Opinion ID: 2585200
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Alleged instructional errors and challenges to death penalty law

Text: Defendant raises a variety of constitutional challenges to the death penalty law and related instructions, many of which, he acknowledges, we have previously rejected. First, he contends the instruction pertaining to the circumstances of the crime (§ 190.3, factor (a) (factor (a)); CALJIC No. 8.85) failed to adequately guide the jury's sentencing discretion, in violation of the Fifth, Sixth, Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. To the contrary, factor (a) is not unconstitutionally vague. ( Tuilaepa v. California (1994) 512 U.S. 967, 976, 114 S.Ct. 2630, 129 L.Ed.2d 750; People v. Sanders, supra, 11 Cal.4th at pp. 563-564, 46 Cal.Rptr.2d 751, 905 P.2d 420.) Defendant contends the prosecutor's closing argument, commenting with respect to factor (a) that the jury could consider the fact of Stewart's murder and the financial-gain special-circumstance finding, created a factor that was so vague as to encourage arbitrary and capricious decision making. We are unable to discern how the brief remark defendant cites could have had such an effect. Defendant further argues that the instruction pertaining to prior criminal activity involving the express or implied threat to use force or violence (§ 190.3, factor (b) (factor (b))) was unconstitutionally vague and ambiguous because it permitted the jury to consider in aggravation situations in which defendant was merely reacting to real or imagined attacks upon himself or to circumstances he did not cause. He thus characterizes as merely reactive his conduct in the Gary's Drive-In incident, where he brandished a knife and threatened to stab a man who approached him as he sat in his car; the Savemart store incident, where he kicked a store employee; and the Harris incident, in which he punched Danny Wisner in the eye, after having kicked the three-year-old son of Michael Harris while in the grip of what he now terms an insane delusion. As the Attorney General argues, defendant's characterization of these incidents is not the only or necessarily the most reasonable one. Contrary to defendant, the factor (b) instruction was not vague ( Tuilaepa v. California, supra, 512 U.S. at pp. 976-977, 114 S.Ct. 2630; People v. Osband (1996) 13 Cal.4th 622, 703-704, 55 Cal. Rptr.2d 26, 919 P.2d 640) and did not preclude the jury from according these incidents the weight it believed appropriate in the circumstances. Defendant further argues that the portion of CALJIC No. 8.85 directing the jury to consider all the evidence received during any part of the trial of the case, except as it was otherwise instructed, violated the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution in permitting the jury to consider nonstatutory aggravating evidence. Defendant failed, however, to preserve his claim of error, in that he did not request a limiting instruction. ( People v. Quartermain (1997) 16 Cal.4th 600, 630, 66 Cal.Rptr.2d 609, 941 P.2d 788.) In any event, immediately after hearing the instruction he challenges, the jury was told: You shall consider, take into account and be guided by the following factors, if applicable, followed by a listing of each of the sentencing factors, section 190.3, factors (a) through (k). We conclude the jury was properly guided in the exercise of its sentencing discretion. (See People v. Medina (1995) 11 Cal.4th 694, 770-771, 47 Cal.Rptr.2d 165, 906 P.2d 2 [trial court did not err in failing to specify sua sponte the irrelevant evidence the jury should ignore].) Defendant next contends section 190.3, factor (d) (factor (d)), together with the related instruction, advising the jury it must consider whether or not the offense was committed while defendant was under the influence of extreme mental or emotional disturbance, is unconstitutionally vague because it gives the jury no direction as to whether such evidence is aggravating or mitigating. We have previously rejected the contention, as well as defendant's related argument that in referring to extreme mental or emotional disturbance, factor (d) precludes consideration of other, less extreme forms of disturbance. ( People v. Holt (1997) 15 Cal.4th 619, 698-699, 63 Cal.Rptr.2d 782, 937 P.2d 213.) Defendant also contends the prosecutor, in closing argument dismissing his delusional condition as merely eccentric, converted factor (d) into an aggravating factor in violation of the Fifth, Sixth, Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. We do not so read the challenged portion of the prosecutor's argument, which, after expressly advising the jury that factor (d) is a factor in mitigation, simply sought to persuade the jury to accord the defense evidence on the subject of defendant's mental disturbance little weight. Defendant further asserts that all the remaining sentencing factors contained in section 190.3 and reflected in CALJIC No. 8.85 are unconstitutionally vague and arbitrary and result in unreliable sentences, in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. He fails, however, to present any specific argument or authority for the assertion, and we reject it. None of the factors is shown to lack a commonsense core of meaning that criminal juries should be capable of understanding. (See Tuilaepa v. California, supra, 512 U.S. at p. 975, 114 S.Ct. 2630.) Defendant further contends the instructions given in his case violated the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution by failing to require the jury to find aggravating factors beyond a reasonable doubt, and to find that any such proven aggravating factors outweighed the mitigating factors beyond a reasonable doubt. We have previously rejected these contentions, and defendant cites no reason to depart from our prior decisions. ( People v. Medina, supra, 11 Cal.4th at p. 782, 47 Cal.Rptr.2d 165, 906 P.2d 2; People v. Hawthorne, supra, 4 Cal.4th at p. 79, 14 Cal.Rptr.2d 133, 841 P.2d 118.) Nor do the Fifth, Sixth, Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments require that the jury base its sentencing decision on written findings specifying the aggravating factors on which it relied. ( People v. Fauber (1992) 2 Cal.4th 792, 848, 9 Cal.Rptr.2d 24, 831 P.2d 249.) Contrary to defendant's argument, the provisions of California's death penalty statute do not violate the Fifth, Sixth, Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments by the lack of comparative or intercase proportionality review. ( People v. Crittenden (1994) 9 Cal.4th 83, 156, 36 Cal.Rptr.2d 474, 885 P.2d 887.) Defendant argues that the absence of procedural safeguards employed by other states in the operation of their death penalty laws renders this state's law unconstitutional under the Fifth, Sixth, Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. As defendant acknowledges, however, we have previously rejected this argument (e.g., People v. Sully, supra, 53 Cal.3d at pp. 1251-1252, 283 Cal.Rptr. 144, 812 P.2d 163), and he fails to convince us to reconsider this conclusion. Because we have found no error in the sentencing factors and instructions given in this case, defendant is not entitled to reversal of his sentence on the grounds asserted.