Opinion ID: 835865
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Exclusion of Alibi Evidence

Text: We now turn to defendant's argument that the trial court erred in excluding his alibi evidence during his third penalty-phase proceeding. According to the state's case, the Housers were murdered in the early morning hours of June 28, 1987. At his third penalty-phase proceeding, defendant sought the admission of two items of evidence that tended to show that he could not have been at the Housers' home at that time: (1) the transcript of defendant's grandfather's testimony, admitted during the guilt phase, that defendant had been with him from 9:00 p.m. on June 28 until 2:00 a.m. on June 29, 1987; and (2) the testimony of defendant's mother that defendant had been at her home from shortly after 2:00 a.m. on the morning of June 29, 1987, and that, when she awoke at 4:20 a.m. on the same day, defendant was sleeping on a loveseat at her house. The trial court excluded that evidence, apparently on relevance grounds. [19] On review, defendant argues that the trial court erred in excluding that evidence because it was mitigating evidence relevant to the fourth question under ORS 163.150(1)(b), that is, [w]hether the defendant should receive a death sentence. ORS 163.150(1)(b)(D). The state responds that the trial court properly excluded that evidence because alibi evidence, by definition, is relevant to only a defendant's guilt of the crime charged and, therefore, is not relevant to sentencing. Because the analysis of their relevance is different, we address separately the two different types of alibi evidence that defendant sought to present to the jury. The transcript of defendant's grandfather's testimonylike the transcript of any other witness's testimonywas relevant and subject to consideration in the penalty phase, regardless of its substance, because it was previously offered and received during the trial on the issue of guilt. ORS 163.150(1)(a); see also ORS 138.012(2)(b) (if reviewing court vacates death penalty, transcript of all testimony, all exhibits, and other evidence properly admitted in prior guilt- and penalty-phase proceedings deemed admissible in remanded penalty-phase proceeding). The trial court therefore erred in sustaining the state's objection to admission of that evidence. We turn to the question of the relevance of defendant's remaining alibi evidencespecifically, his mother's testimony. The state begins its argument with the unassailable premise that capital penalty-phase proceedings occur only if a jury has found a defendant guilty of the substantive offense. From that, the state urges that we infer that evidence of innocence is irrelevant to the penalty-phase proceeding. However, as is clear from this court's case law, as well as from decisions of the United States Supreme Court, the question of relevance of a capital defendant's proffered evidence in a penalty-phase proceeding is not that simple. Its relevance is, instead, a matter of statutory construction in the context of federal constitutional requirements. We now turn to that task, using the framework set out in PGE v. Bureau of Labor and Industries, 317 Or. 606, 610-12, 859 P.2d 1143 (1993) (court first considers text and context of statute at issue, as well as applicable case law construing statute). See also Swarens v. Dept. of Rev., 320 Or. 326, 331, 883 P.2d 853 (1994) (context includes statute's development through successive legislatures). We begin by setting out the relevant parts of the death-penalty statutory scheme. ORS 163.150(1)(a) provides, in part: In the [penalty-phase] proceeding, evidence may be presented as to any matter that the court deems relevant to sentence including, but not limited to,    mitigating evidence relevant to the issue in paragraph (b)(D) of this subsection[.] (Emphasis added.) ORS 163.150(1)(b) provides, in part: Upon the conclusion of the presentation of the evidence, the court shall submit the following issues to the jury:      (D) Whether the defendant should receive a death sentence. The jury instructions accompanying ORS 163.150(1)(b) are set out in ORS 163.150(1)(c), which provides: (A) The court shall instruct the jury to consider, in determining the issues in paragraph (b) of this subsection, any mitigating circumstances offered in evidence, including but not limited to the defendant's age, the extent and severity of the defendant's prior criminal conduct and the extent of the mental and emotional pressure under which the defendant was acting at the time the offense was committed. (B) The court shall instruct