Court Opinion

ID: 9497522
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:53:13.100652+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:58:14.583533
License: Public Domain

McKEOWN, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
The bedrock principles of our Eighth Amendment jurisprudence require that a state’s capital sentencing scheme must “genuinely narrow the class of persons eligible for the death penalty.” Zant v. Stephens, 462 U.S. 862, 877, 103 S.Ct. 2733, 77 L.Ed.2d 235 (1983). California’s scheme does not. The California lying-in-wait special circumstance, which triggers eligibility for the death penalty, has been expanded to such a degree that the line between premeditated murder and capital murder is but an illusory veil. To pass constitutional muster, a sentencing scheme must limit capital murders to a small realm within the universe of ordinary premeditated murders. But in California, like a Venn diagram of nearly overlapping circles, the confluence of lying-in-wait and other types of murder is virtually complete.
The Eighth Amendment analysis required in this challenge to the lying-in-wait provision confronts us with the intersection of a complex sentencing scheme and constitutional concepts that mean different things depending on the context. The questions raised in this appeal cannot be answered by a simplistic syllogism like “Not every ambush has to be from the bushes,” maj. op. at 1178, any more than I would suggest one must be lying down to *1181satisfy the lying-in-wait provision. Nor can they be resolved by applying less rigorous scrutiny taken from our Fifth Amendment precedent. Unfortunately, the majority does both. Although the majority recites the Eighth Amendment, it fails to apply the principal tenets of Eighth Amendment law. The Eighth Amendment requires that the lying-in-wait statute be narrowly construed such that individuals statutorily eligible for the death penalty under the special circumstance — that is, those for whom the jury is even allowed to consider a death sentence — are sufficiently distinguishable from and comprise a significantly narrower class than other murder defendants. Applying the constitutionally mandated level of scrutiny, the California lying-in-wait provision fails.
Michael Morales was found guilty of two special circumstances that made him eligible for the death penalty: torture and lying-in-wait. This Court previously determined that the torture murder special circumstance failed to meet the requirements of the Eighth Amendment. See Wade v. Calderon, 29 F.3d 1312, 1320 (9th Cir.1994) (holding that, in the absence of a narrowing construction, “the torture special circumstance would fail to provide a principled basis for distinguishing capital murder from any other murder”). I agree with the majority that the jury’s consideration of the torture special circumstance, in the context of this case, was harmless under either a weighing or non-weighing scheme, as long as the lying-in-wait special circumstance is valid. The critical question, then, is whether the lying-in-wait special circumstance comports with the Eighth Amendment, as Morales’s death sentence hinges on this special circumstance. This question is more difficult than the majority suggests, and ultimately I cannot agree with either the majority’s analysis or its conclusions.
Although I originally concurred in the majority’s opinion in full, upon conducting an Eighth Amendment-specific analysis, I can only conclude that the lying-in-wait special circumstance, as construed by California courts, is insufficiently narrow to pass constitutional muster. California’s three-prong test for the special circumstance has proven so permissive and penetrable that lying-in-wait murder is nearly indistinguishable from other murders. Upon reflection, and after considering Morales’s petition for rehearing and rehearing en banc, along with the brief of amici curiae, I would grant Morales’s ha-beas petition with respect to his sentence. I concur in the majority’s opinion denying his petition on the remaining grounds.
I. Fifth Amendment versus Eighth Amendment Analysis
My disagreement with the majority begins with its conflation of the specificity requirements of the Fifth and Eighth Amendments. In upholding his sentence of death, the majority answers Morales’s Eighth Amendment challenge by concluding that the lying-in-wait special circumstance is constitutional because it does not apply to every defendant convicted of murder. See Maj. Op. at 1175. Although the inquiry under both amendments asks whether there is a meaningful distinction between those individuals that are eligible for the sentence and those that are not, the two inquiries are substantively dissimilar.
