Opinion ID: 2598537
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Background of Federal Precedent

Text: [ś 90] In 1972, the Court declared all death penalty statutes unconstitutional as constituting cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, 92 S.Ct. 2726, 33 L.Ed.2d 346 (1972). The basis for that conclusion was explained through five concurring opinions. Four years later, when new statutory schemes from various states were presented to the Court, several plurality decisions pinpointed the precise deficiency of the previous statutes to be the untrammeled discretion permitted juries in deciding whether to impose or withhold the death penalty. In those opinions, the Court upheld Georgia, Florida, and Texas' new statutory schemes and struck down two other states' statutes, namely, North Carolina's scheme which mandated the death sentence, and Louisiana's statutory scheme which required a sentencer to consider lesser offenses even when not a scintilla of evidence supported that lesser charge. Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153, 96 S.Ct. 2909, 49 L.Ed.2d 859 (1976); Proffitt v. Florida, 428 U.S. 242, 96 S.Ct. 2960, 49 L.Ed.2d 913 (1976); Jurek v. Texas, 428 U.S. 262, 96 S.Ct. 2950, 49 L.Ed.2d 929 (1976); Woodson v. North Carolina, 428 U.S. 280, 96 S.Ct. 2978, 49 L.Ed.2d 944 (1976); Roberts v. Louisiana, 428 U.S. 325, 96 S.Ct. 3001, 49 L.Ed.2d 974 (1976). In 1977, we considered the constitutionality of Wyoming's death penalty statute. In declaring it unconstitutional because it mandated the death penalty, we noted that [t]o constitutionally exact a death penalty the statute must contain standards provided by the legislature controlling the exercise of the discretion of the sentencing authority, which are totally lacking in our statute. The lessons of Gregg v. Georgia , Roberts v. Louisiana , Jurek v. Texas , Proffitt v. Florida , and Woodson v. North Carolina demonstrate that to successfully withstand attack upon constitutional grounds there must be provided in the statute standards to guide and control the exercise of discretion by the sentencing authority in its determination of the propriety of the application of the death sentence, or the alternative of a term of life imprisonment. There must further be provided a procedure by which the fact finder can consider and examine any and all aggravating and mitigating circumstances and the character and situation of the individual defendant, upon which the final determination is made. A proper record of the findings which are used as the basis for the infliction of this penalty must be preserved to enable a reviewing court to determine the reasonableness and the propriety of the application of such sentence. The Wyoming statute under scrutiny does not meet these requirements. Kennedy v. State, 559 P.2d 1014, 1016 (Wyo.1977) (citations omitted). [ś 91] In the following years, thirty-eight states passed death penalty statutes and, as various issues came before the Court, the conceptual basis of aggravating and mitigating circumstances' role in a jury's reasoned moral response was further defined, evolving into the principle that a capital sentencing scheme must genuinely narrow the class of persons eligible for the death penalty and must reasonably justify the imposition of a more severe sentence on the defendant compared to others found guilty of murder. Engberg, 820 P.2d at 90 (quoting Zant v. Stephens, 462 U.S. 862, 877, 103 S.Ct. 2733, 2742, 77 L.Ed.2d 235 (1983)). Besides its mandate that a statute limit the jury's discretion, the Court required the admission of all relevant mitigating evidence: There is no perfect procedure for deciding in which cases governmental authority should be used to impose death. But a statute that prevents the sentencer in all capital cases from giving independent mitigating weight to aspects of the defendant's character and record and to circumstances of the offense proffered in mitigation creates the risk that the death penalty will be imposed in spite of factors which may call for a less severe penalty. When the choice is between life and death, that risk is unacceptable and incompatible with the commands of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U.S. 586, 605, 98 S.Ct. 2954, 2965, 57 L.Ed.2d 973 (1978). The Court emphasized that a sentence of death is not a fact-finding exercise, but, instead, must reflect an ethical judgment about the moral guilt of the defendant and the reasoned moral response of the sentencer. Penry v. Lynaugh, 492 U.S. 302, 328, 327-28, 109 S.Ct. 2934, 2951, 106 L.Ed.2d 256 (1989); see Enmund v. Florida, 458 U.S. 782, 800-01, 102 S.Ct. 3368, 3378, 73 L.Ed.2d 1140 (1982). [ś 92] In 1994, the Court explained these complementary doctrines of its capital punishment jurisprudence in Tuilaepa v. California, 512 U.S. 967, 114 S.Ct. 2630, 129 L.Ed.2d 750 (1994). The Court explained that its decisions require that a jury's discretion in sentencing defendants to death must be genuinely narrowed; however, once that is accomplished, the jury must be allowed the widest possible discretion to not choose death. To accomplish these constitutional requirements, there are two different aspects of the capital decision-making process: the eligibility decision and the selection decision. Id. at 971, 114 S.Ct. at 2634. A defendant is eligible for the death penalty in a homicide case when the trier of fact finds one aggravating circumstance or its equivalent at either the guilt or sentencing phase. Id. at 972, 114 S.Ct. at 2634. Aggravating circumstances must meet two requirements: the circumstance may