the jury to answer the question in paragraph (b)(D) of this subsection `no' if, after considering any aggravating evidence and any mitigating evidence concerning any aspect of the defendant's character or background, or any circumstances of the offense and any victim impact evidence as described in paragraph (a) of this subsection, one or more of the jurors believe that the defendant should not receive a death sentence. (Emphasis added.) Our task here is to determine whether defendant's proffered evidence constitutes mitigating evidence that is relevant to the question set out in ORS 163.150(1)(b)(D), that is, [w]hether    defendant should receive a death sentence. Answering that question, in turn, requires that we determine the intended scope of mitigating evidence under the statutory scheme. At the outset, we note that the wording of ORS 163.150(1)(c)(B)instructing the jury to consider any mitigating evidence concerning any aspect of the defendant's character or background, or any circumstances of the offensesuggests, on its face, that the statutory category of mitigating evidence is quite broad and, possibly, unlimited. [20] It likely would follow under such a reading that defendant's mother's testimony would qualify as mitigating evidence under the statutory provisions, because it arguably relates to circumstances surrounding the offense that mitigate in defendant's favor (that is, defendant's argument that he had not been involved in the crime). However, we must read the applicable text in its proper context, PGE, 317 at 611, 859 P.2d 1143, which, here, most notably includes earlier versions of the statutory scheme and its development through successive legislatures. As this court has explained before (and as discussed further below), ORS 163.150(1)(b)(D) was enacted in 1989 and originally provided:  If constitutionally required, considering the extent to which the defendant's character and background, and the circumstance of the offense may reduce the defendant's moral culpability or blameworthiness for the crime, whether a sentence of death be imposed. Or. Laws 1989, ch. 790, § 135b (emphasis added). Also in 1989, the legislature created a statutory jury instruction pertaining to all four questions set out in ORS 163.150(1)(b), now set out at ORS 163.150(1)(c)(A), see 336 Or. at 452, 86 P.3d at 1121-1123 (setting out ORS 163.150(1)(c)(A)), in substantially the same form as it exists today. See Or. Laws 1989, ch. 790, § 135b (enacting that jury instruction as ORS 163.150(1)(c) (1989)); see also ORS 163.150(1)(b)(B) (1987) (text of jury instruction now set out as ORS 163.150(1)(c)(A) originally set out as instruction on second statutory question on future dangerousness). In 1991, the legislature amended ORS 163.150(1)(b)(D) to reflect its current wording, that is, [w]hether the defendant should receive a death sentence. Or. Laws 1991, ch. 885, § 2. Also in 1991, the legislature enacted the jury instruction specifically accompanying ORS 163.150(1)(b)(D), set out as ORS 163.150(1)(c)(B), in the following form: In determining the issue in subparagraph (D) of paragraph (b) of this subsection, the court shall instruct the jury to answer the question `no' if one or more of the jurors find there is any aspect of the defendant's character or background, or any circumstances of the offense, that one or more of the jurors believe would justify a sentence less than death. Or. Laws 1991, ch. 885, § 2. [21] Turning to the original version of ORS 163.150(1)(b)(D), the above-emphasized phrase, [i]f constitutionally required, clarified that the requirement that a trial court instruct a jury respecting consideration of relevant evidence admitted under that statutory provision hinged on whether a constitutional provision required consideration of the evidence. The case law construing ORS 163.150(1)(b)(D) clearly explains the constitutional source at issue, as well as the intended scope of relevant mitigating evidence under the statutory scheme in its current form, as discussed below. In State v. Stevens, 319 Or. 573, 580-82, 879 P.2d 162 (1994), this court reviewed the legislative history of ORS 163.150(1)(b)(D), from its enactment in 1989 through its amendment in 1991. In short, the court explained that the legislature originally had enacted that statute in light of the United States Supreme Court's decision in Penry v. Lynaugh, 492 U.S. 302, 328, 109 S.Ct. 2934, 106 L.Ed.2d 256 (1989), abrogated in part on other grounds by Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304, 122 S.Ct. 2242, 153 L.Ed.2d 335 (2002), which had invalidated a