The Eighth Amendment demands that the death penalty not be administered in a way that is cruel and unusual. Towards this end, the criteria that make defendants eligible for the death penalty — which in California are termed “special circumstances” — must “genuinely narrow the class of persons eligible for the death penalty and must reasonably justify the impo*1182sition of a more severe sentence on the defendant compared to others found guilty of murder.” Romano v. Oklahoma, 512 U.S. 1, 7, 114 S.Ct. 2004, 129 L.Ed.2d 1 (1994) (quoting Zant, 462 U.S. at 877, 103 S.Ct. 2733). Eighth Amendment narrowing is also accomplished by the states’ “constitutional responsibility to tailor and apply its law in a manner that avoids the arbitrary and capricious infliction of the death penalty.” Godfrey v. Georgia, 446 U.S. 420, 428, 100 S.Ct. 1759, 64 L.Ed.2d 398 (1980). Thus, aggravating circumstances must not be unconstitutionally vague. See Tuilaepa v. California, 512 U.S. 967, 972, 114 S.Ct. 2630, 129 L.Ed.2d 750 (1994).
Although the Fifth Amendment also demands that laws not be unconstitutionally vague, the vagueness inquiry is not parallel to the Eighth Amendment analysis. Under the Fifth Amendment, due process is satisfied so long as “a penal statute define[s] the criminal offense with sufficient definiteness that ordinary people can understand what conduct is prohibited and in a manner that does not encourage arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement.” Houston v. Roe, 177 F.3d 901, 907 (9th Cir.1999) (citing Kolender v. Lawson, 461 U.S. 352, 357, 103 S.Ct. 1855, 75 L.Ed.2d 903 (1983)).
The difference between the constitutional inquiries applied under the Fifth and Eighth Amendments can be simply stated: the Fifth Amendment only looks for the existence of a line between the categories of murder, whereas under the Eighth Amendment, that line must be drawn in the right place — where capital murder is a small fraction of first degree murder. In other words, a void-for-vagueness challenge under the Due Process Clause asks whether the statutory language distinguishes among classes of murder so that defendants have proper notice, whereas a challenge under the Eighth Amendment’s cruel and unusual punishment clause asks whether the statute sufficiently narrows the application of the death penalty. Compare Kolender, 461 U.S. at 357, 103 S.Ct. 1855 (under due process, void-for-vagueness doctrine requires a penal statute to define criminal offense with sufficient definiteness that ordinary people can understand what conduct is prohibited and in a manner that does not encourage arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement) and Houston, 177 F.3d at 907 (with reference to a due process challenge, the “legislature and courts have created a thin but meaningfully distinguishable line”) with Godfrey v. Georgia, 446 U.S. 420, 427-28, 100 S.Ct. 1759, 64 L.Ed.2d 398 (1980) (under the Eighth Amendment, capital sentencing scheme must provide a meaningful basis for distinguishing the few cases in which the penalty is imposed from the many cases in which it is not).
The questions asked under the two Amendments make it easy to fall prey to mixing and matching the substantive analysis for each. Both look to see if the statutes or the state court’s interpretations of the statutes meaningfully distinguish among classes of defendants so that the penalty is not imposed in an arbitrary and capricious manner. But while the two inquiries are linguistically similar, the phrase “meaningfully distinguish” assumes significantly different meanings under each analysis. By substituting one standard for the other, the majority fails to apply the proper scrutiny to the California lying-in-wait special circumstance.
Although the majority opinion does not cite to Houston in its Eighth Amendment analysis, the majority’s reasoning suggests a reliance on Houston’s Fifth Amendment vagueness analysis when it attempts to demonstrate that the lying-in-wait special circumstance passes Eighth Amendment scrutiny simply because murder scenarios *1183exist that would fall outside the lying-in-wait criteria. This reasoning misses the point of the Eighth Amendment requirement of narrowness. In Houston, we concluded that, for Fifth Amendment purposes, the difference between murder while lying in wait, under the special circumstance, and murder by means of lying in wait, under the first degree murder provision, constitutes “a thin but meaningfully distinguishable line between first degree murder lying in wait and special circumstances lying in wait.” 177 F.3d at 907. The majority acknowledges that Houston did not consider an Eighth Amendment challenge, but nonetheless invokes the logic of Houston to uphold the constitutionality of this particular death eligibility criterion under the Eighth Amendment. This approach, although semantically smooth, is flawed.