not apply to every defendant convicted of murder; it must apply only to a subclass of defendants convicted of murder (genuine narrowing), and the circumstance must not be unconstitutionally vague. Id., 114 S.Ct. at 2635. [ś 93] The selection decision determines whether an eligible defendant should receive the death penalty and requires an individualized determination on the basis of the character of the individual and the circumstances of the crime. Id. The individualized determination requirement is met when the jury can consider relevant mitigating evidence of the character and record of the defendant and the circumstances of the crime. Id. The eligibility decision requires an answer to the factual question of what was the rationale for imposing a sentence of death while the selection decision does not necessarily have to answer a factual question, but can be open-ended in assessing the defendant's culpability. Id. at 973, 114 S.Ct. at 2635. The Court observed that the objectives of the eligibility and selection inquiries can be in some tension but the principle common to both decisions is that the State must ensure that the process is neutral and principled so as to guard against bias or caprice in the sentencing decision. Id. This is the controlling objective when examining eligibility and selection factors for vagueness and the reason why neither can be too vague. Id. [ś 94] It is on the issue of invalid aggravating circumstances that the Court began to develop decisions based on whether it considered a particular statutory scheme as weighing or nonweighing. The Court has declared that, on review, the distinction between weighing and nonweighing schemes is not one of semantics, but is one of critical importance. Stringer v. Black, 503 U.S. 222, 231-32, 112 S.Ct. 1130, 1137, 117 L.Ed.2d 367 (1992); Hopkinson v. State, 664 P.2d 43, 60 (Wyo.1983) ( Hopkinson II ) (The scales must not be tipped by impermissible factors leaving us in a quandary as to what the jury would have done had impermissible factors not been present.); see also Hopkinson v. State, 632 P.2d 79, 170-72 (Wyo.1981) ( Hopkinson I) . In a weighing state, where the aggravating and mitigating factors are balanced against each other, it is constitutional error for the sentencer to give weight to an unconstitutionally vague aggravating factor, even if there are other valid aggravating factors. Richmond v. Lewis, 506 U.S. 40, 46, 113 S.Ct. 528, 534, 121 L.Ed.2d 411 (1992). In a nonweighing state, aggravating circumstances serve only to make a defendant eligible for the death penalty and not to determine punishment, and the invalidation of one aggravating circumstance does not necessarily require the appellate court to vacate a death sentence and remand to a jury. Zant, 462 U.S. at 890, 103 S.Ct. at 2749-50. [ś 95] Because weighing states require sentencers to balance aggravating circumstances against mitigating circumstances, one invalid aggravating circumstance requires the reviewing court to either remand the case for a new sentencing determination, reweigh the evidence itself, or conduct harmless error analysis to decide if, beyond a reasonable doubt, the sentence would have been the same despite the invalid aggravating circumstance. By contrast, in nonweighing states the jury must find the existence of one aggravating factor before imposing the death penalty, but aggravating factors as such have no specific function in the jury's decision whether a defendant who has been found to be eligible for the death penalty should receive it under all the circumstances of the case. Instead, ..., in making the decision as to the penalty, the factfinder takes into consideration all circumstances before it from both the guilt-innocence and the sentence phases of the trial. These circumstances relate both to the offense and the defendant. Stringer, 503 U.S. at 229-30, 112 S.Ct. at 1136 (quoting Zant, 462 U.S. at 872, 103 S.Ct. at 2740). If the reviewing court concludes that the sentencer found at least one valid aggravating circumstance and that the invalid factor did not affect the sentencer's determination in imposing the death penalty, the sentence may stand despite an invalid aggravating circumstance. Stringer, at 232, 112 S.Ct. at 1137; Zant, at 881, 103 S.Ct. at 2745. The Court said: Assuming a determination by the state appellate court that the invalid factor would not have made a difference to the jury's determination, there is no constitutional violation resulting from the introduction of the invalid factor in an earlier stage of the proceedings. But when the sentencing body is told to weigh an invalid factor in its decision, a reviewing court may not assume it would have made no difference if the thumb had been removed from death's side of the scale. When the weighing process itself has been skewed, only constitutional harmless-error analysis or reweighing at the trial or appellate level suffices to guarantee that the defendant received an individualized sentence. This clear principle emerges not from any single case ... but from our long line of authority setting forth the dual constitutional criteria of precise and individualized sentencing. Stringer, at 232, 112 S.Ct. at 1137. In this particular case, both Olsen and the State describe Wyoming's current statute as a weighing statute; however, while Olsen contends this statutory language unconstitutionally fails to properly channel the sentencer's discretion and allows arbitrary imposition of the death penalty, the State argues that the weighing/nonweighing distinction is important only to this court's reviewing process.