three-question statutory death-penalty scheme on the ground that it did not allow the jury to consider fully the effect of the defendant's mitigating evidence regarding his diminished mental capacity. Stevens, 319 Or. at 580-81, 879 P.2d 162. More specifically, in Penry, the Court held that, under the Eighth Amendment, a jury must be able to consider and give effect to any mitigating evidence relevant to a defendant's background and character or the crime. Stevens, 319 Or. at 581, 879 P.2d 162 (quoting Penry, 492 U.S. at 328, 109 S.Ct. 2934). See 336 Or. at 427 n. 2, 86 P.3d at 1108 n. 2 (setting out Eighth Amendment). The court in Stevens further explained that, shortly after the legislature had enacted ORS 163.150(1)(b)(D) in 1989, this court held in Wagner II, 309 Or. at 18-19, 786 P.2d 93, that that statute did not satisfy the Eighth Amendment directive set out in Penry. Wagner II, 309 Or. at 18-19, 786 P.2d 93. Consequently, the legislature in 1991 amended ORS 163.150(1)(b)(D) to its present form (that is, [w]hether the defendant should receive a death sentence) and enacted the corresponding jury instruction set out in ORS 163.150(1)(c)(B). Stevens, 319 Or. at 581-82, 879 P.2d 162. The court in Stevens specifically noted that, in amending ORS 163.150(1)(b)(D) in 1991, the legislature intended to codifyand indeed precisely adoptedthis court's proffered wording from Wagner II. Stevens, 319 Or. at 582, 879 P.2d 162. After reviewing the development of ORS 163.150(1)(b)(D) through its 1991 amendment, the legislative history of that statute, the Supreme Court's decision in Penry, and this court's decision in Wagner II, this court in Stevens concluded: The passage of the original fourth question after Penry and the modification of that question following Wagner II make it clear that the legislature intended the scope of the statutory fourth question to be co-extensive with the scope of the fourth question held in Penry and Wagner II to satisfy the requirements of the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Accordingly, cases dealing with the Eighth Amendment fourth question and with the evidence relevant to that question inform our inquiry as to the scope of the evidence that is relevant under the statute. 319 Or. at 582-83, 879 P.2d 162 (emphasis added). See also Guzek II, 322 Or. at 258, 906 P.2d 272 (citing Stevens for proposition that, in enacting fourth question, legislature was attempting to bring Oregon's death penalty scheme in compliance with Penry ). The court in Stevens then went on to examine Supreme Court decisions that discussed the phrase mitigating evidence relevant to a defendant's background and character or the circumstances of the crime, 319 Or. at 583, 879 P.2d 162 (internal quotation marks omitted), as those decisions related to the evidentiary issue in Stevens. [22] In sum, this court concluded in Stevens that, in using the phrase any aspect of the defendant's character or background, or any circumstances of the offense in the jury instruction set out in ORS 163.150(1)(c)(B), the legislature intended to limit the admission of mitigating evidence in penalty-phase proceedings so as to satisfy the Eighth Amendment. Specifically, the legislature intended to ensure the admissibility of such evidence that the Eighth Amendment requires that a penalty-phase jury consider. The remaining question, then, involves a determination whether the alibi evidence that defendant proffered at his third penalty-phase proceedingspecifically, his mother's testimonyfell within that federal constitutional category. As explained below, the Supreme Court's Eighth Amendment jurisprudence suggests that defendant's alibi evidence is the type of evidence that a defendant is constitutionally entitled to introduce during the penalty phase for the jury's consideration. We begin our discussion with the plurality decision in Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U.S. 586, 98 S.Ct. 2954, 57 L.Ed.2d 973 (1978), which was a precursor to Penry. The defendant in Lockett was charged with aggravated murder resulting from a robbery of a pawnshop. According to the state's evidence, the defendant had participated with others in the planning of the robbery; however, she had remained in the car outside the pawnshop during the robbery and ensuing murder of the pawnbroker. During the guilt phase, defense counsel initially had argued that the defendant had been unaware that a robbery had taken place; however, the defendant ultimately presented no evidence to rebut the state's case. [23] The jury convicted the defendant of aggravated murder in the course of a robbery. From the jury instructions quoted in the plurality's opinion, it appears that the jury found that the defendant intentionally had participated in the robbery and that the circumstances of the robbery allowed the jury further to find, by operation of state law, that the defendant had intended to kill the pawnbroker. 