Title: Bowen v. State

State: tennessee

Issuer: Tennessee Supreme Court

Document:

488 S.W.2d 373 (1972) Fred J. BOWEN v. STATE of Tennessee. Supreme Court of Tennessee. December 19, 1972. *374 Burkett C. McInturff and Shelburne Ferguson, Kingsport, for plaintiff in error. David M. Pack, Atty. Gen., State of Tennessee, Bart Durham, Asst. Atty. Gen., Nashville, Carl K. Kirkpatrick, Dist. Atty. Gen., Kingsport, for defendant in error. McCANLESS, Justice. The petitioner, Fred J. Bowen, was convicted of murder in the first degree and sentenced to death. The Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the judgment of the Criminal Court, one of the judges in a separate concurring opinion recommending that the Governor commute the death sentence to one of imprisonment for ninety-nine years. We granted certiorari, heard oral argument, and took the case under advisement. The Supreme Court of the United States on June 29, 1972, in Furman v. Georgia, Jackson v. Georgia, and Branch v. Texas, 408 U.S. 238, 92 S. Ct. 2726, 33 L. Ed. 2d 346, delivered an opinion in which they said: Our study of the record in this case convinces us that the trial was conducted without reversible error and that the court lawfully and constitutionally imposed the sentence of death on the petitioner in accordance with the law as it then existed. When the Criminal Court convicted and sentenced the petitioner to death the Supreme Court of the United States had not adjudged the death penalty to be in violation of the federal constitution; indeed, on May 3, 1971, in the case of McGautha v. California and Crampton v. Ohio, 402 U.S. 183, 91 S. Ct. 1454, 28 L. Ed. 2d 711, the Court affirmed judgments in cases in which juries had imposed sentences of death when there were no standards to guide their discretion in determining whether to impose or to withhold the death penalty, expressly holding that the judgments in these circumstances did not violate due process of law. After the Supreme Court of the United States decided the Furman, Jackson and Branch cases, supra, the Governor of Tennessee commuted the petitioner's sentence of death to one of ninety-nine years' imprisonment. *375 There are two questions now to be answered: (1) Did the judgment of the Supreme Court of the United States in the Furman, Jackson, and Branch cases make void the judgment in this case? (2) If the judgment was not thus made void, then what is its effect on the judgment as the Governor has commuted it from death to imprisonment for a term of ninety-nine years? The answer to the first question must be that the judgments entered by the United States Supreme Court in the Furman, Jackson, and Branch cases had no direct effect whatsoever on the judgment in this case. While the opinions of the United States Supreme Court, and the conclusions arrived at, furnish a basis in a proper case for the future invalidation of a death sentence probably in this case invalidation was not accomplished instanter, by those judgments. That could be accomplished only by the future application of the principles settled in the Georgia and Texas cases to the death penalty part of the judgment in the present case. There is no case in point to cite in support of this statement. It is supported, however, by accepted fundamental rules of law relating to the finality of judgments. This proposition is stated in 46 Am.Jur.2d, Judgments, § 14, p. 322, this way: We conclude, therefore, that the judgment in a criminal case, while it is in process of appellate review, cannot be regarded as void, because of the pronouncement of a judgment in another case. Conceding, as we do, that the United States Supreme Court's opinions are binding on this Court, we cannot concede that what it has to say has the immediate effect of voiding judgments of this Court which are not involved in proceedings before it. After the pronouncement of the Georgia and Texas opinions by the United States Supreme Court, it remained for the courts of this state to apply the principles settled therein to its judgments; which were presumptively valid until that had been done. So, at the time the Governor of Tennessee commuted the death sentence in this case to ninety-nine years, it stood as the judgment in any other criminal case, subject to being corrected as might be required to make it conform to the federal constitution as required by the United States Supreme Court's opinions in the Furman, Jackson, and Branch cases, supra. It was simply a judgment in a criminal case that was subject to review as to legal or constitutional infirmities by the appellate processes afforded in this state. In the year 1914 the Supreme Court of Minnesota in State ex rel. Murphy v. Wolfer, 127 Minn. 102, 148 N.W. 896, wrote this: What, then, was the effect of the order of