Opinion ID: 1344406
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Constitutionality of the Sentencing Under the Idaho Constitution

Text: Not in Creech, [1] not in Sivak, [2] and again not in Gibson, has the State presented any argument and authority to refute the considered and substantiated views of Justice Huntley and myself that a defendant convicted of first degree murder in Idaho is possessed of a right guaranteed by the Idaho Constitution to have a jury determine whether he shall live or die. While it is true that Justice Bakes attempted a refutation in his Sivak opinion, it did not meet the documented history which establishes that at the time of the adoption of our Idaho Constitution, and thereafter until the advent of Furman, a jury of a defendant's peers made the awesome decision. The views of Justice Bakes are always entitled to considerable deference, but in this particular area it seems abundantly clear that the Justice simply has declined to have a head-on confrontation with history. At some point in time it behooves the State to address the issue. At the present time it is apparently content to ride on the coattails of the Court's Sivak opinion. As I have said before, the High Court's intervention in the death penalty area of state law, while it may have been needed in some of the southern states, as mentioned just recently in the oral argument of the Attorney General in the Aragon [3] case, was not needed in Idaho, the net result being the legislature's passage of a statutory scheme that did not conform to the Constitution. The legislature, of course, can correct the situation and cure this Court's inaction. Meanwhile Justice Huntley and I remain unable to join any opinion of the Court's where a jury has not been the sentencer.