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LOWENFIELD V. PHELPS, 484 U. S. 231 - Volume 484 - 1988 - Full Text - US Supreme Court Center - USSC Cases - Nolo
US Supreme Court Center > Volume 484 > LOWENFIELD V. PHELPS, 484 U. S. 231 (1988) > Full Text
1. When considered in context and under all the circumstances, the two jury polls and the supplemental charge did not impermissibly coerce the jury to return a death sentence. The supplemental charge is similar to the traditional Allen charge long approved by this Court on the ground that it is an attempt to secure jury unanimity, which reasoning applies with even greater force here, since this charge does not speak specifically to the minority jurors. Although not without constitutional weight, the fact that one of the purposes served by such a charge -- the avoidance of the societal costs of a retrial -- is not present here, because Louisiana law requires the court to impose a life sentence if the jury is hung, does not render the charge impermissible under the Due Process
REHNQUIST, C.J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which WHITE, BLACKMUN, O'CONNOR, and SCALIA, JJ., joined, and in Part III of which, except for the last sentence thereof, STEVENS, J., joined. MARSHALL, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which BRENNAN, J., joined, and in Part I of which STEVENS, J., joined, post, p. 484 U. S. 246.
Petitioner was charged with killing a woman with whom he had lived, three members of her family, and one of her male friends. The jury found petitioner guilty of two counts of manslaughter and three counts of first-degree murder; an essential element of the latter verdicts was a finding that petitioner intended "to kill or inflict great bodily harm upon more than one person." La.Rev.Stat.Ann. § 14:30A(3) (West 1986).
When the jurors returned to the courtroom, a new note from them was given to the judge. This note stated that some of the jurors had misunderstood the question previously asked. The judge polled the jury again using the same method but changing the question slightly; the judge asked, "Do you feel that any further deliberations will enable you to arrive at a verdict?" App. 55. This time 11 jurors answered
On direct appeal, the Louisiana Supreme Court upheld the convictions and sentences. State v. Lowenfield, 495 So.2d 1245 (1985), cert. denied, 476 U.S. 1153 (1986). The court
Subsequently, petitioner sought habeas corpus from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana. Petitioner raised, inter alia, the two issues now before this Court: whether a sentence of death may validly rest upon a single aggravating circumstance that is a necessary element of the underlying offense of first-degree murder, and whether the judge had coerced the sentence verdicts from the jury. The District Court denied relief, and a divided panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed. 817 F.2d 285 (1987). The panel unanimously rejected the aggravating circumstance claim. Id. at 289. The majority went on to conclude: "there is no showing of coercion; the record certainly does not demonstrate coercion sufficient to render the trial fundamentally unfair." Id. at 293. The dissenting judge argued that the combination of the supplemental instruction to the jury and the polling of the jury as to the usefulness of further deliberations constituted improper coercion. Id. at 299-303.
The continuing validity of this Court's observations in Allen are beyond dispute, and they apply with even greater
force in a case such as this, where the charge given, in contrast to the so-called "traditional Allen charge," does not speak specifically to the minority jurors. [Footnote 1] But, in this case, one of the purposes served by such a charge -- the avoidance of the societal costs of a retrial -- is not present, because Louisiana law provides that, if the jury hangs, the court shall impose a sentence of life imprisonment. La.Code Crim.Proc.Ann., Art. 905.8 (West 1984). Petitioner naturally urges that this difference makes the charge here impermissible under the Due Process Clause and the Eighth Amendment. The difference between the division of function between the jury and judge in this case and the division in Allen obviously weighs in the constitutional calculus, but we do not find it dispositive. The State has, in a capital sentencing proceeding, a strong interest in having the jury "express the conscience of the community on the ultimate question of life or death." Witherspoon v. Illinois, 391 U. S. 510, 319 U. S. 519 (1968). Surely, if the jury had returned from its deliberations after only one hour and informed the court that it had failed to achieve unanimity on the first ballot, the court would incontestably have had the authority to insist that they deliberate further. This is true even in capital cases such as this one and Allen, even though we are naturally mindful in such cases that the "qualitative
Petitioner argues, however, that the coercive effect of the supplemental charge was exacerbated by inquiries made to the jury by the trial court. In Brasfield v. United States, 272 U. S. 448 (1926), the trial court had, after deliberations stalled, inquired as to how the jury was divided, and was informed simply that the jury stood nine to three. The jury resumed deliberations, and subsequently found the defendants guilty. This Court concluded that the inquiry into the jury's numerical division necessitated reversal because it was generally coercive and almost always brought to bear "in some degree, serious although not measurable, an improper influence upon the jury." Id. at 272 U. S. 450. Although the decision
We are mindful that the jury returned with its verdict soon after receiving the supplemental instruction, and that this suggests the possibility of coercion. United States Gypsum Co., supra, at 438 U. S. 462. We note, however, that defense counsel did not object to either the polls or the supplemental instruction. We do not suggest that petitioner thereby waived this issue, Wainwright v. Witt, 469 U. S. 412, 469 U. S. 431, n. 11 (1985), but we think such an omission indicates that the potential for coercion argued now was not apparent to one on the spot. [Footnote 4] Id. at 469 U. S. 430-431, and n. 11.
Louisiana has established five grades of homicide: first-degree murder, second-degree murder, manslaughter, negligent homicide, and vehicular homicide. La.Rev.Stat.Ann. § 14:29 (West 1986). Second-degree murder includes intentional murder and felony murder, and provides for punishment of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. § 14:30.1. [Footnote 5] Louisiana defines first-degree murder to include a narrower class of homicides:
La.Code Crim.Proc.Ann., Art. 905.3 (West 1984). Louisiana has established 10 statutory aggravating circumstances.
