Opinion ID: 2600593
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Asserted vagueness

Text: Defendant contends the instruction is impermissibly vague and ambiguous because of the phrase so substantial in the final sentence: To return a judgment of death each of you must be persuaded that the aggravating circumstances are so substantial in comparison with the mitigating circumstances that it warrants death instead of life. Defendant notes that the Georgia Supreme Court found that the word substantial rendered an instruction impermissibly vague in a capital case. ( Arnold v. State (1976) 236 Ga. 534 [224 S.E.2d 386] ( Arnold ).) Georgia's statutory scheme described an aggravating circumstance that would support the imposition of a sentence of death as follows: `The offense of murder ... was committed by a person ... who has a substantial history of serious assaultive criminal convictions.' ( Id., 224 S.E.2d at p. 391.) The Georgia court concluded that [w]hether the defendant's prior history of convictions meets this legislative criterion is highly subjective. ( Id. at p. 392.) (8) We rejected defendant's contention in People v. Breaux (1991) 1 Cal.4th 281 [3 Cal.Rptr.2d 81, 821 P.2d 585] ( Breaux ), which evaluated basically identical language in CALJIC former No. 8.84.2 (1986 rev.). We explained in Breaux that the instructions as a whole adequately conveyed to the jury the appropriate manner of performing its task, and that the instruction concerning the weighing of aggravating and mitigating circumstances essentially informed the jury that it may return a death verdict only if aggravating circumstances predominate[] and death is the appropriate verdict. ( Breaux, supra, at p. 316.) We added that the differences between the use of substantial in the Georgia instruction in Arnold, supra, 224 S.E.2d 386, and the use of substantial in CALJIC No. 8.84.2 in Breaux were obvious. ( Breaux, supra, at p. 316, fn. 14.) Defendant complains that our decision in Breaux did not specify the differences between Arnold and Breaux. Defendant's assertion that the two cases are analogous is based upon the presence of the word substantial in both of the challenged jury instructions, and does not take into account the context of the use of substantial in each case. The jurors in Arnold were called upon to decide, in isolation and without further guidance, whether a defendant's prior criminal record was substantial, whereas the jurors in the present case were instructed extensively with respect to the manner of performing their task and were called upon to compare the totality of the aggravating circumstances with the totality of the mitigating circumstances. The instructions adequately explained that the jurors could return a death verdict only if aggravating circumstances predominated and death is the appropriate verdict. ( Breaux, supra, at p. 316.)