Opinion ID: 1947870
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 13

Heading: guidelines for appellate review of death penalty cases?

Text: The appellant principally argues here that in determining whether his death sentence has been wantonly and freakishly imposed, the facts and circumstances of his case should be compared not only to other cases where the death penalty was upheld but also to all cases with similar facts and circumstances including those where life imprisonment was the sentence. We feel that a comparison with other cases where the death penalty was upheld is constitutionally adequate and judicially manageable. A similar attack was made on the vagueness of appellate review of death cases under the Florida statute, which is similar to the Mississippi statute, in Spinkellink v. Wainwright, 578 F.2d 582 (5th Cir.1978). In Spinkellink, in dismissing this attack upon the appellate review procedure, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals cited the concurring opinion of Justices Stewart, Powell and Stevens, in Proffitt v. Florida, supra: Nonetheless the petitioner attacks the Florida appellate review process because the role of the Supreme Court of Florida in reviewing death sentences is necessarily subjective and unpredictable. While it may be true that that Court has not chosen to formulate a rigid objective test as its standard of review for all cases, it does not follow that the appellate review process is ineffective or arbitrary. In fact, it is apparent that the Florida Court has undertaken responsibly to perform its function of death sentence review with a maximum of rationality and consistency. For example, it has several times compared the circumstances of a case under review with those of previous cases in which it has assessed the imposition of death sentences. See, e.g., Alford v. State, 307 So.2d 433, 445 (Fla. 1975); Alvord v. State, 322 So.2d 533, 540-541 (Fla. 1975). By following this procedure the Florida Court has in effect adopted the type of proportionality review mandated by the Georgia statute. 578 F.2d at 601-02. Spinkellink specifically stated a comparison to all death cases where the convicted murderer was given life was not required by Proffitt. Such review ... would be never ending and the benchmark for comparison would be chronically undefined. 578 F.2d at 604-05.