commutation on this judgment? The answer is that after the order of the governor commuting the sentence to ninety-nine years, the judgment of conviction and the sentence then stood as if it had been the verdict and judgment pronounced in the first instance. It became at that time, and is now, a judgment of conviction for ninety-nine years. In the cases of State ex rel. v. Garrett, 135 Tenn. 617, 188 S.W. 58, L.R.A., 1917B, 567 [1915]; and Battistelli v. State, 141 Tenn. 565, 213 S.W. 417 [1919], our Court expressed the opinion that a pardon was not complete without acceptance; but with respect to commutation it is generally, if not universally, held that the convict's consent is not an essential element of its validity. The question seems never to have been adjudicated in Tennessee, but in Biddle v. Perovich, 274 U.S. 480, 47 S. Ct. 664, 71 L. Ed. 1161, 52 A.L.R. 837 [1927], the Supreme Court of the United States in an opinion by Mr. Justice Holmes said: In 59 Am.Jur.2d, Pardon and Parole, § 65, the following appears: and, in the same section: Since we have statutes relating to executive clemency, Sections 40-3501 through 40-3508, T.C.A., which have not been employed in this case, we call attention to the Governor's power under the constitution and independent of these provisions of the Code. *377 Article 3, Section 6, of the Constitution of Tennessee provides that the Governor "shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons, after conviction, except in cases of impeachment". The Court held in State ex rel. Rowe v. Conners, 166 Tenn. 393, 61 S.W.2d 471 [1933], that in the exercise of this constitutional power the Governor can no more be controlled by the courts than he can by the legislature in the exercise of these powers, so these statutes confer no more power on the Governor than he is granted by Article 3, Section 6 of our Constitution, and they take none of this power from him. In the face of all this, it cannot validly be arged that the bare fact that the prisoner might receive a lesser sentence in the event of a jury trial, requires that his case be remanded. These legal principles establish that the judgment of death, though subject to avoidance, was yet valid at the time the Governor commuted it to ninety-nine years, that this commutation became effective without the consent of the defendant, and its legal effect was to leave the judgment as though it had first been pronounced as a judgment sentencing the defendant to ninety-nine years in the penitentiary. And, the unconstitutional part, that of death, being removed, the judgment is valid and enforceable. The basis on which we have concluded that the sentence for ninety-nine years is valid does not involve our case of Corlew v. State, 181 Tenn. 220, 180 S.W.2d 900 [1955]. That case had to do with the power of this Court to enter the correct judgment in a criminal case, without a remand. This case involves the validity of the Governor's commutation, and its effect. However, the principles settled by Corlew case could be used to reach the same conclusion. In that opinion the Court said: While this Court did not apply these principles to the fullest extent it might have applied them in the Corlew case, choosing instead to reduce the penalty from a maximum sentence of three years for grand larceny to the minimum sentence of one year for petit larceny, it might have done otherwise. Under these principles from the Corlew opinion it is conceivably within the power of this Court to reduce the death penalty to ninety-nine years, where a defendant is clearly and beyond a reasonable doubt guilty of a first degree murder which justifies the death penalty, which would be applied except for the unconstitutionality of the death part of the sentence. However, in this approach, we would have to take into account Section 40-3506, T.C.A., which provides that the Governor may commute a death sentence upon the certificate of the Supreme Court. *378 We notice with approval the language of the Court of Criminal Appeals of the State of Texas in the case of Whan v. State, Tex.Cr.App., 485 S.W.2d 275 [1972]. The petitioner's punishment, as reduced by the Governor's action, is constitutionally permissible and was lawfully imposed; since it is a reduction from the punishment fixed by the jury, the petitioner cannot be heard to complain. The law of the Furman, Jackson and Branch cases, supra, should not be applied retroactively except to the extent necessary to prevent the execution of death sentences. In this case the judgment having been modified by the Governor's commutation no retroactive application is required. We affirm the judgment of the Criminal Court as commuted to imprisonment for a term of ninety-nine years. DYER, C.J., CHATTIN, J., and JENKINS, Special Judge, concur.