Opinion ID: 1060719
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Prosecutor's Argument at Sentencing

Text: We next turn to the third Howell factor in the harmless error analysiswhether and the extent to which the prosecution relied on the invalid felony murder factor in arguing for the death penalty in the sentencing phase of the trial. The State's argument is replete with references to the felony murder factor, as well as to the fact that the killing occurred during a robbery. A review of the prosecutor's opening argument reveals the following statements: [W]hen you carefully analyze as you have done, and find that on May 27th, 1982, without justification of any sort, without claim of any right, this man willfully, deliberately took the life another with malice with a deadly weapon and took that in the course of committing another felony, to wit: Armed robbery. . . . The day is gone when we can just pick out a county and go there and pick out a man and pick out a business, rob and kill, and then with impunity seek to escape the accountability of our deeds. . . . And the murder was committed while the Defendant was engaged in committing, or was an accomplice in the commission of, or was attempting to commit, or was fleeing after committing, or attempting to commit any first degree murder, arson, rape, robbery, burglary, larceny, kidnapping, aircraft piracy, or unlawful throwing, placing, or discharging of a destructive device or bomb. He committed this murder in the course of an armed robbery. . . . Hold this man accountable, stop his reign of criminal activity, put him under the kind of sentence that will forbid him to once again roam the streets seeking criminal activity, that will forbid him from once again choosing to come on a tour of Maury County to kill and to murder. The following additional references to the felony murder aggravating factor appear in the prosecution's final closing remarks: [The defendant] comes to Maury County for no good reason other than he says he has some stolen goods in his car that he wants to sell, and goes into a place of business in Maury County to a man that he says he doesn't even know, and with the purpose, with his big pistol, with the purpose to rob and the, the pre-conceived notion that he will kill if he has to, and rob and kill the decent citizens of this community. . . . We have listed for your consideration no less than three mitigating [sic] circumstances. One of which you have already determined, and that is that this murder was committed during the course of an armed robbery. . . . That has [been] determined in order to find that this man was guilty of felony murder, so that has been found by you already beyond a reasonable doubt. . . . Violence, crimes of violence, risk of death to two or more persons, and of course, the underlying felony in this felony murder charge of which he now stands convicted which you have already found beyond a reasonable doubt. . . . When a man takes a pistol, whether he takes a large pistol such as this, or a little bitty pistol, when he takes an instrument of death and goes into another person's business with the preconceived purpose of using that instrument of death for whatever, or in whatever manner is necessary in order to steal and rob from the people there, then I cannot see any mitigating circumstances when he goes in there and kills a man. It is evident from the foregoing that the State's reliance on the invalid felony murder aggravating factor was substantial and strongly emphasized in seeking the death penalty. Moreover, the jury was told on several occasions that, by virtue of its guilty verdict, it had already found this circumstance to have been proven. Accordingly, I disagree with the majority's conclusion that taken as a whole, the State's argument did not emphasize the felony murder aggravating circumstance.