The Supreme Court today unanimously affirms a death penalty judgment in People v. Sandoval, but, by a 5-2 vote, it reverses one of several special circumstance findings. The majority opinion by Justice Goodwin Liu concludes that a lying-in-wait special circumstance verdict cannot stand because the trial court failed to sua sponte instruct the jury about evaluating circumstantial evidence. The court leaves intact three other special circumstance findings: murder of a peace officer engaged in the lawful performance of his duties, murder committed for the purpose of preventing a lawful arrest, and murder to further the activities of a criminal street gang. Justices Ming Chin and Carol Corrigan dissent from the reversal of the one special circumstance finding.
Among other things, the court also concludes there was prosecutorial misconduct in a PowerPoint display of photos of the victims “accompanied by stirring orchestral music.” “[B]ecause background music in victim impact presentations provides no relevant information and is potentially prejudicial, it is never permitted,” the court holds. The misconduct in this case was found harmless, however.
The harmlessness analysis regarding another error — improperly limiting defense counsel’s jury argument — is more controversial and re-opens a debate from an earlier (and future) case. The Attorney General did not argue the error was harmless and the majority suggests that the omission should make it harder for a reviewing court to find a lack of prejudice. Justices Chin and Corrigan disagree, stating that the stricter analysis is “clearly at odds with the California Constitution’s express commands regarding the review duty of California appellate courts.” (They also disagree there was an error in the first place.) Although not mentioned in the opinion, the effect of the Attorney General’s failure to assert harmless error was a point of dispute in People v. Grimes, which the court has agreed to rehear and is currently awaiting its third argument. The issue doesn’t matter in today’s case because the majority finds the error harmless even under a more exacting standard, but it could be consequential in Grimes on rehearing.
Justices Chin and Corrigan each wrote separately, and they concurred in each other’s opinions. Justice Chin’s opinion is long (23 pages) and written in a style suggesting that the Sandoval appeal was originally assigned to him — the court’s Internal Operating Practices and Procedures states that, unlike other cases, death penalty appeals “are assigned in rotation as they are filed” — but was reassigned when a majority concluded there was error in the lying-in-wait finding and in the limitation of defense counsel’s argument.