Opinion ID: 2595083
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Constitutionality of Financial Gain Special Circumstance as Applied to This Case

Text: Defendant contends the financial gain special circumstance is unconstitutional as applied to this case. He claims the prosecution's evidence shows that he killed Esther Alvarado to obtain a fix to feed his heroin addiction. He maintains that when the only financial gain a defendant hopes to obtain from a murder are the drugs that will satisfy an addiction, the financial gain special circumstance fails to genuinely narrow the class of persons eligible for the death penalty, in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the federal Constitution. The Attorney General responds that defendant has not preserved this issue for appeal because he did not raise it at trial. But this court has consistently considered as applied challenges to California's death penalty law (such as this one) on their merits without discussing whether they were raised at trial. (See, e.g., People v. Seaton (2001) 26 Cal.4th 598, 691, 110 Cal.Rptr.2d 441, 28 P.3d 175; People v. Kraft, supra, 23 Cal.4th 978, 1078, 99 Cal.Rptr.2d 1, 5 P.3d 68; People v. Davenport (1995) 11 Cal.4th 1171, 1225, 47 Cal. Rptr.2d 800, 906 P.2d 1068; People v. Garceau (1993) 6 Cal.4th 140, 207, 24 Cal. Rptr.2d 664, 862 P.2d 664; People v. Roberts (1992) 2 Cal.4th 271, 323, 6 Cal. Rptr.2d 276, 826 P.2d 274.) Here, we need not decide whether an objection was necessary to preserve the issue because, as we shall explain, defendant's claim lacks merit. (See People v. Champion (1995) 9 Cal.4th 879, 908, fn. 6, 39 Cal.Rptr.2d 547, 891 P.2d 93 [when the question whether a defendant has preserved a claim is close and difficult, we assume the claim is preserved and address the merits].) Contrary to defendant's argument, there is no evidence that he killed Esther Alvarado simply to satisfy a drug addiction. Prosecution witness Ybarra testified that defendant agreed to commit the murder in exchange for both heroin and cocaine, but there was no evidence at the guilt phase of trial that he was addicted to either drug. To the contrary, when defendant was arrested he told Deputy Sheriff Richard McFarren that although he was beginning to have a drug problem, he was not an everyday user of drugs and did not have a drug habit. Defendant did present evidence at the penalty phase that he was addicted to heroin, but he offered no evidence that he was addicted to cocaine. Thus, even if we were to assume that the financial gain special circumstance does not apply to those who commit a murder solely to satisfy a drug habit, and even if we could consider evidence presented at the penalty phase in determining whether defendant had such an addiction, the evidence here did not show that this was defendant's only motive for killing Esther Alvarado. In any event, we see no constitutional impediment to a capital punishment scheme that, like California's death penalty law, provides that persons who kill for financial gain are eligible for the death penalty, but does not exclude from that relatively broad category those who commit the murder to obtain drugs to satisfy an addiction. Defendant argues that if the financial gain special circumstance encompasses murders committed by addicts in exchange for drugs, it precludes the jury from considering the murderer's addiction as a factor in mitigation. Not so. Nothing in California's death penalty scheme prevents a defendant from arguing that a murder committed to satisfy a drug habit is a mitigating circumstance warranting a sentence of life imprisonment without possibility of parole rather than death. Indeed, here defendant made precisely that argument to the jury.