Opinion ID: 222406
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Failure to Give A Reasonable Doubt Instruction in Weighing Aggravators and Mitigators

Text: Gabrion argues that the District Court's penalty phase jury instruction concerning the manner in which the jury was to weigh the aggravating and mitigating factors violated his due process rights. Specifically, he argues that the jury should have been instructed that in order to impose death they need to find beyond a reasonable doubt the element of the death sentence that the aggravating factors outweigh the mitigating factors. The District Court did not advise the jury that it should apply any particular measure of persuasion or degree of belief to this ultimate question of fact. This ultimate question on which life imprisonment or capital punishment turns was left to the jury to answer intuitively. We believe this was error because a much greater degree of certainty is required when the life of a person is at stake. We, therefore, hold that a jury's finding that the aggravating factors outweigh the mitigating factors is an element of the death penalty and must be found beyond a reasonable doubt, the same standard constitutionally required for all other findings of fact and mixed questions of law and fact. On the general question, see the broad language of United States v. Gaudin, 515 U.S. 506, 510-12, 115 S.Ct. 2310, 132 L.Ed.2d 444 (1995) (criminal convictions must rest upon a jury determination that the defendant is guilty of every element of the crime with which he is charged, beyond a reasonable doubt, including issues of materiality and mixed questions of law and fact). Under the Federal Death Penalty Act, a death-eligible defendant shall be sentenced to death if, after consideration of the factors set forth in section 3592 ... it is determined that imposition of a sentence of death is justified. 18 U.S.C. § 3591. This determination is committed to the jury, who is tasked with weighing aggravating and mitigating factors; though the Act styles this determination as a recommendation, it is one that the judge is obliged to follow. 18 U.S.C. § 3594. Section 3593(e) states as follows to the degree or intensity of belief required by the jury: [T]he jury ... shall consider whether all the aggravating factor or factors found to exist sufficiently outweigh all the mitigating factor or factors found to exist to justify a sentence of death, or, in the absence of a mitigating factor, whether the aggravating factor or factors alone are sufficient to justify a sentence of death. Based upon this consideration, the jury by unanimous vote ... shall recommend whether the defendant should be sentenced to death, to life imprisonment without possibility of release or some other lesser sentence. (Emphasis added.) Thus the statute itself leaves up in the air the measure of persuasion and the jury's requisite degree of belief on the ultimate element of the offense concerning the comparison between aggravators and mitigators. In the instant case, mere sufficiency in the mind of a juror is all that the instructions to the jury, which mirrored the provision quoted above, implied. The instructions were based on the premise that there was no need for the jury to have in mind any particular degree of certainty. We disagree with this premise. The sentencing phase of the case is part of a criminal proceeding that may result in a verdict of death. As discussed above, the Act plainly requires as a necessary precondition to a capital defendant's receiving the sentence of death that the government prove and the jury find that aggravators outweigh the mitigators. Normally, in the run-of-the-mill criminal case, the government is charged with pro[ving] beyond a reasonable doubt ... every fact necessary to constitute the crime with which a defendant is charged. In re Winship, 397 U.S. 358, 364, 90 S.Ct. 1068, 25 L.Ed.2d 368 (1970). This requirement insures the moral force of the criminal law. Id. It has been adhered to by virtually all common-law jurisdictions. Sullivan v. Louisiana, 508 U.S. 275, 278, 113 S.Ct. 2078, 124 L.Ed.2d 182 (1993). This should be particularly true in death cases. Professor Linda Carter has outlined the basic reasons for this requirement: As the Court stated in a case reaffirming the principle that all mitigating evidence must be considered, regardless whether the jurors were unanimous in finding a particular mitigating circumstance: The decision to exercise the power of the State to execute a defendant is unlike any other decision citizens and public officials are called upon to make. Evolving standards of societal decency have imposed a correspondingly high requirement of reliability on the determination that death is the appropriate penalty in a particular case. The nature of the decision itself, life or death, thus speaks forcefully for using a heightened standard of beyond a reasonable doubt. A Beyond a Reasonable Doubt Standard in Death Penalty Proceedings: A Neglected Element of Fairness, 52 Ohio. L.J. 195, 220 (1991) (quoting Mills v. Maryland, 486 U.S. 367, 383-84, 108 S.Ct. 1860, 100 L.Ed.2d 384 (1988)). See also Note, Variable Verbalistics, The Measure of Persuasion in Tennessee, 11 Vand. L.Rev. 1413 (1958) (jury instructions on measure of persuasion needed must be clear and understandable). Likewise, a number of state supreme courts in death penalty cases have thoroughly analyzed the question of the measure of persuasion and concluded that the beyond a reasonable doubt standard is necessary to communicate to the jurors the degree of certainty that they must possess that any mitigating factors do not outweigh the proven statutory aggravating factors before arriving at the ultimate judgment that death is the appropriate penalty. People v. Tenneson, 788 P.2d 786, 792-94 (Colo.1990) (collecting cases). Recent trends in federal constitutional law confirm our application of the basic rule of Winship to the weighing process. The Supreme Court in Ring v. Arizona applied the reasoning of Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466, 120 S.Ct. 2348, 147 L.Ed.2d 435 (2000)which first announced the recognition that facts increasing a maximum sentence must be proven to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt, regardless of whether a criminal statute purports to make those facts sentencing considerations rather than elements of an offenseto the penalty phase of a capital prosecution, and held that the Sixth Amendment requires that aggravating factors required for the imposition of a death sentence must be found by a jury, not a judge. 