Opinion ID: 2422962
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Duplicative Use of Aggravating Circumstances

Text: Lesko next argues that the prosecution's alleged duplicative use of the same facts to establish separate aggravating circumstances violated the Eighth Amendment. This is yet another claim where Lesko takes an issue actually litigated at resentencing and on appeal and claims that prior counsel was incompetent for failing to pose the issue properly. The underlying complaint here, as before, focuses on the Commonwealth's reliance on the murders of Peter Levato and Marlene Sue Newcomer to establish the aggravating circumstances enumerated in both Section 9711(d)(9) (significant history of prior felony convictions) and Section 9711(d)(10) (defendant was convicted of another federal or state offense for which a sentence of life imprisonment or death was imposable) of the capital sentencing statute. Lesko acknowledges that trial counsel raised the same complaint at resentencing and on direct appeal, but he asserts that he was ineffective to the extent his argument failed to incorporate a constitutional component. The constitutional angle that Lesko now asserts is that the Eighth Amendment supposedly does not permit the jury to consider the same evidence multiple times in the weighing process. As support for his claim concerning what the Eighth Amendment allegedly prohibits categorically, Lesko cites to no binding authority, but instead cites to a federal capital case arising from Oklahoma the year after his resentencing proceeding, United States v. McCullah, 76 F.3d 1087 (10th Cir.1996), involving the distinct federal capital punishment scheme. [28] The PCRA court concluded that this claim was previously litigated and decided it adversely to Lesko on that ground. Lesko argues that the PCRA court's finding gives insufficient consideration to his current Sixth Amendment claim of ineffectiveness or recognition that the claim raised on direct appeal was a claim of statutory construction, not of constitutional law. Lesko notes that, on direct appeal, counsel asserted only that it was error for the Commonwealth to introduce evidence of three aggravating circumstances arising out of the two murder convictions under the capital sentencing statute, 42 Pa.C.S. § 9711. We will proceed to the merits of the Sixth Amendment complaint, which is resolvable on the record. The substance of Lesko's claim is that counsel should have argued that the Eighth Amendment prohibits the duplicative use of evidence to establish multiple aggravating circumstances in the penalty phase. But this argument is thoroughly disingenuous: the single Tenth Circuit authority Lesko cites (which did not exist at the time of the sentencing) does not support his absolutist proposition; his argument fails to account for subsequent caselaw from that Circuit; and he ignores existing guidance from the U.S. Supreme Court, which, of course, is the pre-eminent, binding judicial source for what the Eighth Amendment could be said to prohibit. In McCullah, the jury was presented with two statutory aggravating circumstances that the court concluded substantially overlapped. The first aggravating circumstance was that the defendant intentionally engaged in conduct which he knew created a grave risk of death and that such death resulted. The second aggravating circumstance was conduct intending that the victim be killed. The panel noted that, while the two circumstances were not identical per se, they substantially overlapped; and, indeed, the second circumstance necessarily subsume[d] the first one. The panel then summarily concluded that, [s]uch double counting of aggravating factors, especially under a weighing scheme, has a tendency to skew the weighing process and creates the risk that the death sentence will be imposed arbitrarily and thus, unconstitutionally. McCullah, 76 F.3d at 1111. Lesko selects only the latter, generalized quote, while ignoring that the court's holding was premised upon one factor necessarily subsuming another. He then poses his selective account as if it defines Tenth Circuit law on the Eighth Amendment which, we are supposed to accept, also establishes the absolute parameters of the Eighth Amendment. In addition to misrepresenting the McCullah case, Lesko's argument fails to disclose to this Court that McCullah is not even the Tenth Circuit's last word on the subject. Two years later, in Cooks v. Ward, 165 F.3d 1283 (10th Cir.1998), the court squarely rejected the very argument that Lesko now poses as if it were settled Eighth Amendment law. Pointing to the substantially overlapping analysis in McCullah, Cooks noted that McCullah did not stand for the proposition that any time evidence supports more than one aggravating circumstance, those circumstances impermissibly overlap, per se. The test we apply is not whether certain evidence is relevant to both aggravators, but rather, whether one aggravating circumstance `necessarily subsumes' the other. Id. at 1289. Lesko's misleading argument concerning McCullah, thus, is patently meritless. Furthermore, and also unacknowledged by Lesko's federal counsel is the fact that the U.S. Supreme Court has had the opportunity to address the McCullah court's reasoning in Jones v. United States, 527 U.S. 373, 119 S.Ct. 2090, 144 L.Ed.2d 370 (1999). The High Court avoided directly addressing McCullah's double counting theory because it ultimately concluded that the aggravating circumstances at issue were not duplicative. The decision in Jones was a plurality on this issue, as Justice Scalia did not join this part of the opinion. But what is significant is that the plurality opinion introduced this issue by stating, [w]e have never before held that aggravating factors could be duplicative so as to render them constitutionally invalid. . . . Jones, 527 U.S. at 399, 119 S.Ct. 2090. No member of the Court disputed this fact. The plurality opinion is further instructive because it squared with the Cooks opinion when it later concluded that, the factors as a whole were not duplicative  at best, certain evidence was relevant to two different aggravating factors. Id. Given this background, prior counsel obviously cannot be found ineffective for failing to formulate the Eighth Amendment issue Lesko has erroneously posed as a proposition certain, premised upon a misleading and incomplete account of the cases. In the case sub judice, there is no question that the challenged aggravating circumstances do not substantially overlap, much less does one necessarily subsume the other. Rather, by Lesko's own assertions, this is an instance where the same evidence was introduced in support of two different, and distinct, statutory aggravating factors. Such a circumstance does not implicate the constitutional concern he faults counsel for failing to invoke. See Cooks, supra ; cf. Jones, supra . Accordingly, Lesko has not established that counsel's performance was deficient.