In what circumstances will a jury consider extreme mental or emotional disturbance as mitigation of penalty?

California, United States of America


The following excerpt is from People v. Ashmus, 2 Cal.Rptr.2d 112, 54 Cal.3d 932, 820 P.2d 214 (Cal. 1991):

In our view, there is no reasonable likelihood that the jury would have been led by the instructions to entertain the erroneous belief that they could not consider mental or emotional disturbance of any degree whatever in [54 Cal.3d 1003] mitigation of penalty. Quite the contrary. Under the instruction of which defendant now complains, they would have understood that they could take account of disturbance that was extreme. Under the instructions quoted in the three paragraphs immediately preceding, they would have inferred that they could weigh disturbance that was less than extreme. (Compare People v. Benson, supra, 52 Cal.3d at p. 804, 276 Cal.Rptr. 827, 802 P.2d 330 [rejecting a claim similar to defendant's involving the trial court's refusal to delete the adjective "extreme" from the phrase "extreme mental or emotional disturbance"].)

7. Alleged Failure to Adequately Instruct on the Scope of Potentially Mitigating Evidence

Defendant contends that the trial court erred by--allegedly--failing to adequately

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