Opinion ID: 1057944
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Mitigation of the Offense

Text: Prieto alleges that the circuit court erred, both in instructing the jury and in the verdict forms, by including the allegedly limiting term of the offense following aggravation and mitigation. Specifically, the jury verdict forms stated that We the jury . . . having considered all the evidence in aggravation and mitigation of the offense. . . . Prieto argues that this erroneously narrowed the jurors' focus to the offense at hand and would lead them to believe that they could not consider the larger mitigating evidence of his early life. This argument is without merit. The language on the verdict forms tracks the statutory language from Code § 19.2- 264.4 and is consistent with Virginia law. In addition, the jury instructions given by the circuit court repeatedly refer generally to evidence in mitigation without the phraseology of the offense. Finally, the jury's deliberation followed days of mitigating evidence not directly related to the offense, with no limiting instruction from the circuit court. A reasonable jury 30 would not have gathered from the circuit court's instructions and the circumstances of the trial that it was compelled to discount any of the evidence presented. Instead, the instructions referred to consideration of all the mitigating evidence.