People v. Romero and Self

Summary

The court upheld the defendants’ capital judgments in nearly all respects, but reversed Self’s conviction and sentence for Knoefler’s robbery and vacated duplicative multiple-murder special-circumstance findings. It held that accomplice testimony against Self on the Knoefler robbery lacked independent corroboration, while rejecting the remaining guilt-phase, instructional, evidentiary, prosecutorial-misconduct, and penalty-phase claims. The court also concluded that any assumed instructional errors were not prejudicial cumulatively and did not deny defendants a fair trial.