Court Opinion

ID: 9548714
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 18:07:37.525193+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:19:20.794419
License: Public Domain

LUCAS, C. J., Concurring and Dissenting.
I concur in the judgment to the extent it would affirm the guilt judgment and special circumstance finding. I respectfully dissent, however, to the reversal of penalty on the grounds specified by the lead opinion. In my view, we have affirmed penalty judgments in cases involving prosecutorial argument far more questionable than was involved here.
Defendant, acting in pro. per., introduced no evidence at the penalty phase and made no penalty argument. (As he stated, “I can’t mitigate the circumstances of something I didn’t do.”) The prosecutor, likewise declin*887ing to present any penalty phase evidence, gave a brief argument (comprising only two pages of transcript) which basically emphasized the circumstances of the offenses, and the lack of any legal or moral justification for them. (No suggestion whatever was made that the absence of such justification was an affirmative aggravating circumstance.) The prosecutor referred to the fact that defendant had asserted no mitigating evidence, but instead of urging a death sentence he simply left the “difficult choice” of the “appropriate” penalty decision to the jury. A milder prosecutorial argument would be difficult to find.
The lead opinion would reverse penalty because of (1) the giving of the standard, unadorned jury instructions (directing the jury to impose death if aggravating factors outweigh mitigating ones), (2) the absence of any defense argument, (3) the prosecutor’s supposedly misleading remarks, and (4) the charging of two multiple-murder special circumstances where only one was involved (there were only two victims).
The critical ground would appear to be the prosecutor’s remarks, for we have never suggested that reversal of a penalty judgment could be founded on the other enumerated grounds in the absence of misleading prosecutorial argument. Yet I fail to see anything improper about the brief argument presented here—the prosecutor merely stressed the importance of two of the various sentencing factors, the circumstances of the offense, and defendant’s lack of legal or moral justification for the offense.
Indeed, the prosecutor’s concluding remarks were unusually favorable to the defendant, for the prosecutor declined to take a position on the matter of penalty. Surely the prosecutor was not expected to go further, assume the role of defense counsel and make arguments regarding possibly applicable mitigating circumstances. Yet the lead opinion appears to require precisely that, for it stresses that the prosecutor “failed to acknowledge the existence of mitigating circumstances and strongly implied there were none.” {Ante, p. 884.) Again, in my view, a prosecutor must be given broad leeway to characterize the evidence as he deems appropriate. He certainly cannot be expected to make defendant’s arguments for him.
The lead opinion characterizes the prosecutor’s brief, innocent remarks as “an inquiry into whether the capital offenses were in any way justified or excused,” rather than a determination of the appropriate penalty. {Ante, p. 884.) I fail to see how the prosecutor’s emphasis on the crime, and the lack of justification for its commission, was in any way improper. Prosecutors frequently and properly stress the fact that the offenses were heinous, brutal and lacking in any moral or legal justification.
*888For the foregoing reasons, I cannot agree with the lead opinion’s reversal of penalty.
Panelli, J., and Eagleson, J., concurred.