Source: https://www.yalelawjournal.org/forum/innocence-and-override
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 03:46:23+00:00

Document:
As attorneys who represent people on death row in Alabama, we encounter override frequently in our cases. This Essay makes an additional argument, informed by our practice, for why judicial override is unconstitutional: it increases the risk of wrongful executions. Why might death sentences imposed by override be less reliable than others? The reason is residual doubt. Jurors with lingering doubts about a defendant’s guilt are less likely to vote for a death sentence. Accordingly, jury recommendations for life at times reflect an effort to safeguard against the execution of an innocent person. Because the Supreme Court’s approval of state death penalty schemes hinges on reliability,6 the problem of innocence in override cases renders the practice of override constitutionally impermissible.
At first blush, the idea of residual doubt may seem counterintuitive. By the time a capital defendant reaches sentencing, the jury has found him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. What role could lingering doubts play in choosing between life and death?
Even when jurors believe that a particular defendant was involved in the offense at issue, they often have doubts about what role he played and whether he had the specific intent to kill, which is required for a capital murder conviction in Alabama.17 At Shonelle Jackson’s trial in 1998, questions arose as to whether the shots that killed the victim were fired by Jackson or one of his three co-defendants. The jury found Jackson guilty but voted 12-0 for life, in part because several jurors “had concerns about whether [Jackson] was responsible.”18 The judge imposed the death penalty anyway, and Jackson remains on death row today.
The Court’s reasoning in Atkins is equally applicable to override. Just as the risk of wrongful execution weighed against the death penalty for intellectually disabled defendants, it weighs against the death penalty by override.
The Court has already recognized that capital jurors consider residual doubt to be extremely important.24 And if jurors tend to recommend life where the State’s guilt phase case leaves lingering doubts, then override targets cases with weaker evidence. The result is less reliable death sentences—an outcome that creates a constitutional infirmity for override. The only remedy is to eliminate override altogether.
When Justices Stevens and Marshall wrote those opinions, they had little evidence to cite about the link between innocence and override. But their concerns have been validated over time, with studies highlighting the role of residual doubt for capital jurors, and with override cases proving more likely than others to produce death row exonerations. Three decades on, the reliability problems of override are more difficult to ignore.
Patrick Mulvaney is the Managing Attorney for Capital Litigation at the Southern Center for Human Rights. Katherine Chamblee is a Staff Attorney at the Southern Center for Human Rights. Michael Fires, Kelsey Peregoy, and Britney Wilson, all former interns at the Southern Center for Human Rights, provided valuable research assistance.
Preferred Citation: Patrick Mulvaney & Katherine Chamblee, Innocence and Override, 126 Yale L.J. F. 118 (2016), http://www.yalelawjournal.org/forum/ innocence-and-override.
See Hurst v. Florida, 136 S. Ct. 616 (2016).
See Act effective Mar. 7, 2016, 2016 Fla. Sess. Law Serv. ch. 2016-13 (H.B. 7101) (West).
See Rauf v. State, No. 1509009858 (Del. Aug. 2, 2016).
See Gregg, 428 U.S. at 189.
Franklin v. Lynaugh, 487 U.S. 164, 188 (1988) (O’Connor, J., concurring).
Ala. Code § 13A-5-40(b); Ala. Code § 3A-6-2(a)(1).
Paige Williams, Double Jeopardy, The New Yorker, Nov. 17, 2014, at 56.
See Atkins, 536 U.S. at 321.
The United States Supreme Court has directed Alabama’s appellate courts to evaluate the impact of Hurst on Alabama capital sentencing. See, e.g., Order, Wimbley v. Alabama, No. 15-7939 (May 31, 2016); Order, Johnson v. Alabama, No. 15-7091 (May 2, 2016).
Woodward v. Alabama, 134 S. Ct. 405, 406-10 (2013) (Sotomayor, J., dissenting). We represented Mario Woodward, the petitioner, in his challenge to Alabama’s override scheme. The Court declined to review the case, but Justice Sotomayor dissented from the denial, joined by Justice Breyer. Woodward, 134 S. Ct. at 406-10 (2013) (Sotomayor, J., dissenting). As a general principle, the Court considers “cruel and unusual” those punishments that have been rejected by most of the nation, but still linger in isolated states. See Coker v. Georgia, 433 U.S. 584, 592-99 (1977); Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153, 179-82 (1976). In that vein, Justice Sotomayor noted in Woodward that there were twenty-seven death sentences imposed by override across the country between 2000 and 2013, twenty-six of which were in Alabama. See Woodward, 134 S. Ct. at 407 (Sotomayor, J., dissenting). The Eighth Amendment also bars sentencing procedures that create a “substantial risk” that a punishment will be carried out in an “arbitrary and capricious” manner. Gregg, 428 U.S. at 188-89 (discussing Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, 313 (1972)). Under that rubric, Justice Sotomayor pointed out in Woodward that override sentences are often the result of political pressure rather than valid sentencing considerations. See Woodward, 134 S. Ct. at 408-09 (Sotomayor, J., dissenting).