Houston’s Fifth Amendment analysis cannot be stretched so wide that it swallows Morales’s Eighth Amendment claim. Although the majority is correct that Morales’s Fifth Amendment due process argument is foreclosed by Houston, the Houston court never reached the Eighth Amendment cruel and unusual punishment question. Houston in fact lacked standing to bring such a challenge because he was not sentenced to death. Id. at 905. As Houston expressly acknowledged, a Fifth Amendment challenge to a death penalty sentencing scheme differs significantly from an Eighth Amendment challenge. Id. at 907-08 & n. 1. (declining to reach Eighth Amendment challenge to application of the death penalty but deciding Fifth Amendment void-for-vagueness challenge).
The Supreme Court’s decision in Maynard v. Cartwright, 486 U.S. 356, 108 S.Ct. 1853, 100 L.Ed.2d 372 (1988), illustrates the distinction between the levels of scrutiny under each challenge. In Maynard, the Court considered an Eighth Amendment challenge to Oklahoma’s “especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel” statutory aggravating circumstance, which makes a defendant eligible for the death penalty. In its defense, the State argued that the statutory provision was not unconstitutionally vague because certain classes of convicted murderers would fall outside its definition. The Court rejected this approach: “The difficulty with the State’s argument is that it presents a Due Process Clause approach to vagueness and fails to recognize the rationale of our cases construing and applying the Eighth Amendment.” Id. at 361, 108 S.Ct. 1853.
Here, the majority adopts the rationale rejected in Maynard. The majority posits that the California lying-in-wait special circumstance does not violate the Eighth Amendment because the special circumstance “embraces some first-degree murders, but not all.” Maj. Op. at 1175. This rationale mistakes the Fifth Amendment for the Eighth Amendment and ignores the differences between the requirements of the two amendments. Although Houston found a “thin but meaningful distinction” with respect to the due process problem of notice, the due process bar is not only different but is also lower than what the Eighth Amendment requires under Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, 92 S.Ct. 2726, 33 L.Ed.2d 346 (1972), and its progeny. That is, a statute may very well satisfy due process because adequate notice only demands that statutes distinguish crimes in a way that “embraces some ... but not all.” But the very same statute would nonetheless fail to meet the requirements of the Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause if it does not “genuinely narrow the class of persons eligible for the death penalty and ... reasonably justify the imposition of a more severe sentence on the defendant compared to others found guilty of murder.” Zant, 462 U.S. at 877, 103 S.Ct. 2733.
*1184The majority’s reliance on Tuilaepa v. California does not cure its problematic bootstrapping of the Fifth Amendment vagueness analysis. Despite the logical neatness with which the majority attempts to present the relationship among Houston, Tuilaepa, and the present case, the analysis is not parallel. Tuilaepa considered and rejected a narrowness challenge against jury discretion in sentencing a defendant to death during the penalty phase, not a narrowness challenge against eligibility for the death penalty. 512 U.S. at 980, 114 S.Ct. 2630. No special circumstance was at issue, and thus the case does not inform our understanding of what the Eighth Amendment requires with respect to death eligibility — the issue now before us.
Because the concept of narrowness is so crucial to proper Eighth Amendment scrutiny, as well as in distinguishing Tuilaepa, a few words of background are helpful. The Eighth Amendment requires that the types of conduct that render a defendant eligible for the death penalty must be sufficiently narrow to result in a significantly small subclass of murder defendants who qualify for death penalty consideration. This narrowing occurs at a stage known as “death eligibility.” The Eighth Amendment also requires that the actual selection of the death penalty as punishment for an individual defendant must meet certain criteria, such as having proper consideration of aggravating and mitigating circumstances. This narrowing occurs at a stage known as “death selection.” Although the Eighth Amendment demands that capital sentencing schemes sufficiently narrow the possible application of the death penalty at both death eligibility and death selection, the concept of narrowness takes on different forms of analysis during the two stages.
