Opinion ID: 1706950
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 18

Heading: the anti-sympathy instruction and refusal of bell's mercy instruction

Text: ¶ 104. The trial judge instructed the jury in its determination of life or death [N]ot to be swayed by mere sentiment, conjecture, sympathy, passion, prejudice, public opinion or public feeling. Bell argues that this instruction precluded the jury from giving a reasoned moral response to his mitigating evidence in deciding whether to impose the death penalty in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments and their Mississippi counterparts, and that the trial court further erred by not giving a mercy instruction. The State argues correctly that these matters are procedurally barred because Bell did not object to the Court's instruction to which he now takes exception. Willie v. State, 585 So.2d 660, 677 (Miss.1991). Alternatively, the State asserts, again correctly, that the issue of an anti-sympathy instruction was decided adversely to the accused in Willie. The instruction in Willie was essentially identical to that in the present case. In Willie, the Court found the argument unmeritorious in light of the holdings of the United States Supreme Court supporting the use of anti-sympathy language. Id. See California v. Brown, 479 U.S. 538, 107 S.Ct. 837, 93 L.Ed.2d 934 (1987). ¶ 105. In support of his entitlement to a mercy instruction, he quotes the following passage from Wiley v. State, 484 So.2d 339, 349 (Miss.1986), in which the Court stated that giving a mercy instruction [W]ould further refine and direct the jury's discretion in sentencing between those cases in which the death penalty is given and those in which it is not. However, Bell apparently overlooks the Court's statement in the same sentence from which he quotes that this Court has held that no reversible error is committed in refusing a mercy instruction.... Id. Furthermore, the case law is clear that there is no entitlement to a mercy instruction. Foster, 639 So.2d at 1300-01; Jenkins, 607 So.2d at 1181; Ladner, 584 So.2d at 761; Wiley, 484 So.2d at 349.