The following excerpt is from Hamilton v. Vasquez, 17 F.3d 1149 (9th Cir. 1994):
In assessing the effect of a challenged jury instruction, the rule is that it " 'may not be judged in artificial isolation, but must be viewed in the context of the overall charge.' " Boyde, 494 U.S. at 378, 110 S.Ct. at 1196 (emphasis added) (quoting Cupp v. Naughten, 414 U.S. 141, 146-47, 94 S.Ct. 396, 400, 38 L.Ed.2d 368 (1973)). The majority opinion looks only at part of the charge. Reading the charge as a whole in light of the record convinces me there is no reasonable likelihood the jury applied the challenged instruction in a way that prevented the consideration of Constitutionally relevant evidence. I set forth in an appendix to this opinion the complete charge to the jury. The following excerpts from the jury instructions, many of which are completely ignored in the majority opinion, convince me that the jury focused on the evidence, the mitigating factors, and the aggravating factors, not some extraneous matter:
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