Supreme Court of California

A conviction and death sentence for kidnapping and torture murder is affirmed on automatic appeal over claims of error regarding: 1) group voir dire on attitudes toward the death penalty; 2) introduction of crime scene and autopsy photographs; 3) instructions regarding accomplices' and defendant's role in causing death; 4) a felony-murder instruction; 5) standard instructions on jury's consideration of evidence; 6) Griffin error; 7) instruction on weighing aggravating and mitigating circumstances; 8) challenges to the death penalty statute; 9) instruction on mitigating circumstances; 10) a refusal of special instructions on mitigating circumstances; 11) juror misconduct; 12) international norms and the Eighth Amendment; 13) international law; 14) direction to disregard guilt phase instructions; 15) cumulative prejudice; 16) a victim restitution order and parole revocation restitution fine.

Appellate Information

• Decided 02/07/2008
• Published 02/07/2008

Judges

• WERDEGAR, J.

Court

• Supreme Court of California

Counsel

• For Appellees:
  
• Michael J. Hersek, State Public Defender, under appointment by the Supreme Court, and John Fresquez, Deputy State Public Defender, for Defendant and Appellant., Bill Lockyer and Edmund G. Brown, Jr., Attorneys General, Robert R. Anderson, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Pamela C. Hamanaka, Assistant Attorney General, Sharlene A. Honnaka and Linda C. Johnson, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiffs and Respondent.