At the first stage, eligibility for the death penalty must be restricted to a class of crimes in which death is a proportionate punishment. See, e.g., Coker v. Georgia, 433 U.S. 584, 595-96, 97 S.Ct. 2861, 53 L.Ed.2d 982 (1977) (death penalty as punishment for rape unconstitutional). Eligibility for the death penalty is not a matter of juror discretion. “Eligibility factors almost of necessity require an answer to a question with a factual nexus to the crime or the defendant so as to ‘make rationally reviewable the process for imposing a sentence of death.’ ” Tuilaepa, 512 U.S. at 973, 114 S.Ct. 2630 (quoting Arave v. Creech, 507 U.S. 463, 471, 113 S.Ct. 1534, 123 L.Ed.2d 188 (1993)).
At the second stage, the Eighth Amendment requires the actual selection of the death penalty for a particular defendant be based upon an individualized determination directed to the individual and the circumstances of the crime. See Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U.S. 586, 601, 98 S.Ct. 2954, 57 L.Ed.2d 973 (1978); Woodson v. North Carolina, 428 U.S. 280, 304, 96 S.Ct. 2978, 49 L.Ed.2d 944 (1976). Because of the constitutional demand for greater consideration of the individual at the selection phase, state sentencing schemes must afford juries greater discretion in the selection phase than the eligibility phase. See Tuilaepa, 512 U.S. at 973, 114 S.Ct. 2630.
Thus, narrowing is achieved in different ways at the two stages, and as a result, analysis of death selection in Tuilaepa cannot serve as a substitute for the required analysis of death eligibility. Nor is the fact that a statute fulfills the requirements of due process, as in Houston, dispositive of whether it is sufficiently narrow to meet Eighth Amendment standards. It is thus improper to extend the “thin but meaningful” distinction of Houston and not separately analyze whether the lying-in-wait special circumstance is sufficiently narrow under the Eighth Amendment. I turn now to that analysis.
*1185II. Eighth Amendment Analysis: Death Eligibility in California
Morales argues that the lying-in-wait special circumstance is unconstitutional under the Supreme Court’s Eighth Amendment jurisprudence. I agree. The California Supreme Court’s formulation of the limiting construction is so porous that it fails to strain out non-death eligible murders in a constitutionally meaningful way. See People v. Morales, 48 Cal.3d 527, 257 Cal.Rptr. 64, 770 P.2d 244 (1989).
A. Scope of Review
Review of an Eighth Amendment narrowing challenge is constrained by the Supreme Court’s decision in Arave v. Creech. At issue in Arave was an Eighth Amendment challenge to Idaho’s death penalty statute, which made a “cold-blooded, pitiless slayer” death eligible. The Court upheld the statute because the Idaho Supreme Court had adopted a limiting construction that satisfied constitutional requirements. See Arave, 507 U.S. at 471, 113 S.Ct. 1534.
In rejecting a claim that Idaho failed to apply its limiting construction consistently, the Court cautioned: “Under our precedents, a federal court may consider state court formulations of a limiting construction to ensure that they are consistent. But our decisions do not authorize review of state court cases to determine whether a limiting construction has been applied consistently.” Id. at 477, 113 S.Ct. 1534 (emphasis in original). That is, a reviewing court may not consider a claim of unconstitutionality on the grounds that other defendants with similar circumstances did not receive like sentences. But it remains the ardent and unmitigated duty of a reviewing federal court to ensure that state courts construe death penalty sentencing schemes in consonance with the Constitution. See, e.g., Sochor v. Florida, 504 U.S. 527, 536-37, 112 S.Ct. 2114, 119 L.Ed.2d 326 (1992).
