Opinion ID: 1965601
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: commonwealth's claim on appeal

Text: The trial court granted appellant's post-sentence request for a new penalty hearing based on a finding that mitigation counsel was ineffective for making biblical references to the jury that in effect sanctioned the imposition of the death penalty. Counsel told the jury that while most people were familiar with the biblical phrase an eye for an eye, not many knew that the Bible reserved this severe punishment for a very narrow type of wrongdoing, that is, where a person kills a pregnant woman. Despite the fact that this case involved that very scenario, mitigation counsel told the jury: When you go back there, someone may say, as the District Attorney referred: You must impose the death penalty because of an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, and if that happens, I will ask you to . . . request that a Bible be sent back to you, and when you get that Bible, turn to the book of Exodus, Chapter 21, Verse 24, and you will see those very words: An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. And at that moment in time, you will think that you know what it means, but you won't, because in order to know what it means, you have to read verse 22 and 23 in front of it, which says that if there is an assault on a woman, and that woman is pregnant, and that woman loses the child, and there is damage beyond that to the woman, then an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. You may go back there, and you may think that you have to impose the death penalty in this case because that is the worst thing that anyone can ever do to anyone else. N.T. 10/2/03 at 82-83; Trial Court Opinion, July 21, 2004, at 13 n. 4. Shortly after penalty deliberations began, the jury asked the trial judge for the Bible. The trial court refused, explaining, [I]t would be inappropriate for me to give you a copy of the Bible. N.T. 10/3/03 at 3. At the post-sentence evidentiary hearing on appellant's claim of ineffectiveness in connection with this incident, counsel testified that he knew that a prosecutor is precluded from referring to the Bible, but he did not believe the same rule applied to defense counsel. The trial court found credible counsel's testimony that despite his awareness of the victim's pregnancy, he had made the biblical argument out of habit, as he frequently used the argument as a basis for encouraging a jury's rejection of the death penalty. The trial court specifically found counsel's comments to be accidental and not intended as an effort to build prejudicial error into the proceedings. Trial Court Opinion at 15. Concluding that all prongs of ineffective assistance of counsel had been met, the trial court vacated the death sentence and granted appellant a new penalty hearing. To prevail on an ineffective assistance of counsel claim, the defendant bears the burden of establishing: 1) an underlying claim of arguable merit; 2) no reasonable basis for counsel's act or omission; and 3) prejudice as a result, that is, a reasonable probability that but for counsel's act or omission, the outcome of the proceeding would have been different. Commonwealth v. Carpenter, 555 Pa. 434, 725 A.2d 154, 161 (1999). Counsel is presumed to have been effective. Commonwealth v. Balodis, 560 Pa. 567, 747 A.2d 341, 343 (2000). A failure to satisfy any prong of this test is fatal to the ineffectiveness claim. Commonwealth v. Sneed, 587 Pa. 318, 899 A.2d 1067, 1076 (2006). The right to effective assistance of counsel extends to closing arguments, the purpose of which is to sharpen and clarify the issues presented to the trier of fact. Commonwealth v. Bryant, 579 Pa. 119, 855 A.2d 726, 742 (2004) (quoting from Yarborough v. Gentry, 540 U.S. 1, 5-6, 124 S.Ct. 1, 157 L.Ed.2d 1 (2003)). Because of the broad range of legitimate defense strategies at this stage of the proceeding, great deference is accorded counsel's tactical decisions in his closing presentation. Yarborough, supra . A misstatement by counsel when referring to evidence does not necessarily demand relief, particularly because the jury is instructed that the arguments of counsel are not evidence. Bryant, supra at 745. Although we do not disregard completely the reasonableness of other alternatives available to counsel, the balance tips in favor of a finding of effective assistance as soon as it is determined that trial counsel's decision had any reasonable basis. Commonwealth v. Pierce, 515 Pa. 153, 527 A.2d 973, 975 (1987) (citation omitted). In Commonwealth v. Chambers, 528 Pa. 558, 599 A.2d 630 (1991), this Court held that it is per se reversible error for the prosecutor to rely on the Bible or any other religious writing in support of the death penalty. Id. at 644. We explained that a jury should consider only factors which flow from the evidence and the inferences properly drawn from the evidence. Id. Reliance on the Bible or other religious writing encourages the jury to substitute religious precepts for the law of this Commonwealth, only the latter of which the jury is required to follow. Id. Our Legislature has determined that the death penalty is an appropriate punishment for certain intentional killings, and by statute sets forth specific sentencing procedures that control the manner in which the death penalty may be imposed. 42 Pa.C.S. § 9711. The relevant law provides for a separate penalty phase hearing, whereby the parties offer evidence relevant to punishment, and counsel has the opportunity to present argument. 