Court Opinion

ID: 9587882
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:27:33.966459+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:08:26.607716
License: Public Domain

KAUS, J.
 I concur in full in the reasoning and conclusions of the majority opinion with the exception of part III (a).1 With respect to that part, I concur only in the result.
Assuming, as I must in light of Hovey v. Superior Court (1980) 28 Cal.3d 1 [168 Cal.Rptr. 128, 616 P.2d 1301], that it has not yet been established that the “death qualification” procedure results in a jury that is biased against a defendant on the issue of guilt or innocence, I believe that the state’s interest in having a single jury determine the defendant’s guilt or innocence and decide whether he should live or die, is sufficient to justify the exclusion from the guilt phase of those jurors who cannot sit at the penalty phase because they are unalterably opposed to the death penalty. As the majority recognizes {ante, pp. 351-352), the use of a single jury in capital cases serves a number of significant substantive purposes beyond the more obvious savings in time and expense.
I would rest the holding in part in (a) solely on the weightiness of the justifications supporting a single jury procedure in death penalty cases, without deciding whether “guilt phase indudables” are—in the abstract—a “cognizable class” for Duren purposes. In addition, because of the obvious differences between peremptory challenges and broad statutory exclusions, I would not suggest that simply because an individual who holds a particular *375viewpoint may properly be the subject of a peremptory challenge under Wheeler, no cross-sectional-jury problems would be raised by a statutory across-the-board exclusion of all individuals who entertain similar views. As I see it, the constitutional standards governing the two situations—peremptory challenges, on the one hand, and statutory exclusions, on the other—are not necessarily the same.2

My concurrence in part HI (b) rests on my understanding that—in light of footnotes 11 and 13, pages 381, 384, ante—the majority does not intend to approve the routine framing of the Witherspoon inquiry in the form of a question which asks prospective jurors whether they would consider the death penalty “in this case,” but rather that the opinion simply finds no prejudice here where it appears that the jurors to whom the question was posed had no knowledge of any facts of this case beyond the bare language of the charged special circumstances. I certainly agree that the triad court did not err in precluding defendant from attempting to rehabilitate Witherspoon-exdudable jurors by asking such hypothetical questions as whether they would consider the death penalty if the defendant were Adolf Hitler.

 As in People v. Easley (1983) 34 Cal.3d 858 [196 Cal.Rptr. 309, 671 P.2d 813], the State Public Defender has filed an amicus brief in support of a grant of a rehearing in this case in which he raises a host of issues that were not presented by appointed counsel before we filed our opinion in this case. Although in Easley I felt that the seriousness and fundamental nature of the errors raised by the public defender necessitated a grant of a rehearing, in this case I believe that the general interest in an orderly presentation and resolution of issues would be best served by leaving defendant free to raise the newly discovered issues in appropriate collateral proceedings. (E.g., In re Banks (1971) 4 Cal.3d 337 [93 Cal.Rptr. 591, 482 P.2d 215]; In re Smith (1970) 3 Cal.3d 192 [90 Cal.Rptr. 1, 474 P.2d 969]; In re Saunders (1970) 2 Cal.3d 1033 [88 Cal.Rptr. 633, 472 P.2d 921]; cf. People v. Lang (1974) 11 Cal.3d 134, 141 [113 Cal.Rptr. 9, 520 P.2d 393].) The public defender’s voluminous brief here—coming so quickly on the heels of the similar presentation in Easley—suggests to me that it is unrealistic to expect us to unearth all potentially meritorious claims of error on our own in cases of this length and complexity. Granting a rehearing whenever a new claim of error is presented has the disadvantage of denying lower courts the benefit of this court’s definitive resolution of those issues which we have already considered and addressed. Because many of these issues continue to arise in current death penalty litigation, guidance on which trial courts can rely is particularly important. Given these considerations, I have concluded that I should vote to deny the petition for rehearing. y