Opinion ID: 2234065
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 15

Heading: Jury Instruction: Aiding and Abetting

Text: During the aggravation proceeding, Vela repeatedly objected to evidence regarding the acts committed by Galindo and Sandoval. He argued that their actions could not be imputed to him for the purpose of applying the aggravating circumstances. Vela also objected to the following jury instruction given at the close of the aggravation hearing: [Vela] can be guilty of an aggravator even though he personally did not commit the act involved in the crime so long as he aided someone else to commit it. [Vela] aided someone else if: (1) [Vela] intentionally encouraged or intentionally helped another person to commit the aggravator; and (2) [Vela] intended that an aggravator be committed; or [Vela] knew that the other person intended to commit, expected the other person to commit the aggravator; and (3) the aggravator in fact was committed by that other person. Although Vela concedes that an aiding and abetting theory could properly be used to prove the aggravating circumstance involving the Lundell murder, he argues that its use with respect to the other aggravating circumstances which involved the bank murders deprived him of individualized consideration for the death penalty and therefore violated his rights under the 8th and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution; article I, ง 9, of the Nebraska Constitution; and ง 29-2523. The only authority cited by Vela in support of this argument is Lockett v. Ohio. [67] In that case, the U.S. Supreme Court addressed the concept of individualized consideration for the death penalty in the context of mitigating circumstances. The Court held that in all but the rarest kind of capital case, the 8th and 14th Amendments require that the sentencer not be precluded from considering, as a mitigating factor, any aspect of a defendant's character or record and any of the circumstances of the offense that the defendant proffers as a basis for a sentence less than death. [68] The court further recognized the need for individualized consideration as a constitutional requirement in imposing the death sentence. [69] Applying these principles, the Court held Ohio's death penalty statute to be unconstitutional, because it required imposition of the death penalty unless at least one of three specific statutory mitigating circumstances existed and did not permit consideration of a defendant's comparatively minor role in the offense. Lockett did not address the concept of aider/abettor liability in the context of aggravating circumstances used to determine eligibility for the death penalty. Two U.S. Supreme Court cases decided subsequent to Lockett bear more directly on this issue. In Enmund v. Florida, [70] the defendant had driven the getaway car from the scene of a robbery gone awry, in which two persons were killed. He was convicted of felony murder and sentenced to death. The question addressed by the Supreme Court was whether death is a valid penalty under the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments for one who neither took life, attempted to take life, nor intended to take life. [71] The Court noted that the focus in imposing the death penalty must be on the defendant's culpability, not on that of those who committed the robbery and shot the victims, for we insist on `individualized consideration as a constitutional requirement in imposing the death sentence.' [72] The Court remanded the cause for further proceedings to determine whether the defendant intended or contemplated that life would be taken. [73] The Enmund holding was expanded in Tison v. Arizona. [74] In that case, the defendants had participated in a prison breakout and a kidnapping. The codefendants had brutally murdered the kidnapped family. The question addressed by the Court was whether the defendants, after being convicted of felony murder, could be constitutionally sentenced to death under the Eighth Amendment based on their conduct leading up to and following the murders. [75] Under a sentencing scheme substantially similar to Nebraska's, the sentencing judge found statutory aggravators, including that the murders were committed for pecuniary gain and were especially heinous. The sentencing judge specifically found that the statutory mitigator of relatively minor participation was not met. Noting that the defendants' conduct was more directly linked to the murders than was that of the getaway driver in Enmund, the Court held: [R]eckless disregard for human life implicit in knowingly engaging in criminal activities known to carry a grave risk of death represents a highly culpable mental state, a mental state that may be taken into account in making a capital sentencing judgment when that conduct causes its natural, though also not inevitable, lethal result. [76] Thus, the Court held that the culpability requirement of Enmund is satisfied where there is major participation in the felony committed, combined with reckless indifference to human life. [77] Relying on the reasoning of Tison, the Supreme Court of Connecticut concluded in State v. Peeler [78] that the Eighth Amendment does not forbid the use of accessorial liability to prove aggravating factors which are a prerequisite to the imposition of the death penalty. The court wrote that [b]y explicitly recognizing the trial court's finding of aggravating factors established through principles of accessorial liability, and thereafter concluding that an accessory could be sentenced to death, the Supreme Court in Tison implicitly concluded that the [E]ighth [A]mendment permitted the use of accessorial liability to prove aggravating factors. [79] The Peeler court also noted that we can conceive of no reason why a statutory scheme that requires a jury to evaluate aggravating factors need face a more stringent requirement under the [E]ighth [A]mendment when principles of accessorial liability are being used to prove those aggravating factors rather than the commission of the crime itself. [80] The court concluded that any Eighth Amendment concern was sufficiently addressed by the sentencing body's ability to give effect to mitigating circumstances, which presumably included minimal participation in the crime. Tennessee and Oklahoma courts have reached similar conclusions. The Tennessee case [81] involved a woman who hired another to kill her husband. The husband was brutally murdered with a tire iron. She argued that the exceptionally heinous nature of the crime could not be imputed to her as an aggravator, as she had no involvement in the actual act and did not dictate the method of the killing. The court noted that the Enmund-Tison holdings addressed only whether a nontriggerman could be sentenced to death and did not expressly address whether the conduct of a triggerman could be used to aggravate the sentence of the nontriggerman. Examining the plain language of the Tennessee aggravation statute, the court concluded that the language of the aggravator related to the heinous nature of the murder itself, not the defendant's action, and thus applied to the defendant. In affirming the death sentence, the court implicitly held that the Eighth Amendment did not prohibit the use of vicarious criminal liability principles in proving the existence of aggravating circumstances. Similarly, the Court of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma has held, If criminal liability can attach for a codefendant's act that a defendant has aided and abetted, liability for an aggravating circumstance can also attach for a codefendant's act that a defendant has aided and abetted. [82] Under Nebraska law, [a] person who aids, abets, procures, or causes another to commit any offense may be prosecuted and punished as if he were the principal offender. [83] Aiding and abetting requires some participation in a criminal act and must be evidenced by some word, act, or deed. [84] No particular acts are necessary, nor is it necessary that the defendant take physical part in the commission of the crime or that there was an express agreement to commit the crime. [85] Mere encouragement or assistance is sufficient. [86] Nebraska's capital sentencing statutes account for the teaching of Enmund and the wide range of conduct that can constitute aiding and abetting by specifying, as a mitigating circumstance, that the defendant was an accomplice in the crime committed by another person and his or her participation was relatively minor. [87] But as one of three armed men who entered the bank and began shooting, Vela clearly exhibited the degree of moral culpability required by Tison, in that he was a major participant in all five of the bank murders and exhibited a reckless indifference to human life. We conclude that the district court did not err in receiving evidence of the actions of Galindo and Sandoval and in instructing the jury that those actions could be considered in its determination of the existence of aggravating circumstances which would make Vela eligible to receive the death penalty.