Can prospective jurors who strongly oppose the death penalty be excluded from the trial?

[35 Cal.3d 385] Jurors who strongly oppose capital punishment cannot even be excluded from the penalty trial unless they "ma[k]e unmistakably clear" that they would automatically vote against a death sentence or would be biased as to the issue of guilt. (Witherspoon v. Illinois, supra, 391 U.S. at pp. 522-523, fn. 21, 88 S.Ct. at pp. 1776-1777, fn. 21.) Death penalty opponents are trusted to make that judgment despite their views on capital punishment. Do jurors suddenly lose the ability to speak truthfully just because they declare--truthfully--that they cannot vote to impose death? ¹³

Even when prospective jurors "frankly concede that the prospects of the death penalty may affect what their honest judgment of the facts will be or what they may deem to be a reasonable doubt," they may not constitutionally be excluded from the [673 P.2d 717] jury on that basis. (Adams v. Texas (1980) 448 U.S. 38, 50, 100 S.Ct. 2521, 2528, 65 L.Ed.2d 581.) "Such assessments and judgments by jurors are inherent in the jury system, and to exclude all jurors who would be in the slightest way affected by the prospect of the death penalty or by their views about such a penalty would be to deprive the defendant of the impartial jury to which he or she is entitled under the law." (Ibid.) If a venireperson making the explicit declarations discussed in Adams cannot constitutionally be excluded for alleged bias, then it is difficult to understand the majority's assertion in the present case that persons who do not make such admissions may be constitutionally excluded for the identical alleged bias.