B. California’s Formulation of its Limiting Construction
The California death penalty statute under which Morales was convicted provides that anyone found guilty of murder in the first degree shall be punished by death or life without parole if “the defendant intentionally killed the victim while lying in wait.” Cal.Penal Code § 190.2(a)(15) (1989). The California Supreme Court applies a three-pronged limiting construction of the lying-in-wait special circumstance. Murder committed while lying-in-wait must contain the following elements: (1) a concealment of purpose; (2) a substantial period of watching and waiting for an opportune time to act; and, (3) immediately thereafter, a surprise attack on an unsuspecting victim from a position of advantage. See People v. Morales, 257 Cal.Rptr. 64, 770 P.2d at 260-61. Yet, far from creating “a factual matrix sufficiently distinct from ‘ordinary’ premeditated murder,” id. at 261, the lying-in-wait special circumstance reaches so far that it encompasses almost all lying-in-wait first degree murders, and as a result, also includes most premeditated murders. That is, there is virtually no line between premeditated murder and lying-in-wait first degree murder, and likewise virtually no line between lying-in-wait first degree murder and the special circumstance. Whereas the Constitution demands a funnel narrowing the pool of defendants eligible for the death penalty, California gives us a bucket. Indeed, the California Supreme Court has instructed that the lying-in-wait circumstance, as outlined in the standard jury instructions, is “the functional equivalent of proof of premeditation, deliberation and intent to kill.” People v. Ruiz, 44 Cal.3d 589, 244 Cal.Rptr. 200, 749 P.2d 854, 867 (1988).1
*1186The “concealment of purpose” prong has proven so malleable that it fails to narrow significantly the class of defendants eligible for the death penalty. And the “watching and waiting” prong, as construed by the California Supreme Court, makes it indistinguishable from any other premeditated murder. All that remains is the third prong, the “surprise” element, which, because of the way it has been interpreted, overlaps with the first prong. To me, a test in which almost anyone found guilty of premeditated murder satisfies all three parts is no test at all, and provides “no principled way to distinguish this case, in which the death penalty was imposed, from the many cases in which it was not.” Godfrey, 446 U.S. at 433, 100 S.Ct. 1759.
Ironically, the concealment prong, which by virtue of plain English adheres to the conventional and ordinary understanding of lying-in-wait as ambush, see e.g., People v. Merkouris, 46 Cal.2d 540, 297 P.2d 999, 1011-12 (1956), has been expanded rather than narrowed by the California courts. Instead of the traditional rule that lying-in-wait requires evidence of physical concealment or surprise, California has no definitive requirement for actual physical concealment. See Morales, 257 Cal.Rptr. 64, 770 P.2d at 259 (“[T]he concealment element ‘may manifest itself by either an ambush or by the creation of a situation where the victim is taken unawares even though he sees his murderer.’ ”) (emphasis in original); see also People v. Sutic, 41 Cal.2d 483, 261 P.2d 241, 245-46 (1953) (concealment in ambush unnecessary). Rather, the concealment portion of the lying-in-wait test is satisfied by the concealment of purpose, not physical concealment. See Morales, 257 Cal.Rptr. 64, 770 P.2d at 259; see also People v. Tuthill, 31 Cal.2d 92, 187 P.2d 16, 21 (1947). Thus, the cases preceding Morales established that the concealment criterion extended to more than mere ambush, as the term is commonly understood. Concealment, it turns out, can sometimes mean no more than a murderer’s failure to announce his intentions or a desire to conceal the murderous plan from the victim. What, then, *1187is the difference between concealment and surprise?
But even concealment of purpose is not always necessary, as subsequent cases demonstrate. In People v. Hillhouse, the California Supreme Court held that a defendant could be death eligible under the lying-in-wait special circumstance despite the fact that he announced his purpose to his victim, stating “I ought to kill you” prior to committing the murder. 27 Cal.4th 469, 117 Cal.Rptr.2d 45, 40 P.3d 754, 775 (2002). Under this recent iteration of the rule, criminal defendants meet the concealment test regardless of whether they are hidden or seen, and even whether they conceal their intentions or reveal them. Thus, rather than curing the over-breadth of the first part of the lying-in-wait test, subsequent cases manifest the same if not more problematic infirmities than those that existed before Morales’s case.
