Whalen

A jury found defendant Daniel Lee Whalen guilty of the 1994 first degree murder (Pen. Code, § 187, subd. (a)) 1 and first degree robbery (§ 212.5, subd. (a)) of Sherman Robbins, and found true the special circumstance allegation that the murder was committed during the course of a robbery (§ 190.2, former subd. (a)(17)(i), now subd. (a)(17)(A)), and the allegation that defendant personally used a firearm in the commission of the offenses (§ 12022.5). Defendant admitted he had suffered three prior serious felony convictions (§ 667, subd. (d)), and had served four prior prison terms (§ 667.5, subd. (b)). After a penalty trial, the jury returned a verdict of *11 death for the murder. The trial court denied defendant’s automatic application to modify the verdict (§ 190.4, subd. (e)), and imposed the death sentence for the murder and a prison term for the robbery and enhancements.

This appeal is automatic. (§ 1239, subd. (b).) We affirm the judgment in its entirety.

I. Facts

In March 1994, Sherman Robbins was house sitting for his brother, who was away on vacation. Late one evening, defendant and his accomplices, Michelle Lee Joe and Melissa Fader, gained entry into the…

I join the court’s opinion except as to the issue of the trial court’s disparate treatment of a small number of prospective jurors whose written questionnaires showed ambiguity concerning their ability to follow the court’s instructions despite their personal views on the death penalty. Although the trial court’s actions did not ultimately result in a skewed jury panel and thus do not constitute reversible error, I write separately to underscore the obligation of trial courts to proceed “ ‘evenhanded[ly]’ ” when exercising their broad discretion to conduct death-qualification voir dire. (People v. Thornton (2007) 41 Cal.4th 391, 425 [ 61 Cal.Rptr.3d 461 , 161 P.3d 3 ].)

I.

The process of selecting a jury in a capital case is as important as it is difficult, as the record before us illustrates. Jury selection in this case took over seven days; the record from voir dire alone consumed more than 1,000 pages of the approximately 2,500 total pages in the trial court transcript. The majority of that time was spent reviewing the written questionnaires and conducting individual questioning of the 158 members of the jury pool who remained after hardship excusáis. Based on this extensive…

I. FACTS

In March 1994, Sherman Robbins was house sitting for his brother, who was away on vacation. Late one evening, defendant and his accomplices, Michelle Lee Joe and Melissa Fader, gained entry into the home by pretending the car they had been driving had broken down. The three took numerous items from the house, and defendant shot Robbins as he lay on a couch with his hands tied behind his back. Joe and Fader were initially charged, along with defendant, with Robbins‘s first degree murder and robbery, but each agreed to plead guilty to lesser charges in exchange for her testimony against defendant.2 At trial, defendant attempted to place the blame for the murder on Joe and argued the evidence was legally insufficient to corroborate the accomplice testimony. At the penalty phase, defendant‘s attorney and an expert relayed to jurors defendant‘s expressed desire for the jury to impose the death penalty, but each made a case for sparing defendant‘s life.

Fader pleaded guilty to the robbery of Robbins with a vicarious arming enhancement (§ 12022, subd. (a)), in exchange for a sentence of up to seven years imprisonment, which she was serving when she testified, and her…