Opinion ID: 1365990
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 9

Heading: Alleged Ramos Error.

Text: (18) After the jury received its instructions, one juror asked the court whether the penalty of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole meant no parole ever? Or, I mean, could he ever come up for parole, as sometimes it happens? The court answered: The law provides for life imprisonment without possibility of parole. That's the way the statute reads. Defendant contends that the court committed reversible error under People v. Ramos (1984) 37 Cal.3d 136 [207 Cal. Rptr. 800, 689 P.2d 430], by not admonishing the jury in response to the above-quoted question not to speculate about how some future Governor might act in defendant's case. We disagree. In Ramos, this court held that the Briggs Instruction, informing capital sentencing juries about the Governor's power to commute a sentence of life imprisonment without possibility of parole to one that would include the possibility of parole, violated state constitutional guaranties of due process because of its one-sided reference to the commutation power. (37 Cal.3d at pp. 153-155.) Moreover, we held that even an instruction referring to the Governor's power to commute both a sentence of death and one of life imprisonment without possibility of parole would violate the state Constitution, because it would invite the jury to consider matters that are both totally speculative and that should not, in any event, influence the jury's determination. ( Id. at p. 155.) Defendant is correct that this reasoning, which was based on our decision in People v. Morse (1964) 60 Cal.2d 631 [36 Cal. Rptr. 201, 388 P.2d 33, 12 A.L.R.3d 810], applies equally to parole as it does to commutation. (See Ramos, supra, 37 Cal.3d at pp. 155-156.) However, no instruction was given below which could have misled the jury with regard to defendant's future eligibility for parole or indeed for any other modification of sentence. [17] Defendant argues that the the trial court was under an obligation to admonish the jurors that, while the Governor can commute any sentence to include the possibility of parole, they were not to consider the possibility of commutation or parole in determining the sentence. ( Ramos, supra, 37 Cal.3d at p. 159, fn. 12.) We find that in the absence of any reference to the commutation power by the jury, however, such an admonition would have been in clear violation of Ramos. Rather the court's response was correct, and cannot have left the jury with any doubt that the term without possibility of parole meant anything but without possibility of parole.