Court Opinion

ID: 9792474
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:29:51.917649+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:43.119307
License: Public Domain

ARABIAN, J., Concurring.
Although I concur fully in Justice Eagleson’s thorough and well reasoned majority opinion, I am constrained to state separately my views concerning the prosecutor’s use of a homemade scale during penalty phase argument. This issue is the principal basis of a dissent by Justice Broussard.
*1262I agree with the majority’s conclusion that, viewed in context, the jury was not misled as to the scope of its sentencing discretion. (People v. Brown (1985) 40 Cal.3d 512, 544, fn. 17 [220 Cal.Rptr. 637, 709 P.2d 440].) The use of the scale and the prosecutor’s accompanying remarks could not reasonably have confused a jury otherwise informed that counsel’s remarks were not evidence, that the deliberative process involved a “weighing” rather than a “counting” of relevant factors, and that the jury itself was to assign values to those factors and to impose the sentence it deemed “just and fair.”
It is not enough, however, simply to dismiss the scale illustration as harmless. The use of such demonstrative evidence, even in good faith, strikes at the core principles on which our system is founded. Fair play and substantial justice are the articles of faith to which all involved in the administration of criminal justice subscribe and to which all are constitutionally bound. Prosecutorial tactics such as those exhibited here push against the very limits of acceptable behavior under this rubric. While I am persuaded that the line was not crossed, I am equally certain that this court’s tolerance for such tactics nears its brim.