Opinion ID: 2611126
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: what did the 1984 death penalty statute mean?

Text: The death penalty measure was put on the ballot by initiative petition in 1984. For reasons of their own, the sponsors chose a formula that calls upon jurors to answer three factual inquiries about a defendant who has been convicted of aggravated murder. The same formula (to be applied by trial judges) had been used in a 1978 initiative measure which was unconstitutional for other reasons. See State v. Quinn, 290 Or. 383, 623 P.2d 630 (1981). The 1984 statute (codified at ORS 163.150(1)(b) (1985)) instructed the trial judge to submit the following issues to the jury. Briefly stated, the three issues were, first, whether the defendant acted deliberately and expected that someone's death would result; second, whether the defendant probably would commit violent crimes in the future, and third, in case of provocation, whether the defendant's conduct was an unreasonable response. [1] The 1984 statute then provided: If the jury returns an affirmative finding on each issue considered under this section, the trial judge shall sentence the defendant to death. If the jury returns a negative finding on any issue submitted under this section, the trial judge shall sentence the defendant to imprisonment for life in the custody of the Department of Corrections as provided in ORS 163.105. ORS 163.150(1)(e). The three issues were questions of fact. The statute expressly called for findings. It excluded discretion. If the jury returned an affirmative finding on each issue, a sentence of death followed as a matter of law; if the jury returned a negative finding (more accurately, failed to return an affirmative finding) on any issue, the statute prescribed imprisonment for life. [2] Indeed, eliminating discretion was the central feature of the 1984 measure. It sought, at least so far as the words of a law and of jury instructions can do this, to relieve both jury and judge of the choice whether or not to punish a defendant by death. Findings of fact would determine the applicable penalty. The jury could not vote for death without findings; the jury could not vote against death once it found the statutory facts. The judge's role was not judgment but only to announce the statutory sentence. For that very reason, the statute included an express provision to allow the prosecution and the defense to present arguments for or against a sentence of death. ORS 163.150(1)(a). If the jury were left to choose the penalty, the parties would need no special permission to argue for and against death; that would go without saying. The provision would be surplusage. But a statute limiting the jury to specified findings of fact might seem to forbid arguments drawing attention to the life-or-death consequences of those findings. The special permission for such arguments was not surplusage when its inclusion is seen to confirm the nonjudgmental, factfinding questions put to the jury under the 1984 measure. The provision did not alter or add to those questions. The decisive role of the three statutory issues appeared not only on the face of the statute. It was so explained to the voters by the committee charged with providing an impartial explanation in the Voters Pamphlet. The explanation stated: If the jury unanimously agrees that the defendant (1) acted deliberately with reasonable expectation of causing death, (2) is probably a continuing threat to society, and (3) responded unreasonably to provocation, if any, by the murder victim, the sentence must be death by lethal injection. Otherwise the sentence is life in prison with a minimum of 30 years (20 years minimum upon a unanimous vote of the Parole Board) without possibility of parole. Any sentence of death will be automatically reviewed by the Oregon Supreme Court. Official 1984 General Election Voters Pamphlet, Explanation to Measure No. 7. The explanation, like the text, did not refer to three specified findings among others not specified. It explained that if the jury finds the three listed facts, the sentence must be death by lethal injection. It must be death, not may be, depending on the jury's view of other considerations. Suppose that shortly after the 1984 vote, in the face of the explicit text of the measure and this official explanation, someone had written in a Bar examination that the statute did not make the three questions decisive, that affirmative answers to all three did not lead to a death sentence, but that the statute required the jury further to answer whether in its view the death sentence for the individual defendant was appropriate on other, unspecified grounds. Such an answer would be graded on the assumption that the student could not or did not read the statute. The contention would be brushed aside by prosecutors and judges as baseless and flatly contrary to the statute. That, of course, is what happened when defendants later made such arguments. The state concedes that until the current round of cases it consistently, and successfully, maintained that the statute left no room for any issue beyond the three specified in the text. What, in short, did the 1984 statute mean? As written and as presented to the voters, it meant that the penalty depended exclusively on three questions, not four. In this very case, the state told the United States Supreme Court that the statute asks the jury to answer the three statutory questions. Wagner v. Oregon (No. 87-6820), State's Response in Opposition to Petition for Writ of Certiorari at 2. Before the United States Supreme Court decided Penry v. Lynaugh, supra , Oregon's statute meant no fourth question. If Penry had never been decided, the 1984 statute would still mean no fourth question. If Penry had been decided differently, the Oregon statute now would mean no fourth question. The state and the majority do not pretend otherwise. The United States Supreme Court, of course, does not reinterpret or alter the meaning of an Oregon statute. The statute means after Penry what it meant before. In the words of the 1984 Voters Pamphlet explanation: If the jury unanimously agrees that the defendant (1) acted deliberately with reasonable expectation of causing death, (2) is probably a continuing threat to society, and (3) responded unreasonably to provocation, if any, by the murder victim, the sentence must be death by lethal injection.