Opinion ID: 2557847
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: In Stevenson, We Granted A New Penalty Hearing Because Of An Unacceptable Appearance of Impropriety.

Text: A grand jury indicted Stevenson for first degree murder, among other charges, for his role in the death of a witness scheduled to testify against him in an unrelated theft case. A jury convicted Stevenson on all charges. After a penalty hearing, the jury unanimously found four statutory aggravating circumstances, voted eight to four that the aggravating circumstances outweighed the mitigating circumstances and recommended a death sentence. In what this Court described as an extensive written opinion, [9] the trial judge sentenced Stevenson to death. On his direct appeal, Stevenson argued that the trial judge should have recused himself because he had conducted a suppression hearing in the theft case against Stevenson during which he heard the murder victim testify. This Court rejected that claim under a plain error standard of review, because the judge's familiarity with the victim resulted entirely from a judicial, rather than extra-judicial, source and recusal was therefore not required. Stevenson then filed a Rule 61 petition for postconviction relief. One of the grounds for his postconviction claims of ineffective assistance of counsel was that his trial attorney failed to file a motion for recusal based on the appearance of partiality. The same judge who had presided over Stevenson's trial denied Stevenson's petition for postconviction relief without granting an evidentiary hearing. Stevenson then appealed that judgment to this Court. We remanded the case to the Superior Court for development of the factual record. Specifically, we requested a report from the President Judge of the Superior Court detailing the general standards governing the assignment of judges to capital cases and commenting specifically on the assignment in Stevenson's case. We also requested a report from the trial judge explaining his involvement in the suppression hearing in Stevenson's unrelated theft case and the circumstances of his assignment to Stevenson's capital case. Both reports revealed, for the first time on the record, that the trial judge had requested, directly from the President Judge, to be assigned Stevenson's capital case. In his report on remand, the trial judge characterized the circumstances in this way: At the time of my request, I had no pending capital murder trials. President Judge Ridgely strives to divide murder cases equally among the judges and, quite naturally, considers volunteers in assigning high profile cases. I volunteered for two reasons. First, I had no capital cases assigned to me at the time, and second, I was familiar with the facts surrounding the [ ] theft case. . . . My familiarity with the theft case did not induce me to prejudge Stevenson [ ] on the murder charge[ ]. [10] The parties, like this Court, had never known about the trial judge's specific assignment request before the trial judge filed this report on remand. We reversed the Superior Court judgment on the basis that the circumstances of the trial judge's conduct in Stevenson created an unacceptable appearance of impropriety. We also remanded the case, mandating that a new Superior Court judge consider Stevenson's postconviction claims relating to the guilt phase of his trial and conduct a new penalty hearing. Specifically, we stated: [T]he appearance of partiality evident in this case creates too great a risk that a constitutional violation has occurred in the imposition of the death penalty. [11]