Opinion ID: 2509294
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Informing Jury of NGI Plea

Text: Defendant entered dual pleas of guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity (NGI). Where such dual pleas are entered, section 1026, subdivision (a) (section 1026) provides for a bifurcated trial. [11] The trial court told counsel it would inform prospective jurors that defendant had entered an NGI plea. Defense counsel objected that it would be prejudicial to do so. The trial court responded: I think the jury needs to be advised of the plea and just what they're facing in this case. In the voir dire proceedings that followed, two prospective jurors were excused for cause, one because he told the court that, if the prosecution proved the defendant guilty, he could not accept an insanity defense, and the other because she did not understand the burden of proof would shift during a sanity phase. Defendant contends that informing prospective jurors about his NGI plea violated the spirit of section 1026, and various constitutional protections including the privilege against self-incrimination and the presumption of innocence. Nothing in the statute, either expressly or by implication, bars the trial court from informing prospective jurors about a defendant's NGI plea, and defendant fails to articulate a basis for his claim of statutory violation. His constitutional claims are based on the premise that the jury would have been so prejudiced by having learned of his NGI plea it would have been unable to impartially determine his guilt. A similar claim was made and rejected in People v. Guillebeau (1980) 107 Cal.App.3d 531, 166 Cal.Rptr. 45. There, the court remarked: As to the contention that once the jury learns of the double plea it cannot approach the question of guilt in an impartial way, it is sufficient to cite the following passage from People v. Leong Fook [(1928)] 206 Cal. 64 at page 78, 273 P. 779: `We must assume that a fair and impartial jury of intelligent men and women would obey . . . instructions and would therefore hold in reserve their ultimate finding upon the issue of the defendant's sanity until that separate issue and the evidence supporting it had, in the prescribed order of the trial, been committed to it for determination. We are not to assume that such a jury will cease to be fair and impartial as the cause progresses upon its successive issues, but, on the contrary, we must assume, in the absence of any other showing, that the jury has retained its attitude of fairness and impartiality under the changed procedure as before until the whole cause . . . has been determined.' ( Id. at p. 543, 166 Cal.Rptr. 45.) We agree with this analysis. Defendant's claim that the jury was prejudiced by learning about his double plea at the outset of trial is wholly speculative. There was no error and, necessarily, no constitutional violations.