What is the effect of the court's ruling that photographs of a murder victim can be admitted?

But the question before us is whether the court's ruling that the photographs could be admitted was within reason. It was. The photographs were clearly probative of the prosecution's theory that defendant killed with malice, and they corroborated other evidence of the circumstances surrounding the murders. Before returning its verdict, the jury was instructed "not [to] be influenced by pity for a defendant or by prejudice against him," and "not [to] be swayed by mere sentiment, conjecture, sympathy, passion, [or] prejudice...." We assume that the jurors followed that instruction (People v. Mickey, supra, 54 Cal.3d 612, 689, fn. 17, 286 Cal.Rptr. 801, 818 P.2d 84) and considered the photographs for their evidentiary value alone.