Opinion ID: 1210535
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 13

Heading: idaho's statutory scheme for consideration of the death penalty is constitutional, subject to review for proper application.

Text: Wood makes a general assertion that Idaho's statutory scheme for consideration of the death penalty violates the Idaho and U.S. Constitutions. As in the past, this Court finds Idaho's statutory scheme for consideration of the death penalty to be constitutional. In Godfrey v. Georgia, 446 U.S. 420, 100 S.Ct. 1759, 64 L.Ed.2d 398 (1980), the U.S. Supreme Court held that states can impose the death penalty for certain crimes without running afoul of the federal constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, but only if the manner in which the penalty is selected provide[s] a `meaningful basis for distinguishing the few cases in which [the penalty] is imposed from the many cases in which it is not.' Id. at 427, 100 S.Ct. 1759 (quotation omitted) (second alteration in original). This Court has determined that Idaho's statutory scheme for consideration of the death penalty provides a meaningful basis for and is not arbitrary and capricious in distinguishing death penalty cases from other capital offenses. State v. Card, 121 Idaho 425, 825 P.2d 1081 (1991); State v. Osborn, 102 Idaho 405, 417, 631 P.2d 187, 199 (1981) ([A] limiting construction is indispensable if the state is to meet its constitutional obligation `to tailor and apply its law in a manner that the avoids the arbitrary and capricious infliction of the death penalty.') (citation omitted). Furthermore, this Court has upheld the constitutionality of its death penalty statutes on numerous occasions. Osborn, 102 Idaho at 405, 631 P.2d at 187. See also State v. Pizzuto, 119 Idaho 742, 810 P.2d 680 (1991) (determining that I.C. § 19-2515 does not violate the Eighth Amendment to the federal constitution and Article I, § 6 of the Idaho Constitution), overruled on other grounds by State v. Card, 121 Idaho 425, 432, 825 P.2d 1081, 1088 (1991); State v. Charboneau, 116 Idaho 129, 774 P.2d 299 (1989) (death penalty statutes are not unconstitutional by placing burden on defendant to come forward with mitigating circumstances because burden to come forward with mitigating circumstances applies only if at least one statutory aggravating circumstance is found to exist), overruled on other grounds by Card, 121 Idaho at 432, 825 P.2d at 1088; State v. Creech, 105 Idaho 362, 370, 670 P.2d 463, 471 (1983) (concluding that the language of the statutory scheme is sufficiently narrow to avoid the arbitrary and capricious infliction of the death penalty). Wood has not shown that this long-standing precedent should be disturbed. Wood also makes some specific challenges to the constitutionality of the aggravating circumstance set out in I.C. § 19-2515(g)(7). He claims that the (g)(7) aggravator is over broad, arbitrary and violates the right to due process and constitutional proscriptions against double jeopardy and cruel and unusual punishment. The (g)(7) aggravating circumstance is established when the murder is one defined in the first degree under I.C. § 18-4003(b), (c), (d), (e) or (f), and was committed with the specific intent to cause the death of a human being. [1] The district court found the (g)(7) aggravator to apply because the murder was a murder defined under § 18-4003(d), which reads: Any murder committed in the perpetration of, or attempt to perpetrate, aggravated battery on a child under twelve (12) years of age, arson, rape, robbery, burglary, kidnaping or mayhem is murder of the first degree. Wood claims that the (g)(7) aggravator is over broad because it applies to all intentional murders of children under the age of twelve without regard to the specific circumstances of either the defendant or the crime. He also claims that the (g)(7) aggravator makes an arbitrary distinction: intentional murders of children under the age of twelve are all made death eligible by aggravator (g)(7) while otherwise identical murders committed by identical defendants are not. There is no constitutional infirmity in making the intentional killing of a young child an aggravating factor making the defendant death eligible. Furthermore, a defendant's ability to present mitigating evidence provides the narrowing function required to distinguish intentional murders of children under the age of twelve warranting imposition of the death penalty from murders of children under twelve which do not warrant imposition of the death penalty. The (g)(7) aggravator is not over broad or arbitrary. Wood also claims that an aggravator which duplicates the crime itself violates constitutional proscriptions against double jeopardy and cruel and unusual punishment in that the elements of the (g)(7) aggravator found by the district court are the same as elements found under § 18-4003(d) defining first degree murder. A similar argument was dismissed by the U.S. Supreme Court in Lowenfield v. Phelps, 484 U.S. 231, 108 S.Ct. 546, 98 L.Ed.2d 568 (1988). In Lowenfield, the Supreme Court held that a death sentence did not violate the Eighth Amendment simply because the single statutory aggravating circumstance found by the jury duplicated an element of the underlying offense of first-degree murder. The Lowenfield Court stated: It seems clear to us ... that the narrowing function required for a regime of capital punishment may be provided in either of ... two ways: The legislature may itself narrow the definition of capital offenses, as ... Louisiana [has] done, so that the jury finding of guilt responds to this concern, or the legislature may more broadly define capital offenses and provide for narrowing by jury findings of aggravating circumstances at the penalty phase.... Here, the narrowing function was performed by the jury at the guilt phase when it found defendant guilty of three counts of murder under the [Louisiana statutory] provision that the offender has a specific intent to kill or to inflict great bodily harm upon more than one person. The fact that the sentencing jury is also required to find the existence of an aggravating circumstance in addition is no part of the constitutionally required narrowing process, and so the fact that the aggravating circumstance duplicated one of the elements of the crime does not make this sentence constitutionally infirm. Id., 108 S.Ct. at 555. The Idaho Legislature has narrowed the class of murders that may be punished by death in I.C. §§ 18-4003 and 18-4004. [2] The fact that the (g)(7) aggravator in I.C. § 19-2515 duplicates an element of first degree murder in I.C. § 18-4003 does not violate any constitutional standard.