Opinion ID: 2974320
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Clemons Violation

Text: Defendant next argues that the trial court improperly instructed the jury on multiple aggravating circumstances for each aggravated murder charge. While we agree with Defendant that the jury was improperly instructed, the error was later remedied by the Ohio Supreme Court. In Clemons v. Mississippi, 494 U.S. 738, 741 (1990), the Supreme Court held that the “[f]ederal Constitution does not prevent a state appellate court from upholding a death sentence that is based in part on an invalid or improperly defined aggravating circumstance either by reweighing of the aggravating and mitigating evidence or by harmless-error review.” According to the Court, Nothing in the Sixth Amendment as construed by our prior decisions indicates that a defendant’s right to a jury trial would be infringed where an appellate court invalidates one of two aggravating circumstances found by the jury, but affirms the death sentence after itself finding that the one or more remaining aggravating factors outweigh the mitigating evidence. Id. at 745. “We see no reason to believe that careful appellate weighing of aggravating . . . circumstances in cases such as this would not produce ‘measured consistent application’ of the death penalty or in any way be unfair to the defendant.” Id. at 748. During the reweighing process, the state appellate court may not automatically affirm the defendant’s death sentence. Id. at 752. Rather, the court must give the defendant “an individualized and reliable sentencing determination based on the defendant’s circumstances, his background, and the crime.” Id.at 749. Recently, in Brown v. Sanders, 126 S.Ct. 884, 892 (2006), the Supreme Court announced the new rule that: An invalidated sentencing factor (whether an eligibility factor or not) will render the sentence unconstitutional by reason of its adding an improper element to the No. 03-4034 Spisak v. Mitchell Page 23 aggravation scale in the weighing process unless one of the other sentencing factors enables the sentencer to give aggravating weight to the same facts and circumstances. The Court’s concern in Brown was “the skewing that could result from the jury’s considering as aggravation properly admitted evidence that should not have been weighed in favor of the death penalty,” but “such skewing will occur, and give rise to constitutional error, only where the jury could not have given aggravating weight to the same facts and circumstances under the rubric of some other, valid sentencing factor.” Id. (emphasis in original). Defendant was indicted on four separate counts of aggravated murder, with a total of nineteen specifications. On appeal, the Eighth District Court of Appeals determined that Defendant was improperly convicted of two counts of aggravated murder for the death of Timothy Sheehan, stating that: The appellant was indicted on four counts of aggravated murder for the murders of three people. Two counts of aggravated murder, the fifth and sixth counts of the indictment, were for the murder of one individual, Timothy Sheehan. The appellant was subsequently convicted for and sentenced on all four counts of aggravated murder . . . Accordingly while it was proper for the appellant to have been indicted on two separate counts of aggravated murder for the murder of Timothy Sheehan he could only be convicted on one of those counts. Spisak, 1984 WL 13992, at . The Eighth District Court of Appeals thus vacated Defendant’s conviction on the fifth count of aggravated murder, relating to Sheehan’s death, as well as the specifications attached thereto. Id. The court of appeals then reweighed the aggravating and mitigating circumstances as they related to the remaining counts and specifications, and upheld the convictions and sentences on those counts. Id. at . Subsequently, the Ohio Supreme Court noted that the trial court had also failed to merge certain specifications, and held the following: Proceeding to our independent weighing of the aggravating circumstances and mitigating factors presented herein, we note that appellant’s three aggravated murder convictions specify fifteen separate aggravating circumstances under R.C. 2929.04. However, as pointed out by appellant in his first proposition of law, for purposes of sentencing the doctrine of merger herein applies. Each aggravated murder count should thus contain only one specification that appellant’s acts were part of a course of conduct involving the purposeful killing of or attempt to kill two or more persons. R.C. 2929.04(A)(5). Similarly, specifications pursuant to R.C. 2929.04(A)(3) (escaping detection, apprehension, trial or punishment) and R.C. 2929.04(A)(7) (felony murder) are duplicative of and thus merge with R.C. 2929.04(A)(5), since these aggravating circumstances arise from the same indivisible course of conduct. Although the court of appeals did not apply the merger doctrine below, we have determined that the jury’s consideration of the duplicative aggravating circumstances during sentencing did not affect their verdict. Furthermore, we have independently determined that the remaining aggravating circumstances outweigh the mitigating factors beyond a reasonable doubt. Spisak, 521 N.E.2d at 803. After reviewing the state court proceedings, the district court held, and we agree, that the Ohio Supreme Court did not unreasonably apply federal law in independently reweighing the aggravating and mitigating factors, and upholding Defendant’s convictions and sentence. While it is undisputed that the trial court committed error in not merging the death penalty specifications, the Ohio Supreme Court’s independent reweighing was sufficient to remedy any error. No. 03-4034 Spisak v. Mitchell Page 24 It is also clear that after merging the duplicative aggravating circumstances, the Ohio Supreme Court gave the required individualized sentencing determination, see Clemons, 494 U.S. at 749, in reweighing Defendant’s death sentence: Of the mitigating factors specified in R.C. 2929.04(b) appellant relied solely on his allegations that he lacked, due to a mental disease or defect, substantial capacity to appreciate the criminality of his conduct or to conform his conduct to the law at the time of committing the offense. Although there was testimony that appellant had characteristics of borderline and schizotypal personality disorders, the bulk of the testimony, from both defense and rebuttal expert witnesses, established that appellant was sane at the time of the acts, that he could have refrained from committing them, had he so chosen, and that he understood the nature of his acts but elected to carry them out anyway. Appellant admitted to being the principal offender in three murders and two attempted murders. He did not have a significant history of prior criminal convictions or juvenile adjudications, nor was his age a factor. He was not under duress, coercion or strong provocation at the time of the crimes. His victims neither facilitated nor induced the offense. Nothing in the nature and circumstances of these deliberate murders tempers the gravity of the offenses. We concur with the jury and lower courts that the balance of these factors lies heavily, and beyond reasonable doubts, on the side of the aggravating circumstances of which the appellant was convicted. State v. Spisak, 521 N.E.2d at 803-04 (internal citations omitted). Unlike the case in Clemons, this Court can clearly discern that the Ohio Supreme Court did in fact employ the proper method of reweighing the aggravating and mitigating factors before upholding the death sentence. Clemons, 494 U.S. at 741. Moreover, under the recently-decided Brown decision, which states that the sentence is unconstitutional unless the jury could give aggravating weight to the same facts and circumstances under one of the other sentencing factors, the reweighing was still sufficient to cure the error where the Ohio Supreme Court merely invalidated some of the specifications because they were duplicative of other specifications that were also considered by the jury. Brown, 126 S.Ct. at 892. The jury was able to give aggravating weight to the same facts and circumstances in the remaining murder convictions and death penalty specifications that were properly submitted to the jury. We thus find that any error related the weighing of aggravating and mitigating factors during the sentencing phase of Defendant’s trial was cured by the Ohio Supreme Court’s reweighing of the factors, and therefore the Ohio Supreme Court did not violate clearly established federal law in upholding Defendant’s death sentence.