The second element of the limiting construction is even more permeable than the first. California requires “a substantial period of watching and waiting for an opportune time to act.”2 People v. Morales, 257 Cal.Rptr. 64, 770 P.2d at 261. The paradigmatic understanding of watching and waiting would require — as the term suggests-an actual period of time spent waiting. Although imposing a specific quantum of time may prove both unneees-sary and impractical, the Eighth Amendment requires death eligibility factors to include at least some means of distinguishing death penalty cases from others.
Despite the need to distinguish cases eligible for the death penalty, the California Supreme Court has consistently construed the temporal requirement of the lying-in-wait circumstance to be no more than that of ordinary premeditated or deliberate murder. Thus, in People v. Ruiz, 244 Cal.Rptr. 200, 749 P.2d at 866 n. 3, the court reaffirmed the constitutionality of the lying-in-wait murder provision: “The lying-in-wait need not continue for any particular period of time provided that its duration is such as to show a state of mind equivalent to premeditation or deliberation.” The formulation is the same for the lying-in-wait special circumstance. See Edwards, 1 Cal.Rptr.2d 696, 819 P.2d at 474 n. 16. Indeed, this broad construction of the “watching and waiting” requirement is identical to the definition of lying-in-wait given in the standard jury instruction at the time of Morales’s conviction.3
Both the standard jury instructions regarding the lying-in-wait special circumstance and the California court’s construction of the test lead to the conclusion that any premeditated or deliberate murder would satisfy the watching and waiting-requirement. Under such a construction, *1188the second part of the so-called limiting construction is without any limiting parameters.
The third and final element of California’s three-part test requires the defendant to attack by surprise from a position of advantage. The California Supreme Court held that Morales satisfies this prong of the limiting construction because he was sitting behind the victim in a car. Under the loose construction of the first and second parts of the lying-in-wait test, Morales’s eligibility for the death penalty ultimately turns on whether he killed his victim by surprise. That is, even after a jury applies the first and second parts of the lying-in-wait test, the question of surprise is all that remains as a truly narrowing factor. And yet, taking a page from the California courts’ book on concealment, surprise apparently can be nothing more than concealment of purpose. Standing alone, I fail to see how this singular factor significantly narrows the pool of defendants eligible for the death penalty, and for that reason, it is not a proper litmus test for death eligibility under the Eighth Amendment.
The majority provides examples of cases in which the lying-in-wait special circumstance would not apply, and suggests that the scheme is overbroad only if “unimaginative” about the way murders are committed. Maj. Op. at 1176. I do not dispute that, with imagination and creativity, one can explain away the constitutional infirmities of the California death penalty. But that is beside the point. Under the Eighth Amendment, it is not enough that a death penalty statute applies to some but not all murder defendants. Rather, the inquiry is whether the statute is narrow enough-whether the subclass of death eligible defendants is sufficiently smaller than the overall class of murder defendants. See Maynard, 486 U.S. at 361, 108 S.Ct. 1853. The majority’s litany of examples underscores precisely the way in which the majority misconstrues the Eighth Amendment inquiry. By applying Fifth Amendment scrutiny to Morales’s Eighth Amendment challenge, the majority is able to sidestep the long reach of California’s construction of the lying-in-wait provision.
