California, United States of America
The following excerpt is from People v. Turner, 20 Cal.Rptr.3d 182, 34 Cal.4th 406, 99 P.3d 505 (Cal. 2004):
Defendant contends the special circumstance retrial was unconstitutional per se. According to defendant, the second jury could not have known the legal basis for the first jury's findings and could have therefore construed the evidence in a manner inconsistent with those findings. Thus, the use of different juries to decide the murder and special circumstance allegations violated his constitutional rights. We have, in the past, rejected a similar argumentthat penalty retrials are unconstitutional per se. (See, e.g., People v. Gurule (2002) 28 Cal.4th 557, 645, 123 Cal.Rptr.2d 345, 51 P.3d 224.) And we see no reasoned basis for distinguishing between special circumstance retrials and penalty retrials. Accordingly, we reject defendant's contention.
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