Supreme Court of California

Conviction for murder and robbery and death sentence are affirmed, where: 1) defendant's claims that jury selection errors resulted in a jury composed of pro-death and otherwise biased jurors and violated his constitutional rights are without merit, where court did not abuse its discretion or display bias in its questioning of either death-leaning or life-leaning prospective jurors, and its voir dire was adequate to enable it to determine whether the prospective jurors' views on the death penalty qualified them to sit on a capital jury; 2) defendant forfeited several of his claims of prosecutorial misconduct, and in any event fails to establish any misconduct occurred; 3) defendant's claims regarding errors related to accomplice testimony lack merit; 4) there was no error in the jury instructions with the exception of the instruction "not to be influenced by mere sympathy," but it was harmless; 5) defendant's claim of error in the penalty phase lack merit; and 6) defendant's challenge to the constitutionality of California's death penalty scheme fails.

Appellate Information

• Decided 02/04/2013
• Published 02/04/2013

Judges

• CANTIL-SAKAUYE

Court

• Supreme Court of California

Counsel