Court Opinion

ID: 9605990
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 02:44:52.364477+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:36:34.870096
License: Public Domain

*485SCHAUER, J.
I dissent. On the question of punishment the trial court instructed the jury that “If the entire evidence does not show some extenuating fact or circumstance it is your duty to find a simple verdict of murder and leave with the law the responsibility of fixing the punishment.” The law does not bear “the responsibility of fixing the punishment” ; on the contrary the law places that responsibility squarely on the jury. If the jury followed the quoted instruction, and we cannot assume that they did not, then they did not discharge their “responsibility of fixing the punishment”; on the contrary they left “with the law” the responsibility which was theirs. Thus was trial by jury, on the issue of his life or his death, denied the defendant.
All that I would say further on this aspect of the case has already been said, and most forcefully, by Mr. Justice Shenk in People v. Hall (1926), 199 Cal. 451, 456-458 [249 P. 859]. The language is equally applicable here. “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. . . . The result of the exercise of that discretion must appear on the face of the verdict either by the use of specific words to express it or in the absence of such words by necessary inference in the light of the instructions. ... [p. 458] We cannot agree that the defect in the verdict [failure to show exercise by the jury of its discretion as to punishment] was merely an error in ‘matter of procedure’ as contemplated by . . . section 4% [of article VI of the state Constitution]. On the contrary the defect involved matter of substantial and substantive right. It was in effect the denial of a trial by jury. . . . 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 *486effect this right was denied to the defendant in the case at bar.” (Italics added.)
Not only has the defendant in this case in effect been denied the right of trial by jury on the issue of punishment but also, for the reasons which are elucidated in my dissent on denial of rehearing in People v. Williams (1948), 32 Cal.2d 78, 100-104 [195 P.2d 393], he has been denied equal protection of the law. (See, also, 36 Cal.L.Rev. (Dec., 1948) 628-634.)
For the reasons stated I would reverse the judgment and remand the cause for a new trial.
Carter, J., and Traynor, J., concurred.