Opinion ID: 6536853
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The limitations of comparison

Text: {206} The Majority holds out cross-case comparison as a reliable method to evaluate the merits of death sentences and suggests that consistency in outcomes of capital cases is not only desirable but required. They embrace two incorrect assumptions: first, comparing death sentences, in the way envisioned by the Majority, reliably answers whether a death sentence has been appropriately imposed; and second, any perceived inconsistency in the application of the death penalty is unacceptable. Both of these assumptions are wrong. {207} The type of comparison in which the Majority engages-one that seeks to assess the correctness of death sentences by scrutinizing the facts and details of capital crimes and sentences-is inappropriate. As one court effectively and imaginatively explained, a court undertaking comparative proportionality  review should not treat the endeavor as a forensic scientist would. [The defendant] would have us review [the comparative disproportionality of his death sentence] as a forensic scientist analyzes fingerprints, looking for a specified number of identity points. Only if one can conclusively determine that each swirl, ridge, and whorl is present in both samples is a match declared. We decline to do this. Crimes, particularly the brutal and extreme ones with which we deal in death penalty cases, are unique and cannot be matched up like so many points on a graph. State v. Lord , 117 Wash.2d 829 , 822 P.2d 177 , 223 (1991) (overruled in part by State v. Schierman , 192 Wash.2d 577 , 438 P.3d 1063 (2018). The point of the metaphor is that appellate courts cannot and should not sift through the fine details of capital crimes and the death sentences they produce and compare them. Doing this draws appellate courts into a realm they simply do not belong and provides only the most superficial assurance of the validity of a death sentence. And this point brings me back to my preliminary criticism of the language with which the Majority has described its task here. The validity of a death sentence cannot be based on our judgment about the severity of the murder that gave rise to the sentence. {208} This Court does not sit in judgment of what crimes are most severe, heinous, and deserving of the death penalty. Section 31-20A-4(C)(4) cannot be construed to provide this Court that authority. To do so intrudes into an area that is reserved solely for the jury, the only entity capable of deciding what punishment is appropriate for the most severe violations of community norms. So what is the concern for courts undertaking a comparative proportionality review? {209} The concern is with alleviating the types of major systemic problems identified in Furman : random arbitrariness and imposition of the death sentence based on race. Lord , 822 P.2d at 223 . Technical inconsistencies in a line-by-line comparison cannot be equated with those core concerns. Id. Comparative proportionality review is simply not intended to ensure that there can be no variation on a case-by-case basis, nor to guarantee that the death penalty is always imposed in superficially similar circumstances. Id. {210} For these reasons, the secondary literature indicates that death sentences are overturned as comparatively disproportionate only very rarely. See Leigh B. Bienen, The Proportionality Review of Capital Cases By State High Courts After Gregg: Only The Appearance of Justice? , 87 J. Crim. L. & Criminology 130 (1996) (surveying the states that perform comparative proportionality review and noting only a limited number of instances where death sentences were overturned as comparatively disproportionate). It is, ironically, the Majority's position in this case that is the outlier.