Opinion ID: 1206767
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Prejudice from Instructional Error

Text: (19) Our examination of the record of appellant's trial, the totality of the penalty instructions given and the nature of the arguments made to the jury leads us to conclude that in this case the jury may have been misled as to its proper function. First, we note that the three instructional errors were especially important here because the instructions affected the juror's consideration of the only significant evidence in aggravation and mitigation of penalty, as well as the jury's understanding of the nature of the balancing process by which it was to determine whether appellant deserved the punishment of death or life without parole. The Robertson errors permitted the jury to consider evidence of other crimes as circumstances in aggravation without finding  as required by law  that the evidence established beyond a reasonable doubt that appellant committed those crimes. At the same time the pre- Easley factor k instruction failed to inform the jury that it could properly consider as a circumstance in mitigation the only evidence offered by appellant for that purpose at the penalty trial. The combined effect of these instructions is that the jury may have improperly found aggravating circumstances and improperly failed to find mitigating circumstances. There were no supplementary instructions, such as those suggested in Easley, supra, 34 Cal.3d 858, which would have clarified the jury's discretion to consider mitigating evidence unrelated to the crime itself. And the prosecutor's argument reinforced the error by taking advantage of the ambiguity in the factor k instruction. He urged the jury to discount appellant's mitigating evidence as just something that is an attempt to get you to feel some sympathy, to get you to feel sorry for the defendant. Instead, the prosecutor argued, I submit to you that, you know, in order to find it to be a mitigating circumstance, you have got to find, somehow, that it is something, it has something to do with the crime because [factor k] asks you to, a circumstance that extenuates the gravity of the crime.... In light of the absence of clarifying instructions on the subject of mitigating evidence and the nature of the balancing process, it is likely that the jury was misled as to the scope of its sentencing discretion under applicable statutory and constitutional principles and there is a reasonable possibility the penalty verdict was affected. The judgment of death must be reversed.