Opinion ID: 1912613
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: events preceding mata's direct appeal

Text: In June 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Ring. [3] The Court determined, under the Sixth Amendment, that Arizona's aggravating circumstances in capital cases are the functional equivalent of elements that expose a defendant to greater punishment. Therefore, it determined that they must be found by a jury. In November, the Governor signed into law L.B. I, [4] emergency legislation that reassigned responsibility for determining the existence of aggravating factors from judges to juries, as required by Ring, for any capital sentencing proceeding occurring on or after November 23, 2002. In March 2003, this court decided State v. Gales. [5] We stated that new constitutional rules apply to pending direct appeals. Therefore, under Ring, we vacated the defendant's death sentence because the sentencing judge, not a jury, had determined the existence of aggravating circumstances. We remanded the cause for resentencing and set out a new procedural rule for capital cases in the wake of Ring. We recognized that L.B. 1 had amended Neb.Rev.Stat. § 29-1603 (Reissue 1995) to require that when the State seeks the death penalty, the information must contain a notice of aggravation which alleges one or more aggravating circumstances. But we concluded that the notice requirement did not apply to the defendant's resentencing because it is a procedural rule that has no retroactive effect. [6] We limited, however, the aggravating circumstances the State could seek to prove at the resentencing hearing to those which were determined to exist in the first trial, and as to which [the defendant] is therefore on notice. [7]