Opinion ID: 1355634
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Requirement of Extreme Mental Distress

Text: (14) Defendant next asserts the court erred in instructing (in the statutory language) that the jury could consider whether defendant was influenced by extreme mental or emotional disturbance when the offense was committed. Defendant suggests that confining the evidence to an extreme condition improperly limited the scope of the mitigating evidence admissible at the penalty phase. The point was rejected in People v. Ghent, supra, 43 Cal.3d 739, 776, and need not be reconsidered here. (See also People v. Brown (1988) 46 Cal.3d 432, 457-458 [250 Cal. Rptr. 604, 758 P.2d 1135].) Defendant argues that Ghent, supra, 43 Cal.3d 739, is distinguishable. He observes that in the present case the prosecutor minimized the significance of the evidence of defendant's mental distress arising from his childhood experiences and the breakup of his marriage. The prosecutor questioned whether such distress would amount to an extreme disturbance, but he stopped short of asking the jury to ignore such evidence as legally irrelevant to the penalty issue. Moreover, the court expressly instructed the jury (through a modification of the standard statutory language) that it could consider any aspect of defendant's character that he offered as a basis for a sentence less than death. We conclude that Ghent controls here.