider, the trial court encouraged the jury to consider nonstatutory aggravating evidence in the form of prior bad acts that did not involve violence or the threat of violence. (See Boyd, supra, 38 Cal.3d at pp. 775-776.) Inasmuch as the jury instruction explicitly required consideration of evidence only if it involved violence or the threat of violence, we reject the claim. We also reject the notion that factor (b) created a liberty interest  complete with due process protections  that was violated by the trial court's failure to more fully instruct on the scope of factor (b). We thus find unavailing defendants' attempted analogy to Hewitt v. Helms (1983) 459 U.S. 460 [74 L.Ed.2d 675, 103 S.Ct. 864].