Opinion ID: 579225
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Unconstitutionally vague terms

Text: 27 Barnard contends that the Texas capital sentencing statute was unconstitutionally applied to him because its operative terms are so vague and indefinite that they deprive the jury of meaningful guidance in its sentencing deliberations. Without clarifying instructions on terms such as probability and deliberateness, he argues, the statute unduly restricts the scope of the mitigating evidence which the jury can consider. To support his contention, Barnard points out that in Penry, the Supreme Court expressed doubt about whether the jury could give effect to Penry's mitigating evidence of mental retardation and child abuse [i]n the absence of jury instructions defining the term 'deliberately.'  492 U.S. at 323, 109 S.Ct. at 2949. 28 This claim is without merit. Both the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals and this court have held that the common meaning of the term deliberately is sufficiently clear to allow the jury to decide the punishment phase issues. Ellis v. Lynaugh, 873 F.2d 830, 839 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 493 U.S. 970, 110 S.Ct. 419, 107 L.Ed.2d 384 (1989). In Penry, the Court was concerned that the trial court did not direct the jury to consider Penry's mental retardation in a way that bore fully on his moral culpability. The Court observed that Penry's mental retardation was relevant to the question whether he was capable of acting 'deliberately,' but it also 'had relevance to [his] moral culpability beyond the scope of the special verdict questio[n].'  492 U.S. at 322, 109 S.Ct. at 2948 (quoting Franklin v. Lynaugh, 487 U.S. 164, 108 S.Ct. 2320, 2332, 101 L.Ed.2d 155) (1988) (alterations in original). Barnard has not presented any evidence that would require additional sentencing instructions pursuant to Penry. Thus, the doubt expressed in Penry does not apply to Barnard's case. See DeLuna, 890 F.2d at 722-23. 29 Moreover, Barnard fails to demonstrate that the jurors were confused about the meanings of the challenged terms probability and society as used in the second special punishment issue. In Jurek, the Supreme Court rejected the petitioner's contention that the second special issue was unconstitutionally vague. See 428 U.S. at 274-75, 96 S.Ct. at 2957-58 (opinion of Stewart, Powell & Stevens, JJ.); id. at 279, 96 S.Ct. at 2959 (White & Rehnquist, JJ. & Burger, C.J., concurring) (the issues posed in the sentencing proceeding have a commonsense core of meaning and ... criminal juries should be capable of understanding them). We conclude that these terms have a plain meaning of sufficient content that the discretion left to the jury was no more than that inherent in the jury system itself. Milton v. Procunier, 744 F.2d 1091, 1096 (5th Cir.1984), cert. denied, 471 U.S. 1030, 105 S.Ct. 2050, 85 L.Ed.2d 323 (1985).