Opinion ID: 1353458
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The State Violated Owens' Right to Prove Mitigating Factors at the Capital Sentencing Hearing

Text: The majority opinion repeatedly refers to Owens' offer of proof as an offer of failed plea negotiations and mistakenly concludes that such failed plea negotiations cannot constitute mitigating evidence within the rule allowing any relevant mitigating evidence, established in Eddings v. Oklahoma, 455 U.S. 104, 114, 102 S.Ct. 869, 71 L.Ed.2d 1 (1982). In fact, the prosecutor argued to the jury that Owens deserved the death penalty because she did not acknowledge and repent her murderous criminal behavior. Owens wanted to show that this was untrue because she had, in fact, offered to plead guilty and because the prosecutor's offer of life imprisonment was itself an admission that Owens did not deserve the death penalty. Thus, both her offer to plead and the prosecutor's offer of life were directly inconsistent with the prosecutor's later claim to the trial jury that she deserved death because she was impenitent and hard of heart. What we have here is death penalty gamesmanship on the part of the prosecution, and the jury was entitled to know what was going on. This should not be a hard concept for my colleagues to grasp. The majority offers a hopeless, out-of-the question argument on this subject of acceptance of responsibility. The opinion says in the first paragraph of Section V.C that Owens's proffered evidence shows no such acceptance because she was willing to plead only if guaranteed a life sentence rather than the electric chair. The majority suggests that the evidence would have been admissible and persuasive as a mitigating factor if she had pled guilty and accepted the electric chair. The argument comes down to this: If Gail Owens had volunteered for the electric chair, the proffered evidence would show acceptance and would have met the test of relevant mitigating evidence under Eddings, but not otherwise. My colleagues' view is that Mrs. Owens could only make her evidence of remorse and acceptance of responsibility admissible by following the Mosaic law of lex talionis  an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Surely the law of admissibility of mitigating evidence in our time under Eddings does not turn on accepting the theory of Mosaic law as found in the Old Testament. The law is not unclear or up-in-the-air on this subject. Eddings is good law, and under Eddings Owens is entitled to prove any relevant mitigating evidence. Contrary to the majority's argument that her offer to plead shows no such acceptance of responsibility, the opposite is true. Had Owens' proof of her offer to plead guilty and the prosecution's offer of life been admitted, the jury might well have concluded that the prosecution's claim that she was remorseless and deserved death was false and that Owens' life should be spared. As with the Brady violation and the ineffective assistance of counsel, the majority has again stood truth on its head with its argument that Owens' offer to plead and the State's offer of life does not fall within the meaning of any relevant mitigating evidence.