Court Opinion

ID: 9583255
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:36:31.879922+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:38:54.120600
License: Public Domain

SCHAUER, J.
I dissent from the order denying a rehearing. In addition to what is said in my dissent from the main opinion I wish to emphasize that the effect of the majority opinion is to deprive each defendant of his life without due process of law and in the taking of his life to deny to him the equal protection of the law.
It is concededly the law of California that in first degree murder cases the penalty is not mandatorily death but is, in the alternative, either life imprisonment or death, in the sole discretion of the jury trying the case. (Pen. Code, § 190; *102People v. Bollinger (1925), 196 Cal. 191, 207 [237 P. 25]; People v. Martin (1938), 12 Cal.2d 466, 471 [85 P.2d 880]; People v. Smith (1939), 13 Cal.2d 223, 229 [88 P.2d 682].) The state Constitution (art. I, §§ 7, 13) and the statutes (Pen. Code, §§ 190, 1042, 1157) give to a defendant charged with murder the right, where he does not waive a jury trial, to have the jury determine not only the question of his guilt or innocence and the question of the class and degree of the offense, but also, if the offense be murder of the first degree, the penalty to be imposed. The law does not give any preference to either penalty but leaves such selection solely to the jury, and it requires that the jury be unanimous in its determination of the penalty as it must be unanimous on the questions of guilt and class or degree of the crime. (People v. Lee Gow (1918), 38 Cal.App. 248, 250 [175 P. 917]; People v. Garcia (1929), 98 Cal.App. 702, 704 [277 P. 747]; People v. Richardson (1934), 138 Cal.App. 404 [32 P.2d 433].)
Pertinent in this connection is the following discussion by this court (speaking through Mr. Justice Shenk) in People v. Hall (1926), 199 Cal. 451, 456-458 [249 P. 859] (although this court there approved, by way of dictum, the practice of permitting a jury to evade express recognition of its responsibility by instructing them that the death sentence would be imposed, and by imposing such sentence, when the verdict was silent upon the subject of penalty) : “From a consideration of our decisions it appears to be the settled law of this state that in the trial on a charge of murder it is first incumbent upon the jury to determine the guilt or innocence of the accused. If he be found guilty of murder in the first degree it is then incumbent on the jury to fix the penalty. . . . Under the law the verdict in such a ease must be the result of the unanimous agreement of the jurors and the verdict is incomplete unless, as returned, it embraces the two necessary constituent elements; first, a finding that the accused is guilty of murder in the first degree, and, secondly, legal evidence that the jury has fixed the penalty in the exercise of its discretion. ... It was the duty of the jury to exercise its discretion and fix the penalty. Failing to do so no penalty was determined upon. The jury could not exercise its discretion and not exercise it in one and the same verdict. When a verdict, such as the one here under consideration [such verdict was, “We, the jury . . ., find the defendant . . . guilty of the crime of murder as charged in *103the indictment, of the first degree. But cannot come to an unanimous agreement as to degree of punishment”], discloses on its face that such discretion was not exercised as to either penalty it is not a verdict upon which the court is authorized to pronounce judgment of either death or life imprisonment. In receiving such a verdict and in imposing the sentence of death upon the defendant, the court usurped the function of the jury and its judgment was a nullity. The proceeding therefore resulted in a mistrial and the judgment must be reversed. ... We cannot agree that the defect in the verdict was merely an error in ‘matter of procedure’ as contemplated by . . . section 4% [of art. VI of the state Const.]. On the contrary the defect involved matter of substantial and substantive right. It was in effect the denial of a trial by jury. The amendment by which said section 4% was added to the constitution was not ‘ designed to repeal or abrogate the guarantees accorded persons accused of crime by other parts of the same constitution, or to overthrow all statutory rules of procedure and evidence in criminal cases’ [citations]. Trial by jury is guaranteed to every person charged with a felony and the denial of that right is in itself a miscarriage of justice. . . . [H]owever degraded and hardened a criminal the evidence may disclose an accused to be, he is entitled under the constitution to trial by jury. In legal effect this right was denied to the defendant in the case at bar. The proceedings before the trial court [which imposed the death sentence] amounted to the same as if the court had denied the defendant a trial by jury in the first instance and, having heard the evidence and found the defendant guilty, proceeded to impose the judgment of death. Such a judgment may not stand even though there be the clearest proof of guilt.”
There is no question of the power of the Legislature to provide that a defendant shall have the right to have his punishment determined by a jury in its sole discretion. But, under the holding of the majority of this court, the right is meaningless and unenforceable and can be stripped away at the whim of a trial court; a trial court can, if it so desires, arbitrarily deprive a defendant of the right to jury trial on the particular issue by informing the jury that, contrary to the legislative provision, their discretion as to choice of penalty “is to be employed only when the jury is satisfied that the lighter penalty should be imposed. If the evidence . . . *104does not show some extenuating facts or circumstances, it is the duty of the jury to find a simple verdict of murder in the first degree as to such defendant, and leave with the law the responsibility of fixing the punishment.” According to this instruction the jury has no responsibility for imposing the extreme penalty. If it is not satisfied from evidence of extenuating or mitigating circumstances that the lighter penalty should be imposed, it need make no determination as to punishment; it can simply arrive at a verdict of guilty, remain silent as to penalty, and leave responsibility with “the law”—the law as declared by this court, not by the Legislature. These defendants go to their deaths without the return of any verdict of the jury unanimously, as the act of each of the 12 jurors, selecting death as the punishment to be inflicted. The penalty to be imposed upon them has been fixed, not in the manner or upon the responsibility prescribed by the Legislature, but by court-made “law” which contravenes the express provision of the Legislature.
Trial courts may instruct juries in accord with section 190 of the Penal Code (I assume that this court would not hold it error for a trial court thus to obey the legislative mandate) or they may instruct them in accord with the law as this court has declared it. Upon what whimsy shall the fatal selection of paradoxically conflicting instructions be made? 'Death sentences may be imposed after verdicts fixing such penalty or they may be imposed after verdicts which fix no penalty. The choice of procedure may be governed by any reason or no reason, but always by whim or caprice. It must always be by whim or caprice because there is no law enacted by the Legislature, and none has been judicially declared by this court, by which the choice of the mandatory law-imposed death penalty instruction or the discretionary life imprisonment instruction shall be selected.
In my view the processes of law are not duly administered, and equal protection of the law is not given to all within the class of persons found guilty of first degree murder, when some are sentenced to death only upon the unanimous and express decision of a jury and others are sentenced to death because of the silence of a jury and the leaving of the penalty “to the law”—“the law” as capriciously declared in the particular case by the trial court with the assured approval of this court.
Carter, J., and Traynor, J., concurred.