42 Pa. C.S. § 9711(a)(2), (3). Defense counsel is permitted wide latitude in presenting evidence of mitigating factors to the jury, including a factor counsel argued in this case, that is, any . . . evidence . . . concerning the character and record of the defendant and the circumstances of his offense. 42 Pa.C.S. § 9711(e)(8). We have not hesitated to find that religious references are improper and irrelevant when intended to persuade jurors to follow their religious beliefs, as opposed to the law of this Commonwealth. See Chambers, 599 A.2d at 644. We defer to the Legislature's carefully defined and limited circumstances under which a sentence of death may be imposed. Jurors have an obligation to apply the law, and may not ignore their oath and obligations by substituting their own religious beliefs. Accordingly, in Commonwealth v. Daniels, 537 Pa. 464, 644 A.2d 1175, 1183 (1994), we upheld the trial court's proper restrictions of defense counsel's references to the Bible in support of his argument that the death penalty is morally wrong. This Court noted that the same considerations which prohibit a prosecutor from relying on the Bible to support imposition of the death penalty should apply to defense counsel's use of the Bible to oppose the death penalty: The boundaries of proper advocacy are exceeded if we allow counsel to make arguments calculated to inflame the passions or prejudices of the jury, or to divert the jury from its duty to decide the case on the evidence by introducing broad social issues that are not based on evidence in the record. Id. at 1183. The Commonwealth argues that because the jury found the existence of one aggravating circumstance and no mitigating circumstances, the jury did not have to engage in a weighing process, and therefore could not have been affected by defense counsel's remarks about the Bible. Relying on several decisions of this Court in which we upheld the imposition of the death penalty, the Commonwealth argues that appellant simply cannot prove prejudice as a matter of law. The Commonwealth draws our attention to Commonwealth v. Crawley, 514 Pa. 539, 526 A.2d 334 (1987), wherein this Court acknowledged as improper a prosecutor's remark that the jury should impose death in order to send a message to a judge who had given a lenient sentence to the same defendant in a prior case. Id. at 344. We concluded in Crawley that, despite the prejudicial nature of the remark, the fact that the jury found a single aggravating circumstance and no mitigating circumstances meant that there was no weighing process in which the jurors may have been adversely affected by the prosecutor's comments. Id. at 344-45. We reached a similar conclusion in Commonwealth v. Beasley, 524 Pa. 34, 568 A.2d 1235 (1990), when we considered whether to affirm a death sentence following the prosecutor's remark about the defendant's previous criminal conviction. Id. at 1237. And in Commonwealth v. Ly, 528 Pa. 523, 599 A.2d 613 (1991), we relied on the same rationale in rejecting the defendant's claim that he was prejudiced by his counsel's statement about how long he might serve if given life imprisonment instead of death. Id. at 623. We note that none of the cases the Commonwealth points to involve references to the Bible, an issue this Court has accorded careful treatment in the past. Further, and much more importantly, the cases simply do not involve the egregious and bizarre circumstances present in this case. Here, defense counsel, honestly and unwittingly, presented the jury with a compelling and independent basis for imposing the death penalty on his own client. Essentially, defense counsel's statements contradicted, indeed invalidated, his argument in support of mitigation, wherein he requested jury consideration of the character and record of the defendant and the circumstances of his offense.  42 Pa.C.S. § 9711(e)(8) (emphasis added). None of the cases summarized above involved these unique circumstances and so we conclude that they do not control. Applying the standard for ineffectiveness claims to this issue, we conclude first that there is arguable merit to appellant's claim that defense counsel's reference was improper. This is so not just because it was a biblical reference, see Daniels, 644 A.2d at 1183, but because it encouraged the jury to impose the death penalty under the particular circumstances of this case: counsel argued against his client's interests. Second, we can think of no reasonable strategy counsel sought to employ by this reference. The trial judge, who heard counsel's testimony at the evidentiary hearing, specifically found that counsel's statements were inadvertent and accidental. Third, it is inconceivable to suggest that the statement had no effect on the jury. Upon retiring to deliberate, the jurors immediately requested that the court provide them with a Bible. The trial court concluded that prejudice was established and we find no error in that conclusion. The record supports the trial court's finding that, but for counsel's encouragement to the jury that the Bible mandated the death penalty in this particular case, the result of the hearing may well have been different. The Pennsylvania Sentencing Code provides that this Court shall affirm the sentence of death unless it determines that the sentence was the product of passion, prejudice or any other arbitrary factor. 42 Pa.C.S. § 9711(h)(3)(i). Counsel's biblical reference likely aroused those very factors in this case. As a result, we will affirm the trial court's grant of a new penalty hearing.