Opinion ID: 528434
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Automatic Aggravating Circumstance (Claim 6)

Text: 104 Bertolotti was convicted of felony murder; later, following the penalty phase of his trial, the sentencer found in aggravation of Bertolotti's crime the circumstance that he murdered while in the course of a robbery. Bertolotti argues that his conviction during the guilt phase thus insured a sentence of death during the penalty phase, and as such the death penalty was unconstitutional. 105 The Supreme Court recently rejected a nearly identical claim. Lowenfield v. Phelps, 484 U.S. 231, 108 S.Ct. 546, 98 L.Ed.2d 568 (1988). In Lowenfield, the petitioner had been convicted of a death-eligible murder under a statute that required the jury to find that the offender has a specific intent to kill or to inflict great bodily harm upon more than one person. 484 U.S. at ----, 108 S.Ct. at 554. The only aggravating circumstance found by the jury to justify the death penalty was that the offender knowingly created a risk of death or great bodily harm to more than one person; the statute and the aggravating circumstance were interpreted in a 'parallel fashion'  under state law. Id. Rejecting the petitioner's assignment of error, the Supreme Court noted that [t]he use of 'aggravating circumstances' is not an end in itself, but a means of genuinely narrowing the class of death-eligible persons and thereby channeling the jury's discretion. We see no reason why this narrowing function may not be performed by jury findings at either the sentencing phase of the trial or the guilt phase. Id. 106 The Lowenfield reasoning applies to the instant case: Florida may narrow the class of death-eligible defendants at either the guilt phase or the penalty phase of capital trials. Moreover, consistent with the judge's instructions, see supra Part II.C.2, the jury could have found Bertolotti guilty of felony murder and yet still not have concluded that the parallel aggravating circumstance justified the imposition of capital punishment; nor need the sentencing judge have agreed with the jury's determination that felony murder had been proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Cf. supra Part II.B.1 (judge did not agree with jury's finding that burglary and sexual battery had been proven beyond a reasonable doubt). In no sense did the jury's verdict of felony murder automatically predestine the judge's imposition of Florida's highest penalty. See Adams, 709 F.2d at 1447. 22