Opinion ID: 1365990
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 13

Heading: Constitutionality of the 1978 Statute.

Text: Defendant contends that the 1978 Briggs death penalty statute violates the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution by its lack of standards to guide, regularize, and make rationally reviewable the process for imposing a sentence of death. ( Woodson v. North Carolina (1976) 428 U.S. 280, 303 [49 L.Ed.2d 944, 960, 96 S.Ct. 2978].) Specifically, he asserts that the statute is deficient for want of the following safeguards: (1) specific and objective enumeration of aggravating and mitigating factors to guide the penalty jury; (2) exclusion of nonstatutory unspecified aggravating factors as a basis for the death penalty; (3) a requirement that the prosecution prove the existence of any aggravating factors beyond a reasonable doubt; (4) a requirement of penalty jury unanimity regarding any aggravating factors found in support of a death sentence; and (5) a requirement that the jury find beyond a reasonable doubt that aggravating circumstances outweigh mitigating and that death is the appropriate penalty. We have previously upheld the statute against challenges on all these grounds. ( People v. Howard, supra, 44 Cal.3d 375, 444; People v. Rodriguez (1986) 42 Cal.3d 730, 777-779 [230 Cal. Rptr. 667, 726 P.2d 113].)