Opinion ID: 2557847
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Jackson's Reliance On Gardner Is Also Misplaced.

Text: Jackson also contends that his death sentence violates due process under the United States Supreme Court's holding in Gardner v. Florida . We disagree because there is no evidence on this record that the trial judge relied at all on Hurley's sidebar commentary when imposing Jackson's death sentence.
A jury found Gardner guilty of first degree murder in Florida on January 10, 1974. [25] Florida, like Delaware, requires a separate penalty hearing in capital cases where a jury must determine whether the State had proven statutory aggravating circumstances, whether mitigating circumstances outweigh aggravating circumstances, and whether the defendant should be sentenced to life imprisonment or death. After the jury retired to deliberate, the sentencing judge announced that he was going to order a presentence investigation of Gardner. [26] After twenty-five minutes of deliberation, the jury expressly found that the mitigating circumstances outweighed the aggravating circumstances and advised the judge to impose a life sentence. [27] The Florida Parole and Probation Commission completed its presentence investigation of Gardner and issued a presentence report on January 28, 1974. [28] Two days later, the trial judge entered findings of fact and, contrary to the jury recommendation, sentenced Gardner to death. [29] He explicitly based his judgment on the evidence presented at both stages of the bifurcated proceeding, the arguments of counsel, and his review of the factual information contained in said pre-sentence investigation. [30] The presentence investigation report had a confidential portion that the judge never disclosed to defense counsel. [31] Defense counsel and the State each received copies of the non-confidential portions of the report, and defense counsel did not ask to see the full report or to be appraised of the substance of the confidential portion. [32] The Supreme Court, by a fractured majority, vacated Gardner's death sentence and remanded. The plurality written opinion based this judgment on its belief that Gardner was denied due process of law when the death sentence was imposed, at least in part, on the basis of information which he had no opportunity to deny or explain. [33]
In Gardner, the judge's reliance on the confidential information as a basis for imposing the death penalty was centrally important. [34] Nevertheless, the plurality written opinion implicitly recognized that judges, consistent with their gatekeeping function, have the intellectual capacity to be exposed to disputed information and disregard it in the exercise of their judicial function. [35] In so doing, the Gardner plurality affirmed that the critical aspect of its decision was not the trial judge's exposure to confidential information, the nature of that information, or the fact that the parties arguably would have disputed the information, but rather that the case record established that the judge relied, at least in part, on that information when imposing the death sentence. In Jackson's case, there is no record evidence that the trial judge relied on Hurley's sidebar comments at all. He permitted Hurley to withdraw as Jackson's attorney at the end of the pretrial hearing, and he sealed the transcript so that no one else could read Hurley's unfavorable opinion of Jackson and risk Jackson's right to a fair trial. And, there is no evidence that when the trial judge imposed the death sentence nearly three years later, he either reviewed or relied in any way on Hurley's commentary. In fact, his finding at the second penalty hearing of one less aggravating factor than he found at the first penalty hearing, affirmatively shows that he was not relying on Hurley's strong negative opinion while sentencing Jackson. As the judge stated in his sentencing opinion, he relied on evidence from the trial and second penalty hearing, the arguments of counsel, and, in particular, the eleven to one death recommendation of the penalty phase jury. [36] Without record evidence proving reliance on Hurley's remarks, the judge in this case did not violate Jackson's due process rights under Gardner. Therefore, we reject Jackson's claim for relief on the basis of Gardner.