Opinion ID: 1675525
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Target: Procedural Bars in Death Penalty Cases

Text: My principal target is the statement in Part III(e) of the majority opinion, at pages 439-440, that this Court has consistently applied a contemporaneous objection rule in death penalty cases. The statement is wrong as a matter of fact. Far more of our cases going back over the decades have declined to invoke procedural bars in capital cases. Beyond that, the statement is wholly at odds (a) with constitutional imperatives enunciated by the Supreme Court of the United States, (b) with the mandate of the legislature of this state regarding appellate review, Miss. Code Ann. § 99-19-105, and (c) with this Court's plain error rules, Miss.Sup.Ct.Rules 6(b) and 42. Without doubt the state has an interest in achieving finality in litigation, even death penalty litigation. Contemporaneous objection and other procedural rules, when fairly enforced, no doubt promote legitimate state interests in non-capital cases. But death is different. Surely the State of Mississippi has no interest as great as its interest in assuring that, before a man suffers the irrevocable penalty of death, he be accorded every substantive right and protection known to our law, procedural niceties to the contrary notwithstanding. No such contrary interest has been identified in the majority opinion, nor could it be. Make no mistake about the implications of the procedural bar the majority imposes upon Alvin Hill. It presumes that Hill's rights secured in the positive laws of this state have been violated. The majority notes  then overlooks  two errors, each of which standing alone has in the past been sufficient to vitiate non-capital convictions and sentences. What state interest requires this fateful step eludes me. I have addressed this proposition briefly in my special concurring opinion in Edwards v. Thigpen, 433 So.2d 906, 909 (Miss. 1983). In Edwards, my view on the merits of the issues tendered was that petitioner was entitled to no relief. The case at bar, however, as the majority correctly notes, is different. Were it not for the procedural sluggishness of defense counsel, Alvin Hill would be entitled to reversal here. In Edwards, counsel's procedural defaults were in my view harmless because the points were substantively meritless. Because here Hill's attorney's failures have, if the majority opinion becomes the last word, become catastrophic, I wish to set forth my views at some length. II. The Uniqueness Of The Death Penalty