Opinion ID: 1057579
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: the decision to pursue the death penalty

Text: Mr. Hester argued both in the trial court and before the Court of Criminal Appeals that the decision of the District Attorney General to pursue the death penalty for the murder of Mr. Haney violated his constitutional rights. He raised two arguments. First, he asserted that the broad discretion afforded Tennessee's prosecutors is unconstitutional. Second, he asserted that the twenty-two month delay between his indictment and the filing of the State's notice of intent to seek the death penalty rendered the District Attorney General's decision to seek the death penalty unconstitutional, when the only intervening change of circumstances was his decision not to plead guilty. Both the trial court and the Court of Criminal Appeals rejected these arguments. We also find that these arguments lack merit.
Mr. Hester asserts that the discretion with regard to seeking the death penalty reposed in Tennessee's thirty-one District Attorneys General is so broad and unfettered that it renders any decision to pursue the death penalty inherently unconstitutional. This is not the first time this argument has been made. For all the reasons set forth in detail in our decision in State v. Banks, 271 S.W.3d 90, 154-55 (Tenn.2008), we have found that the application of the death penalty in Tennessee is not rendered unconstitutional solely because locally elected District Attorneys General make discretionary charging decisions within a statutory framework established by the Tennessee General Assembly. Mr. Hester has not offered a persuasive argument that warrants revisiting this decision.
Mr. Hester also insists that the application of the death penalty to him is unconstitutional because the State did not file its notice of intent to seek the death penalty until twenty-two months after his indictment and because the State decided to seek the death penalty only after he declined to plead guilty. Regrettably, Mr. Hester's account of the circumstances surrounding the State's decision to seek the death penalty in this case reflects a disturbingly inaccurate version of the facts in this record. There is no dispute that a McMinn County grand jury indicted Mr. Hester on February 22, 2000. It is equally beyond dispute that the State filed its notice of intent to seek the death penalty on November 13, 2001. Accordingly, Mr. Hester's assertion that twenty-two months elapsed between his indictment and the filing of the State's notice of intent to seek the death penalty is numerically correct. What is patently incorrect is Mr. Hester's assertion that the only change in circumstances during the intervening twenty-two months was his decision not to plead guilty. On March 13, 2000, approximately three weeks after a McMinn County grand jury handed down its three-count indictment against Mr. Hester, an assistant district attorney general informed Mr. Hester and the trial court that the State was considering pursuing the death penalty and that the District Attorney General would make this decision in the near future. Following this hearing, Mr. Hester's assistant public defender engaged in an active dialogue with the assistant district attorney general regarding the importance of having a psychological evaluation of Mr. Hester. Complications arose regarding the scheduling of Mr. Hester's psychological examination. [6] However, at a hearing held on August 7, 2000, Mr. Hester's assistant public defender stated that he and the assistant district attorney general agreed that the examination should be performed, and the assistant district attorney general stated that he would cooperate with the defense in seeking an acceptable mental health evaluator. Various complications continued to cause delay in Mr. Hester's evaluation. At a hearing held on September 11, 2000, the trial court inquired whether or not the case would be a death penalty case. The assistant district attorney general stated that this decision was linked to the results of Mr. Hester's psychological evaluation. Mr. Hester's first substantial mental health examination was finally conducted in December 2000 by Dr. William Bernet, the Director of Forensic Services at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. In his pretrial forensic psychiatric evaluation submitted on January 9, 2001, Dr. Bernet identified several areas of psychological concern that warranted further exploration. Mr. Hester's defense team desired to pursue these inquiries, and the State continued to cooperate with them. During a hearing held on August 13, 2001, the State expressed a desire to explore Mr. Hester's intelligence quotient in addition to his mental health. On that occasion, the State noted that it would most likely be seeking the death penalty and, therefore, requested the trial court to order that Mr. Hester's intelligence be tested before making a final decision. [7] The trial court entered an order on August 17, 2001 directing that additional testing be performed to ascertain Mr. Hester's intelligence quotient. The subject of a possible plea agreement was also broached during the same August 13, 2001 hearing. When the defense counsel alluded to a plea offer, the assistant district attorney general immediately responded by stating: wait a minute. It wasn't a plea offer. It was my willingness to go to my boss and say, `Look, this is what I'd like to do.' It appears from the record that Mr. Hester had been asked whether he would be willing to plead guilty and was told that if he was, the assistant district attorney general would take up the matter with the District Attorney General. As it turned out, Mr. Hester expressly refused to plead guilty to a crime that he had no recollection of committing. Contrary to the assertions in Mr. Hester's brief, the record reflects that the State's filing of the notice of intent to seek the death penalty was not chiefly due to Mr. Hester's decision not to plead guilty to the murder of Mr. Haney. The State's decision on this matter was delayed because of the months of delay associated with obtaining and completing the psychological evaluation and intelligence testing. We find no basis to attribute these delays to any improper actions by the State. We decline to fault the State for waiting until these evaluations had been completed and their results reported before making such a momentous decision as whether or not to seek the death penalty. We hasten to add that the constitutionality of the State's decision to pursue the death penalty against Mr. Hester would not be undermined even if Mr. Hester had been able to demonstrate that the State decided to pursue the death penalty because Mr. Hester declined to plead guilty. We have already held that District Attorneys General, when they are deciding whether or not to pursue the death penalty, may make a plea offer of a lesser penalty than death and then may pursue the death penalty if the defendant rejects the plea offer. State v. Mann, 959 S.W.2d 503, 509-11 (Tenn.1997). [8] In State v. Coffin, 128 N.M. 192, 991 P.2d 477, 498 (1999), the New Mexico Supreme Court was confronted by circumstances similar to the present case, where the possibility of the death penalty had been a constant backdrop of a case but where the State had not actually filed its notice of intent to seek the death penalty until the defendant rejected a plea agreement offer. The New Mexico Supreme Court explained its rationale for upholding the constitutionality of the State's decision to file a notice of intent to seek the death penalty after the defendant decided not to accept the State's plea offer as follows: [A]lthough the State delayed filing a notice of intent to seek the death penalty, the State repeatedly indicated to Coffin that it viewed this case as a potential death penalty case. The possibility of the State seeking the death penalty was a continuing reality in this case. Under these circumstances, we cannot accept Coffin's characterization of the State's filing of a notice of intent to seek the death penalty in this case as a change in prosecutorial action, subsequent to the defendant's exercise of a right, that would subject the prosecutor's conduct to scrutiny for possible retaliation. Therefore, we conclude that Coffin's claim of prosecutorial vindictiveness is without merit. State v. Coffin, 991 P.2d at 498. Under the circumstances of this case, we find no constitutional violation with regard to the State's filing of its notice of its decision to seek the death penalty. By the time the State filed its formal notice on November 13, 2001, it had been clear both to the trial court and to Mr. Hester for many months that the State viewed this case as one warranting the death penalty but that the State was awaiting the results of the psychological and intelligence quotient tests before making a final decision. Mr. Hester can hardly claim that he was surprised when the State filed its notice. Nor can he claim prejudice in light of the fact that the State filed its notice approximately forty months before the trial.