Opinion ID: 1250206
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Defendant's Motion to Dismiss the Mandatory Appeal

Text: Throughout these proceedings, defendant has voiced his support for the state's death penalty statute and expressed his belief that he should be executed for the confessed crimes. On account of these views, defendant sent a letter to the clerk of this court requesting that he be allowed to abandon all appeals. We treated the letter as a motion to dismiss his mandatory appeal and ordered the parties to brief the bases for compelling defendant to maintain an appeal. Reasoning that a defendant's power voluntarily to dismiss an appeal does not apply to the mandatory appeal filed in capital cases, see rules 26.15 and 31.2(b), Arizona Rules of Criminal Procedure, we denied defendant's motion. See also A.R.S. § 13-4031 (appeals in death cases may be filed only with the supreme court and are prescribed by the rules of criminal procedure); rule 31.15(a)(3), Arizona Rules of Criminal Procedure (power to dismiss an appeal by stipulation of the parties does not apply to rule 31.2(b) appeals). [3] The State now argues that, even though the automatic appeal under rule 31.2(b) may not be voluntarily dismissed, defendant's waiver nevertheless limits this court's jurisdiction and scope of review. Because defendant waived all discretionary issues, this court has jurisdiction to review only those matters that are authorized under the statutes. Section 13-4035(A) states that the supreme court shall review all rulings affecting the judgment, but the statute places no corresponding duty or authority on this court to review sentences. The State insists, therefore, that we may review this case for fundamental error only as it applies to the judgment of guilt and not the sentence of death. The State's argument, however, minimizes our statutorily prescribed powers of review and, if accepted, would defeat the obvious purpose of requiring mandatory appeals in capital cases, which is to insure that the death sentence is properly and constitutionally applied. As we read the statutes and the cases interpreting them, this court has a duty, wholly apart from our obligation to review the judgment for errors, to review the validity and propriety of all death sentences. Section 13-4035, for instance, is not so much jurisdictional in nature as it is relevant to our scope of review, requiring us to search the entire record for fundamental error when a defendant appeals from a judgment, regardless of the grounds urged in that appeal. State v. Dawson, 164 Ariz. 278, 283, 792 P.2d 741, 746 (1990). We find nothing in § 13-4035 or any of the statutes that relate to jurisdictional authority, see A.R.S. §§ 13-4031 through -4033, indicating that the legislature intended to suspend our review of death sentences in cases in which the defendant attempts to waive his mandatory appeal. [4] If anything, we believe, as we did in State v. Richmond, 114 Ariz. 186, 196, 560 P.2d 41, 51 (1976), that [t]he legislature charged this court with the duty to correct [death] sentences which are illegal and sentences where we find that the punishment imposed is greater than the circumstances of the case warrant. In Richmond, this view was premised on language from former A.R.S. § 13-1717, now codified at § 13-4037(A), which instructs in part, Upon an appeal by the defendant either from a judgment of conviction or from sentence, if an illegal sentence has been imposed upon a lawful verdict or finding of guilty by the trial court, the supreme court shall correct the sentence to correspond to the verdict or finding. Thus, once a defendant files an appeal, which is automatic in capital cases, we are expressly required by statute to review issues affecting both judgment and sentencing in our search for fundamental error. See, e.g., State v. Smith, 136 Ariz. 273, 279, 665 P.2d 995, 1001 (1983) (finding of ineffective assistance of counsel at sentencing considered part of the court's fundamental error review). Appellate review of sentencing is, of course, even more necessary in the context of a capital case. The penalty of death differs from all other forms of criminal punishment in terms of severity and irrevocability, and may not be exacted in the absence of certain constitutional safeguards. Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153, 187, 96 S.Ct. 2909, 2931-32, 49 L.Ed.2d 859 (1976) (Stewart, J., announcing judgment of the court, and opinion of Stewart, J., Powell, J., and Stevens, J.). That is, the eighth and fourteenth amendments prohibit all sentencing procedures creating a substantial risk that the death penalty is inflicted in an arbitrary and capricious manner. Gregg, 428 U.S. at 188, 96 S.Ct. at 2932. We have long held, therefore, that we are bound by the gravity of the death penalty to insure proper compliance with Arizona's death penalty statute. Richmond, 114 Ariz. at 196, 560 P.2d at 51; State v. Vickers, 129 Ariz. 506, 514, 633 P.2d 315, 323 (1981). We cannot fulfill this duty by simply inspecting defendant's first-degree murder conviction for fundamental error. We must also conduct a de novo review of the trial court's rulings concerning aggravation and mitigation, and then decide independently whether the death sentence should be imposed. State v. Gretzler, 135 Ariz. 42, 54, 659 P.2d 1, 13 (1983). The automatic appeal mechanism guarantees this court both the opportunity and the vehicle to assess the legality of the sentence in each capital case. See rules 26.15, 31.2(b), and 31.15(a)(3), Arizona Rules of Criminal Procedure (rules requiring mandatory appeal to the supreme court in all death sentence cases); comment to rule 31.15 (specific purpose of rule 31.15(a)(3) is to avoid circumvention of the automatic appeal); A.R.S. § 13-703(D) (trial court must set forth findings on existence or nonexistence of aggravating and mitigating factors in a special verdict); A.R.S. § 13-4031 (sentence of death may only be appealed to the supreme court). If the record reveals that the trial court, for whatever reason, improperly sentenced a defendant to death, we must overturn that sentence. Our duty and ability to do so is neither diminished nor destroyed by the simple fact that a defendant desires to waive his right to appeal. In short, the State's attempt to curtail the scope of our review must be rejected for the very reason we denied defendant's motion to dismiss this appeal  the propriety of the death penalty is not for the defendant or the trial court alone to decide. That decision rests also with this court upon automatic appeal and is guided, above all, by the state's narrowly construed statutes specifying the limited circumstances for which a defendant may be deemed death-eligible, see A.R.S. § 13-703, regardless of defendant's own death wish. Because we believe that acceptance of the State's position is tantamount to the renunciation of a duty imposed upon us by the statutes and our own rules of criminal procedure, we hold that defendant may neither circumvent nor restrict the mandatory appeal to this court provided for him pursuant to the state's capital-sentencing procedures.