Petitioner was found guilty of three counts of first-degree murder under § 14.30.A.(3): "[T]he offender has a specific intent to kill or to inflict great bodily harm upon more than one person." The sole aggravating circumstance both found by the jury and upheld by the Louisiana Supreme Court was that "the offender knowingly created a risk of death or great bodily harm to more than one person." Art. 905.4(d). In these circumstances, these two provisions are interpreted in
The use of "aggravating circumstances" is not an end in itself, but a means of genuinely narrowing the class of death-eligible persons, and thereby channeling the jury's discretion. We see no reason why this narrowing function may not be
Adhering to my view that the death penalty is in all circumstances cruel and unusual punishment prohibited by the
Two principles should guide our evaluation of petitioner's claim. First, recognizing that "impartiality" is a state difficult to define and "coercion" an event difficult to discern in concrete situations, we must be careful to focus on the particular
facts of this case in order to assess "all the circumstances" surrounding the jury's progress from deadlock to unanimity. Jenkins v. United States, 380 U. S. 445, 380 U. S. 446 (1965) (per curiam). Second, we often have acknowledged that the unique nature of the death penalty demands a greater degree of reliability in capital sentencings than in other criminal proceedings. See, e.g., Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U. S. 586, 438 U. S. 604 (1978) (opinion of Burger, C.J., joined by Stewart, Powell, and STEVENS, JJ.); Woodson v. North Carolina, 428 U. S. 280, 428 U. S. 305 (1976) (opinion of Stewart, Powell, and STEVENS, JJ.).
The starting point for any determination of jury coercion is the facts of a given case. The opinion of the Court, however, does not keep its promise to examine "all the circumstances," failing to mention several significant events in evaluating whether the trial court's conduct improperly influenced the
Second, although the Court notes that the jury was instructed at the commencement of the sentencing phase that its failure to reach a verdict would result in a life sentence, rather than a second sentencing hearing, the Court fails to observe that this instruction was repeated three more times
The Court makes quick work of petitioner's challenge to the court's polling of the jury in this case. Observing that
The Court's treatment of petitioner's challenge to the Allen charge is similarly dismissive. The Court begins by suggesting that the validity of such charges is "beyond dispute," citing cases from all of the Circuits in which some form of an Allen charge has been upheld. Ante at 484 U. S. 237-238, and n. 1. This sweeping statement denigrates the serious reservations
expressed by many federal [Footnote 2/1] and state [Footnote 2/2] courts concerning the coercive nature of the traditional Allen charge. These reservations, voiced in the context of ordinary criminal trials, have particular significance for the instant case. The usual justifications for a verdict-urging charge are the time, expense, and possible loss of evidence that a new trial would entail. None of these justifications was present here, where a hung jury would have resulted in a life sentence. Moreover, in an ordinary criminal trial, an Allen charge will not steer the jury one way or the other on the merits, because it is as likely that the minority jurors are for conviction as for acquittal. Here, the charge inevitably made a verdict of death more likely, because a continued deadlock would have achieved a substantive outcome of a life sentence, rather than simply another sentencing hearing. These considerations indicate that the State's interest in a verdict in this case was relatively weak, whereas the defendant's interest in preserving the integrity of a dissenting vote was correspondingly strong. The general reservations voiced by other courts
Cornell v. Iowa, supra, at 1048, n. 2. In this case, the charge was given after the polling had pared down the minority to a single juror, identified
It is an open and a far closer question whether the practices challenged in this case should be deemed coercive in an ordinary criminal context. We have recognized often, and reiterated last Term, that practices entirely appropriate in other contexts may be improper in capital sentencing proceedings. See Booth v. Maryland, 482 U. S. 496, 482 U. S. 509, n. 12 (1987). The Court in this case, however, fails to recognize this principle, and makes no attempt to assess how the capital sentencing context affects the legitimacy of the challenged practices. This failure is troubling, not only because we require greater reliability in capital sentencings, but also because the nature of the capital sentencing process makes the practices challenged here more dangerous. The capital sentencing jury is asked to make a moral decision about whether a particular individual should live or die. Despite the objective factors that are introduced in an attempt to guide the exercise of the jurors' discretion, theirs is largely a subjective
Since our decision in Furman v. Georgia, 408 U. S. 238 (1972), we have required that there be a "meaningful basis for distinguishing the few cases in which [the death sentence] is imposed from the many cases in which it is not." Id. at 408 U. S. 313 (WHITE, J., concurring). We have held consistently that statutory aggravating circumstances considered during the sentencing process provide one of the means by which the jury's discretion is guided in making such constitutionally mandated distinctions. See, e.g., McCleskey v. Kemp, 481 U. S. 279, 481 U. S. 305 (1987) (describing "the role of the aggravating circumstance in guiding the sentencing jury's discretion"); Zant v. Stephens, 462 U. S. 862, 462 U. S. 877 (1983) (holding that "an aggravating circumstance must genuinely narrow the class of persons eligible for the death penalty"); Gregg
The Court today suggests that our emphasis on aggravating circumstances has been mere happenstance, and holds that the critical narrowing function may be performed prior to, and distinct from, the sentencing process. [Footnote 2/4] This holding misunderstands the significance of the narrowing requirement. The Court treats the narrowing function as a merely technical requirement that the number of those eligible for
Id. at 472 U. S. 328-329. Here, the sentencing jurors were led to believe that petitioner's eligibility for the death sentence was already established by their findings during the guilt phase -- findings arrived at without any contemplation of their implication for petitioner's sentence. Indeed, the court specifically instructed the jury at the start of its guilt phase deliberations: "You are not to discuss, in any way, the possibility of any penalties whatsoever." Record 2283. Then, during the penalty hearing, the prosecutor twice reminded the jury that
Witherspoon v. Illinois, 391 U.S. at 391 U. S. 521 (footnote omitted).
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