Hendricks

At a sanity retrial a jury found appellant sane at the time he committed two robbery-murders. Appellant claims three trial court errors require reversal: (1) permitting the prosecution to commence the sanity retrial (2) admitting evidence that when psychiatrists and psychologists interviewed appellant he had been sentenced to death and (3) exclusion of family mental illness evidence. We find no error and affirm the judgment.

Procedural and Factual Background

The initial background is described by Justice Mosk, reviewing appellant’s automatic appeal from a judgment of death: “In the summer of 1980 defendant was without money and was working in Los Angeles and San Francisco as a hustler—a male prostitute for men. In the course of his trade, he would also rob his customers. He met Harry Carter in Los Angeles and had sex with him for money. A week or two later he saw Carter again, and again engaged in an act of prostitution. He lived with Carter for two or three weeks. At the end of that time Carter told him to get out and called him a ‘low life’; defendant picked up a knife lying on the kitchen table and fatally stabbed him; defendant took various items belonging to the…