In what circumstances will a jury consider other crimes as aggravating factors in sentencing a convicted murderer's sentence?

[710 P.2d 892] The other offenses admitted in evidence involved serious acts of violence and were therefore relevant as aggravating factors to be considered by the jury in assessing penalty. (See my dissenting opinion in People v. Robertson (1982) 33 Cal.3d 21, 63, 188 Cal.Rptr. 77, 655 P.2d 279.) The other crimes need not be defined in instructions to the jury. After all, the jury should not become involved in extraneous law --i.e., legal definitions of prior crimes--but in the fact of violent conduct. Thus I find no error in the admission and consideration of other offenses.

Contrary to the majority holding, this case does not involve a Ramos (People v. Ramos (1984) 37 Cal.3d 136, 207 Cal.Rptr. 800, 689 P.2d 430) error. Ramos was concerned with an instruction to the jury to consider the governor's commutation power; no such instruction was given here. While the prosecutor's argument to the jury may have been suggestive of the commutation power, this error was cured by an appropriate admonition by the court to the jury, and by the usual instruction that counsels' arguments are not evidence and that only the court instructs on the applicable law.