Opinion ID: 2545785
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Instructions on Factors in Section 190.3

Text: As previously mentioned, the trial court gave a modified version of CALJIC No. 8.85, a standard instruction describing the section 190.3 factors the jury should consider in deciding whether to impose the death penalty. Defendant argues this instruction was deficient in several respects. We are not persuaded. First, defendant complains the trial court told the jury that one factor it could consider in deciding whether to impose the death penalty was based on section 190.3, factor (a), the circumstances of the crime of which the defendant was convicted in the present proceeding.... According to defendant, the prosecutor introduced a vast array of irrelevant evidence as part of the circumstances of the crimes: that Chrissy lived with her family in Yucaipa on the day of the murder, that Teddy lived with her family nearby, that Chrissy's father told the girls they could go to the park, that Teddy's brother had shown Teddy a shortcut to the park, and that the necklace defendant used to strangle Chrissy had been given to her by her mother as a present shortly before her death. Defendant contends the evidence just described had no bearing on his moral culpability and the jury should not have considered it in determining whether to impose the death penalty. He asserts the court's instruction that the jury could consider the circumstances of the crime was unconstitutionally vague, in violation of the Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the federal Constitution and the parallel sections of our state Constitution, because it allowed the jury to consider this allegedly irrelevant evidence. We disagree. As both the United States Supreme Court and this court have said, an instruction that the jury may consider the circumstances of the offense at the penalty phase of a capital case is not unconstitutionally vague. ( Tuilaepa v. California (1994) 512 U.S. 967, 977-979, 114 S.Ct. 2630, 129 L.Ed.2d 750; People v. Hawkins (1995) 10 Cal.4th 920, 964, 42 Cal.Rptr.2d 636, 897 P.2d 574; People v. Cain, supra, 10 Cal.4th 1, 68, 40 Cal.Rptr.2d 481, 892 P.2d 1224.) We trust that the jury, assisted by the arguments of counsel, were able to determine which facts were relevant to the penalty determination and which were not. To the extent defendant argues that facts relating to the victims can never be relevant to penalty, he is wrong. A State may legitimately conclude that evidence about the victim ... is relevant to the jury's decision as to whether or not the death penalty should be imposed. ( Payne v. Tennessee (1991) 501 U.S. 808, 827, 111 S.Ct. 2597, 115 L.Ed.2d 720; see also People v. Clark, supra, 5 Cal.4th 950, 1033, 22 Cal.Rptr.2d 689, 857 P.2d 1099.) Defendant also criticizes the trial court's instruction, as part of CALJIC No. 8.85, that the jury could consider section 190.3, factor (b) in deciding whether to impose the death penalty. [2] Defendant claims this portion of the instruction was unconstitutionally vague and ambiguous because it permitted the jury to consider in aggravation the evidence that defendant at one time had a shank in his prison cell. Defendant notes that the shank was found in a location where it could have been planted by another inmate, and that at the hearing on defendant's motion for modification of the death sentence, the trial court found that the evidence did not show beyond a reasonable doubt he had been in possession of the shank. The United States Supreme Court has already rejected the contention, now being made by defendant, that factor (b) of section 190.3 in our capital sentencing scheme is unconstitutionally vague. ( Tuilaepa v. California, supra, 512 U.S. at pp. 977-980, 114 S.Ct. 2630.) Nor was the trial court's factor (b) instruction erroneous for permitting the jury to consider defendant's possible possession of a shank while in prison. The court correctly instructed the jurors they should consider this evidence only if they found beyond a reasonable doubt he had indeed possessed it. We assume the jurors obeyed the court's instruction. Also included in CALJIC No. 8.85 was factor (d) of that instruction: Whether or not the offense was committed while the defendant was under the influence of extreme mental or emotional disturbance. Defendant argues this portion of the instruction (as well as § 190.3, factor (d), on which it is based) was constitutionally deficient because (1) it did not tell the jury whether factor (d) was an aggravating or a mitigating factor; (2) the word extreme, as used in the instruction, was unconstitutionally vague; (3) the word extreme prevented the jury from considering mental or emotional disturbances that are not extreme. We have in the past rejected each of these contentions. ( People v. Musselwhite (1998) 17 Cal.4th 1216, 1266-1268, 74 Cal.Rptr.2d 212, 954 P.2d 475; People v. Holt (1997) 15 Cal.4th 619, 698, 63 Cal.Rptr.2d 782, 937 P.2d 213; People v. Ashmus (1991) 54 Cal.3d 932, 1001-1002, 2 Cal.Rptr.2d 112, 820 P.2d 214.) Defendant further contends that CALJIC No. 8.85 and section 190.3 (on which the instruction is based) are unconstitutionally vague for various reasons: [T]hey do not limit the jury to consideration of only the listed factors in aggravation; they fail to guide the jury's discretion; they permit the prosecutor to argue non-statutory aggravating evidence as aggravating evidence; and they allow the penalty process to proceed in an arbitrary, capricious, death-biased and unreviewable manner.... Not so. ( Tuilaepa v. California, supra, 512 U.S. at pp. 971-973, 114 S.Ct. 2630; People v. Millwee (1998) 18 Cal.4th 96, 163-164, 74 Cal.Rptr.2d 418, 954 P.2d 990; People v. Musselwhite, supra, 17 Cal.4th at pp. 1266-1268, 74 Cal. Rptr.2d 212, 954 P.2d 475; People v. Bacigalupo (1993) 6 Cal.4th 457, 470-477, 24 Cal.Rptr.2d 808, 862 P.2d 808.)