California, United States of America
The following excerpt is from People v. Johnson, 14 Cal.Rptr.2d 702, 3 Cal.4th 1183, 842 P.2d 1 (Cal. 1992):
In that case, we held that the California death penalty law did not permit a capital defendant to "attack ... the legality of the ... adjudication" of guilt. (People v. Terry, supra, 61 Cal.2d at p. 145, 37 Cal.Rptr. 605, 390 P.2d 381.) Our conclusion "rest[ed] upon the self-evident prohibition of any attempt to relitigate the ... conviction." (Ibid.)
But we also held that the statutory scheme did indeed allow capital jurors to "conclude that the prosecution has discharged its burden of proving defendant's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt but ... still demand a greater degree of certainty of guilt for the imposition of the death penalty." (People v. Terry, supra, 61 Cal.2d at pp. 145-146, 37 Cal.Rptr. 605, 390 P.2d 381.) We explained: "The jury's task, like the historian's, must be to discover and
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