See Stephen P. Garvey, Aggravation and Mitigation in Capital Cases: What Do Jurors Think?, 98 Colum. L. Rev. 1538, 1563 (1998) (explaining data showing that residual doubt is the most influential factor in jury votes for life); see also Susan D. Rozelle, The Principled Executioner: Capital Juries’ Bias and the Benefits of True Bifurcation, 38 Ariz. St. L.J. 769, 775 (2006) (describing residual doubt as “the most potent mitigator in capital cases”); Scott E. Sundby, The Death Penalty’s Future: Charting the Crosscurrents of Declining Death Sentences and the McVeigh Factor, 84 Tex. L. Rev. 1929, 1939 (2006) (explaining that where it exists, residual doubt is a powerful factor in favor of life).
Garvey, supra note 8, at 1563. Of course, this does not mean residual doubt is easy to create or appropriate as a defense theory in all or most cases. See Scott E. Sundby, The Capital Jury and Absolution: The Intersection of Trial Strategy, Remorse, and the Death Penalty, 83 Cornell L. Rev. 1557, 1583 (1998) (“[I]t may very well be that lingering doubt about actual innocence is the ‘strongest possible mitigating evidence,’ but the cases included in this study suggest that creating such a lingering doubt is very difficult. In this light, the defense carefully and realistically should assess the likelihood that it can create doubt before pursuing a denial defense strategy.”) (quoting Welsh S. White, Effective Assistance of Counsel in Capital Cases: The Evolving Standard of Care, 1993 U. Ill. L. Rev. 323, 357 n.236 (1992)).
There were 413 death sentences imposed in Alabama from 1981, the year in which the override statute was passed, through 2015. See Death Sentences in the United States From 1977 by State and by Year, Death Penalty Info. Center, http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org /death-sentences-united-states-1977-2008 [http://perma.cc/V4DV-CKF7]. Of those 413 sentences, 101 were overrides. See Alabama Overrides from Life to Death, Equal Just. Initiative (Dec. 16, 2013), http://www.eji.org/files/12-16-13%20Updated%20Override %20List_0.pdf [http://perma.cc/43RG-5C69]. In that same period, six people were exonerated from death row in Alabama due to innocence. See Innocence: List of Those Freed From Death Row, Death Penalty Info. Center, http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/ innocence-list-those-freed-death-row [http://perma.cc/MD9G-TQFB]. Three of the six—Larry Randal Padgett, Daniel Wade Moore, and Walter McMillian—had been sentenced to death by override. See Alabama Overrides from Life to Death, supra.
Interview with Anonymous Padgett Juror by Katherine Chamblee (April 13, 2016) (on file with author).
See generally Richard S. Jaffe, Quest for Justice: Defending the Damned 195-229 (2012) (recounting Padgett’s case).
Interview with Anonymous Moore Juror by Katherine Chamblee (April 19, 2016) (on file with author).
Lies and Whispers at 5:14-31 (CBS television broadcast Feb. 20, 2010), http://www.cbsnews.com/news/48-hours-mystery-lies-and-whispers-20-02-2010 [http://perma.cc/X7DR-JF88] (featuring Judge Glenn Thompson’s explanation of his imposition of a death sentence by override in Moore’s case).
See Daniel Wade Moore, Nat’l Registry of Exonerations (June 2012), http://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/pages/casedetail.aspx?caseid=3488 [http://perma.cc/B5DV-YZ5X ]. Walter McMillian suffered a similar fate. He was sentenced to death by override in 1988 and exonerated in 1993. See generally Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2015) (recounting the McMillian case).
See Beck v. Alabama, 447 U.S. 625, 637 (1980); Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U.S. 586, 605 (1978); Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153, 195 (1976).
Beck, 447 U.S. at 637 (“[W]e have invalidated procedural rules that tended to diminish the reliability of the sentencing determination. The same reasoning must apply to rules that diminish the reliability of the guilt determination.”).
Id. at 321; see also Hall v. Florida, 134 S. Ct. 1986, 1993 (2014) (reiterating this point from Atkins); Beck, 447 U.S. at 637 (stating that a practice that enhances the risk of an unwarranted conviction in a death penalty case “cannot be tolerated”).
See Lockhart v. McCree, 476 U.S. 162, 181 (1986) (stating that “residual doubt has been recognized as an extremely effective argument for defendants in capital cases”) (quotations and citations omitted). The Court has declined to embrace residual doubt as a sentencing factor required by the Eighth Amendment, see Franklin v. Lynaugh, 487 U.S. 164, 172-76 (1988), but jurors tend to weigh residual doubt heavily regardless of whether they are instructed to consider it, see, e.g., Christina S. Pignatelli, Residual Doubt: It’s a Life Saver, 13 Cap. Def. J. 307, 313 (2001).
Heiney v. Florida, 469 U.S. 920, 921-22 (1984) (Marshall, J., dissenting from the denial of certiorari).

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