Opinion ID: 2545831
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: Defendant's Letter to Michael Weber

Text: Defendant seeks reversal of the death judgment based on three sentences in a letter defendant wrote to Weber's brother Michael. At the guilt phase, Michael Weber read the letter to the jury, and the letter itself was admitted in evidence. During guilt phase deliberations, the jury asked to see the letter, and the trial court granted that request. At the close of the penalty phase, the trial court instructed under CALJIC No. 8.85 that jurors in penalty phase deliberations could consider all evidence presented at both phases of the trial unless otherwise instructed. The court did not instruct jurors to disregard defendant's letter to Michael Weber. Defendant's letter to Michael Weber, quoted in full, 2 Cal.Rptr.3d on page 566, 73 P.3d on page 443, ante, stated that defendant's role in the Weber killing was as a tool used by other people. The three sentences defendant now objects to are these: After I'm executed or if I am executed those `other people' will still be out there. Sometimes I wish they would be executed right along beside me. They deserve it also in my opinion. (Italics added.) Defendant contends that the three sentences conveyed to penalty phase jurors that defendant thought he deserved to die for Weber's murder. This, he asserts, violated the federal Constitution's Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments in addition to California law because a capital defendant's opinion regarding the appropriate penalty for his crimes [is] irrelevant to the jury's penalty decision. ( People v. Danielson (1992) 3 Cal.4th 691, 715, 13 Cal.Rptr.2d 1, 838 P.2d 729; see Johnson v. Mississippi (1988) 486 U.S. 578, 585, 108 S.Ct. 1981, 100 L.Ed.2d 575.) Defendant also claims a violation of the Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of trial counsel because his lawyers failed to object to the jury's hearing and seeing the three sentences in the letter. According to defendant, the three sentences prejudicially skewed the penalty determination, which he asserts was close because the jury deciding penalty struggled for three days. Because there was no objection to permitting penalty phase consideration of the three sentences in defendant's letter to Weber, the issue of trial court error has not been preserved. In any event, it lacks merit as does defendant's claim of ineffective assistance of trial counsel. Only a strained reading of the quoted passage, overemphasizing the word also, might support an inference that defendant thought everyone responsible for the Weber killing deserved the death penalty. The gist of the entire letter, however, was a threat to Michael Weber that notwithstanding that defendant was in custody and could be executed, other people responsible for his brother's murder will still be out there. Considered in that context, jurors would have understood that phrase to mean that those other people shared with defendant equal responsibility for killing Weber, not that defendant, who by presenting a substantial case in mitigation was actively fighting a death verdict, truly believed that he deserved to die.