536 U.S. 584, 609, 122 S.Ct. 2428, 153 L.Ed.2d 556 (2002). The Court in Ring did not have the issue of weighing before it, id. at 597, n. 4, 122 S.Ct. 2428, but we think its reasoning is helpful in resolving this issue. The Government attempts to limit Ring's import by arguing that the Act's requirement that the jury find the presence of aggravating factors beyond a reasonable doubt is enough to satisfy constitutional requirements. They insist that under the Act a defendant is death eligible once the jury finds the presence of aggravators, and thus that the outcome of the weighing process, rather than increasing that eligibility, simply fixes the punishment within the eligible range, and so it is freed from all constitutional requirement otherwise applicable to jury findings. This is an empty formalism of the sort the Supreme Court explicitly rejected in Ring. See Ring, 536 U.S. at 602, 122 S.Ct. 2428 (The dispositive question... is one not of form, but of effect.) (quoting Apprendi, 530 U.S. at 494, 120 S.Ct. 2348). It is plain from the Act that, even after the jury finds the presence of aggravators beyond a reasonable doubt, more needs to be proven before the defendant may be sentenced to death: a defendant is not truly eligible for the death penaltythat is, that the death penalty cannot legally be imposed on himunless and until the jury makes the determination that the aggravators outweigh the mitigators. [6] He is no more eligible for the death penalty before that determination is made than he was when he was indicted; the range of penalties to which he is exposed does not include the death penalty until the jury makes that required factual finding of this element of the offense. All facts essential to the imposition of the level of punishment that the defendant receiveswhether the statute calls them elements of the offense, sentencing factors, or Mary Janemust be found by the jury beyond a reasonable doubt. Ring, 536 U.S. at 610, 122 S.Ct. 2428 (Scalia, J., joined by Thomas, J., concurring). That requirement surely applies to the jury's determination of whether the Government has proven a defendant worthy of society's ultimate punishment, in spite of features of his case that may militate in favor of a life sentence. The refusal of some of our sister circuits in death cases to impose the ordinary measure of persuasion applicable to criminal cases on the weighing of aggravators and mitigators is based on their theory that this weighing does not resolve a question of fact, but is instead a process designed to arrive at a moral, as opposed to factual, judgment. See United States v. Sampson, 486 F.3d 13, 32 (1st Cir.2007) (holding that the requisite weighing constitutes a process, not a fact to be found and that [t]he outcome of the weighing process is not an objective truth that is susceptible to (further) proof by either party); United States v. Fields, 483 F.3d 313, 346 (5th Cir.2007) (holding that the jury's decision that the aggravating factors outweigh the mitigating factors is not a finding of fact but a highly subjective, largely moral judgment) (internal quotation marks and citations omitted). [7] We depart from the reasoning of these cases at two related points. First, it has never been the case that the constitutional requirement of proof beyond a reasonable doubt applies only when the jury is tasked with the determination of objective truth[s] ... susceptible to ... proof or raw facts. In United States v. Gaudin, 515 U.S. 506, 115 S.Ct. 2310, 132 L.Ed.2d 444 (1995), the Supreme Court explicitly rejected the notion of the criminal jury as a mere factfinder, and held that the requirement of proof beyond a reasonable doubt extends to its resolution of mixed questions of law and fact. Id. at 513-14, 115 S.Ct. 2310. As referred to above, the Court in Gaudin held that the jury's constitutional responsibility is not merely to determine the facts, but to apply the law to those facts and draw the ultimate conclusion of guilt or innocence. Id. at 514, 115 S.Ct. 2310. Surely that responsibility is all the more acute where the ultimate conclusion is not just guilt or innocence, but life or death. Second, these courts misapprehend the nature of jury determinations when they consider the idea of a process to be at odds with the question of ultimate fact that the process resolves. In both civil and criminal cases at common law, we have long had many standards that require the jury to weigh factors that lead to an ultimate conclusion that the law regards as an ultimate finding of fact, even when that fact may have legal or moral, as well as objective, aspects. These include: questions of negligence (where the jury is invited to weigh[] interests in evaluating whether a defendant's conduct meets that of a reasonable man, see Restatement (Second) of Torts § 283 & cmt. e (1965)), punitive damages (where the jury is invited to weigh factors such as the character and intent of the defendant's act, the extent of the harm, and the wealth of the defendant in making the basically moral determination of whether his conduct was outrageous, see id. § 908), insanity (where the jury is asked whether a defendant could appreciate the moral wrongfulness of his conduct at the time of his alleged offense, see Model Penal Code § 4.01 (1962)), tortious interference with contract (where the jury is tasked with weighing factors such as the defendant's intent in determining whether an alleged interference is improper, see Restatement (Second) of Torts § 766, 8c cmt. j (1979)), and many other mixed issues of law and fact in tort and criminal law. That these various weighing determinations involve a process in which the jury weighs factors does not mean that they do not result in the finding of a fact. These determinations require varying degrees of certitude, i.e., burdens of proof, depending on the policy or attitude of the law in balancing the culpability of the defendants versus the nature of the punishment. But our society has decided on only one degree of certitude appropriate in criminal cases: beyond a reasonable doubt. Weighing aggravators versus mitigators in death cases is just one of manyas well as the most drasticof the processes that lead to an ultimate finding of fact. Finally, the Act's harmless-error provision notwithstanding, the law is clear that a court's error in refusing to deliver a reasonable doubt instruction to a jury in a criminal case is a structural error not susceptible to harmless error analysis. See Sullivan v. Louisiana, 508 U.S. 275, 281, 113 S.Ct. 2078, 124 L.Ed.2d 182 (1993) (refusing to apply harmless error analysis where trial court erred in describing burden of proof in a criminal case, reasoning that a misdescription of the burden of proof ... vitiates all the jury's findings). Accordingly, our determination that Gabrion was entitled to a reasonable doubt instruction as to the weighing of aggravating and mitigating factors requires the reversal of his death sentence.