Opinion ID: 1388611
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 23

Heading: Instructions on scope of sentencing authority.

Text: (29) Defendant argues the court erred by instructing, in the language of the 1978 death penalty law, that the jury shall impose the death penalty if it determines that the aggravating circumstances outweigh those in mitigation. (§ 190.3; CALJIC, former No. 8.84.2.) These instructions, he claims, improperly suggested the death penalty is mandatory under certain circumstances. We have concluded that the 1978 law's shall/outweigh language, properly construed, does not limit the sentencer's discretion to decide the appropriate penalty under the evidence. Weighing is neither a mechanical counting of factors nor an arbitrary assignment of values. It is the subjective mental process by which the sentencer determines under the relevant evidence which penalty [it believes] is appropriate in the particular case. [Fn. omitted.] ( People v. Brown (1985) 40 Cal.3d 512, 541 [220 Cal. Rptr. 637, 709 P.2d 440]; see People v. Boyde (1988) 46 Cal.3d 212, 253 [250 Cal. Rptr. 83, 758 P.2d 25].) In Brown, supra, we expressed concern that instructions phrased in the unadorned statutory language might sometimes be misleading. Therefore, we endorsed more elaborate explanatory instructions for use in subsequent trials. (40 Cal.3d at pp. 544, fn. 17, 545, fn. 19.) On the other hand, we examine pre- Brown trials in which the unadorned instruction was given to determine whether, in context, the sentencer may have been misled to defendant's prejudice about the scope of its sentencing discretion.... ( Id., at p. 544, fn. 17.) Here, in addition to the unadorned standard instructions, the jury received a defense instruction that the mere counting of opposing factors was wrong, and that [t]he particular weight of such opposing circumstances is not determined by the relative number, but by their relative convincing force on the ultimate question [of] punishment. Furthermore, the prosecutor did nothing to exploit possible ambiguities in the unadorned instructions. His argument was brief and restrained. He simply claimed that aggravation outweighed mitigation, that mercy was not warranted, that defendant's culpability might be even greater than Madrigal's, but that both men deserved death. Under these circumstances, the jury cannot have been misled about its discretion to impose the appropriate penalty under the particular circumstances. No basis for reversal appears. [23]