Court Opinion

ID: 9628851
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 09:33:11.249861+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:07:12.426562
License: Public Domain

MOSK, J., Concurring and Dissenting.
I concur generally in the court’s opinion. However, I have two reservations.
First, the court approves of a procedure by which questions from jurors to a witness would be repeated by the counsel who produced the witness. Admittedly, there may be a certain logic to that method.
However, not infrequently the question from the juror may be interpreted as being antagonistic to the position of counsel and to the posture of the witness. It would be difficult for counsel to put the question in an impartial manner.
For that reason, I would prefer to require the trial court, rather than either counsel, to restate the juror’s question to the witness. As observed in People v. McAlister (1985) 167 Cal.App.3d 633, 644 [213 Cal.Rptr. 271]: “[W]hen the court permits a juror to propound questions to a witness, the juror, to some extent at least, represents the court.”
While it may not be error for the trial court to permit counsel to restate the juror’s question to the witness, I maintain it would be preferable for the court to reframe the query in appropriate form and ask it of the witness itself.
Second, I believe it was error for the trial court to refuse the request of the jury to view the prison cell and environment provided prisoners who have been sentenced to life imprisonment without possibility of parole. Obviously, the jury was' giving serious consideration to what punishment would be appropriate for this defendant.
Over many years, there has been considerable public discussion concerning the method of imposing the penalty of death, from hanging to lethal gas to lethal injection. Most members of the public, including jurors, are likely to have a point of view on the several alternatives, though they know the ultimate result is the same: death. That certainly is not true, however, of the *434type of confinement imposed on life-without-possibility-of-parole inmates in our prison system. Surely for such inmates, prison is not a pleasant country club. The restrictive facilities for prisoners who are never to be beneficiaries of parole, and the constraints to which they are subjected, are matters that may properly be considered by the jury in determining the appropriate punishment.
A visit to prison facilities for the 12 jurors in this case could easily have been arranged, and, since it was requested by them, it must have had some significance in their deliberations. It should not have been refused.
With the foregoing exceptions, I concur in the court’s opinion.
Appellant’s petition for a rehearing was denied September 2, 1998.