advocating that, instead of two separate juries, courts empanel non death-qualified jurors for guilt phase but then replace those jurors with death-qualified alternates during sentencing
How later courts described this case
- advocating that, instead of two separate juries, courts empanel non death-qualified jurors for guilt phase but then replace those jurors with death-qualified alternates during sentencing
- ‘When an individual is accused of a noncapital crime ... the jurors who decide the question of guilt or innocence are drawn from virtually the entire population of fair and impartial, English-speaking adults in the community. However, when an individual’s life hangs in the balance, the state alters that jury pool. Excluded for all purposes is any adult who would not vote for a death sentence even though that person could fairly decide the question of guilt or innocence.”
- “But here the murder occurred within a few hours of the robbery, and at a site only a few miles distant, and the events are linked not only by defendant’s motives but by his continued control over the victim, forcing her to remain at his house and then transporting her to the murder site.”
- state interest in unitary jury sufficient to exclude noncognizable group of persons who would automatically vote against death at the penalty phase
Written by the judges who cited it.
Distinguished
Distinguished by People v. Vance, 188 Cal. App. 4th 1182 (2010)
Fields, supra, 35 Cal.3d 329, are distinguishable because they are all capital cases, where, as already noted, Golden Rule and victim impact evidence are allowed but only in the penalty phase.
The opinion
KAUS, J.
I concur in full in the reasoning and conclusions of the majority opinion with the exception of part III (a). 1 With respect to that part, I concur only in the result.
Assuming, as I must in light of Hovey v. Superior Court (1980) 28 Cal.3d 1 [ 168 Cal.Rptr. 128 , 616 P.2d 1301 ], that it has not yet been established that the “death qualification” procedure results in a jury that is biased against a defendant on the issue of guilt or innocence, I believe that the state’s interest in having a single jury determine the defendant’s guilt or innocence and decide whether he should live or die, is sufficient to justify the exclusion from the guilt phase of those jurors who cannot sit at the penalty phase because they are unalterably opposed to the death penalty. As the majority recognizes {ante, pp. 351-352), the use of a single jury in capital cases serves a number of significant substantive purposes beyond the more obvious savings in time and expense.
I would rest the holding in part in (a) solely on the weightiness of the justifications supporting a single jury procedure in death penalty cases, without deciding whether “guilt phase indudables” are—in the abstract—a “cognizable class” for Duren purposes. In addition, because of the obvious differences between peremptory challenges and broad statutory exclusions, I would not suggest that simply because an individual who holds a particular *375 viewpoint may properly be the subject of a peremptory challenge under Wheeler, no cross-sectional-jury problems would be raised by a statutory across-the-board exclusion of all individuals who entertain similar views. As I see it, the constitutional standards governing the two situations—peremptory challenges, on the one hand, and statutory exclusions, on the other—are not necessarily the same. 2
My concurrence in part HI (b) rests on my understanding that—in light of footnotes 11 and 13, pages 381, 384, ante—the majority does not intend to approve the routine framing of the Witherspoon inquiry in the form of a question which asks prospective jurors whether they would consider the death penalty “in this case,” but rather that the opinion simply finds no prejudice here where it appears that the jurors to whom the question was posed had no knowledge of any facts of this case beyond the bare language of the charged special circumstances. I certainly agree that the triad court did not err in precluding defendant from attempting to rehabilitate Witherspoon-exdudable jurors by asking such hypothetical questions as whether they would consider the death penalty if the defendant were Adolf Hitler.
As in People v. Easley (1983) 34 Cal.3d 858 [ 196 Cal.Rptr. 309 , 671 P.2d 813 ], the State Public Defender has filed an amicus brief in support of a grant of a rehearing in this case in which he raises a host of issues that were not presented by appointed counsel before we filed our opinion in this case. Although in Easley I felt that the seriousness and fundamental nature of the errors raised by the public defender necessitated a grant of a rehearing, in this case I believe that the general interest in an orderly presentation and resolution of issues would be best served by leaving defendant free to raise the newly discovered issues in appropriate collateral proceedings. (E.g., In re Banks (1971) 4 Cal.3d 337 [ 93 Cal.Rptr. 591 , 482 P.2d 215 ]; In re Smith (1970) 3 Cal.3d 192 [ 90 Cal.Rptr. 1 , 474 P.2d 969 ]; In re Saunders (1970) 2 Cal.3d 1033 [ 88 Cal.Rptr. 633 , 472 P.2d 921 ]; cf. People v. Lang (1974) 11 Cal.3d 134, 141 [ 113 Cal.Rptr. 9 , 520 P.2d 393 ].) The public defender’s voluminous brief here—coming so quickly on the heels of the similar presentation in Easley—suggests to me that it is unrealistic to expect us to unearth all potentially meritorious claims of error on our own in cases of this length and complexity. Granting a rehearing whenever a new claim of error is presented has the disadvantage of denying lower courts the benefit of this court’s definitive resolution of those issues which we have already considered and addressed. Because many of these issues continue to arise in current death penalty litigation, guidance on which trial courts can rely is particularly important. Given these considerations, I have concluded that I should vote to deny the petition for rehearing. y