Under the California Supreme Court’s broad interpretation, it is difficult to see how the limiting construction selects those more deserving of the ultimate punishment. See Zant, 462 U.S. at 877, 103 S.Ct. 2733. To the extent that the special circumstance can be said to limit death eligibility, it does so in an arbitrary and capricious manner. See Godfrey, 446 U.S. at 428, 100 S.Ct. 1759. The lying-in-wait special circumstance has expanded so far beyond a constitutional foundation that it collapses under its own volume. Indeed, several commentators have underscored the infirmity of the California scheme. See Steven F. Shatz & Nina Rivkind, The California Death Penalty Scheme: Requiem for Furman?, 72 N.Y.U. L.Rev. 1283 (1997); Garth A. Osterman & Colleen Wilcox Heidenreieh, Note, Lying in Wait: A General Circumstance, 30 U.S.F. L.Rev. 1249 (1996). And in benchmarking the breadth of the scheme, it is useful to reference the words of one of our colleagues: “The majority must come to realize ... [¡Increasing the number of crimes punishable by death, widening the circumstances under which death may be imposed ... will not do a single thing to accomplish the objective, namely to ensure that the very worst members of our society ... are put to death.” Alex Kozinski & Sean Gallagher, Death: The Ultimate Run-On Sentence, 46 Case W. Res. L.Rev. 1, 29 (1995).
Absent proper limiting by the California courts, the lying-in-wait special circumstance does not survive Eighth Amendment scrutiny because it fails to narrow *1189sufficiently the class of people eligible for the death penalty. For these reasons, I respectfully dissent with respect to the determination of death penalty eligibility.

. The majority criticizes the reliance on cases that deal with lying-in-wait first degree *1186murder as opposed to the lying-in-wait special circumstance, suggesting that the discussion in this section "relies on mistaken use of quotations and citations pulled out of context from some California cases.” Maj. Op. at 1176. But as we and the California Supreme Court have noted before, the only dis-cernable difference between the two lying-in-wait provisions was that the special circumstance requires the murder be committed "while” lying in wait' — a distinction the California Legislature has since removed. See Houston, 177 F.3d at 907; People v. Gutierrez, 28 Cal.4th 1083, 124 Cal.Rptr.2d 373, 52 P.3d 572, 612-13 (2002). Thus, it is entirely appropriate to look at how California distinguishes between ordinary premeditated murder, lying-in-wait first degree murder, and the lying-in-wait special circumstance.
What the majority fails to acknowledge is that the divisions along this spectrum are indiscernible, and are certainly not the kind of genuine narrowing required by the Eighth Amendment. Although, at the time Morales was convicted, the first degree murder provision and the special circumstance were separated by the paper-thin limiting construction that the murder occur "while” lying in wait, other prongs of the lying-in-wait test are identical. For example, in People v. Edwards, 54 Cal.3d 787, 1 Cal.Rptr.2d 696, 819 P.2d 436 (1991), which is a special circumstances case, the California Supreme Court held that there is no difference in the temporal requirement between the special circumstance and the first-degree murder provision. Id. at 474 n. 16. Indeed, the Edwards court relied on People v. Ruiz, 44 Cal.3d 589, 244 Cal.Rptr. 200, 749 P.2d 854 (1988), a lying-in-wait first degree murder case, to interpret the special circumstance provision. Considering that the California Supreme Court itself recognizes the interchangeableness of the two provisions, I see no reason why we should not look to lying-in-wait first degree murder cases for California's construction of the same prongs in the special circumstance.

. Even the “watchful and waiting” element-perhaps the essence of lying-in-wait-has failed to restrain the applicability of the special circumstance. A defendant need not actually watch the victim, as long as he is watchful, or “alert and vigilant,” while waiting. See People v. Sims, 5 Cal.4th 405, 20 Cal.Rptr.2d 537, 853 P.2d 992, 1007-08 (1993). Yet, paradoxically, a defendant can be "alert and vigilant” even if he falls asleep while waiting for his intended victim. See People v. Tuthill, 187 P.2d at 21.

. The standard jury instructions for the lying-in-wait special circumstance explicitly incorporates by definition the instructions for lying-in-wait murder. See CALJIC 8.81.15. Those instructions read:
The term 'lying-in-wait' is defined as waiting and watching for an opportune time to act, together with a concealment by ambush or some other secret design to take the other person by surprise. The lying-in-wait need not continue for any particular period of time provided that its duration is such as to show a state of mind equivalent to premeditation or deliberation.
CALJIC 8.25 (West 4th Rev. Ed.1979).