438 U.S. at 589-93, 98 S.Ct. 2954. Various psychiatric and psychological reports then were prepared for a subsequent capital sentencing proceeding before a judge. Those reports, which contained, among other things, statements from a codefendant that the defendant had not participated in planning the robbery and had left the car to eat during the robbery, were admitted into evidence at sentencing. 438 U.S. at 594, 594 n. 2, 98 S.Ct. 2954. The applicable statutory scheme required the trial court to sentence the defendant to death unless it found, by a preponderance of the evidence, that one or more of three statutory mitigating factors applied, relating to the potential existence of duress, coercion, or provocation; the potential existence of psychosis or mental deficiency; and the potential role of the victim in the offense. Finding that none of those factors applied (particularly, the psychosis or mental defect factor), the trial court sentenced the defendant to death. 438 U.S. at 593-94, 98 S.Ct. 2954. Before the Supreme Court, the defendant argued that the statutory scheme violated the Eighth Amendment. After reviewing its jurisprudence, a plurality of the Court stated:    [W]e conclude that the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments require that the sentencer, in all but the rarest kind of capital case,[ [24] ] not be precluded from considering, as a mitigating factor, any aspect of a defendant's character or record and any of the circumstances of the offense that the defendant proffers as a basis for a sentence less than death.  438 U.S. at 604, 98 S.Ct. 2954 (first emphasis in original; second emphasis added). The plurality added that [n]othing in this opinion limits the traditional authority of a court to exclude, as irrelevant, evidence not bearing on the defendant's character, prior record, or the circumstances of [the] offense. Id. at 604 n. 12, 98 S.Ct. 2954. The plurality then evaluated the statutory scheme at issue in light of the foregoing rule and concluded that, in permitting the consideration of only three specific mitigating factors, that scheme violated the Eighth Amendment. Specifically, under the scheme,  [t]he absence of direct proof that the defendant intended to cause the death of the victim is relevant for mitigating purposes only if it is determined that it sheds some light on one of the three statutory mitigating factors. Similarly, consideration of a defendant's comparatively minor role in the offense, or age, would generally not be permitted, as such, to affect the sentencing decision. Id. at 608, 98 S.Ct. 2954 (emphasis added). In a companion case issued the same day, Bell v. Ohio, 438 U.S. 637, 98 S.Ct. 2977, 57 L.Ed.2d 1010 (1978), the same plurality vacated a death sentence imposed on another defendant under the same state statutory scheme. A jury had convicted the defendant in Bell of aggravated murder in the course of a kidnapping. [25] Among other things, the reports submitted at his sentencing hearing noted the defendant's claim that he had not been aware of the codefendant's actions when the codefendant had killed the victim and also noted that the defendant allegedly had been taking mescaline on the night of the crimes. Also at sentencing, the defendant testified that he had been under the influence of drugs on the night of the crimes and that he had gone along with the codefendant because he had been afraid. Finding that none of the statutory mitigating factors applied, the trial court sentenced the defendant to death. Bell, 438 U.S. at 639-41, 98 S.Ct. 2977. Before the Supreme Court, the defendant argued that his youth, his cooperation with the police, and the lack of proof that he had participated in the actual killing strongly supported an argument for a penalty less than death. Id. at 641-42, 98 S.Ct. 2977. A plurality of the Court agreed that, under Lockett, the defendant's sentence violated the Eighth Amendment because the statutory scheme had precluded the trial court from considering the particular circumstances of his crime and aspects of his character and record as mitigating factors. Id. at 642, 98 S.Ct. 2977. Almost four years after Lockett and Bell, a majority of the Supreme Court adopted and applied the rule set out in those cases, that is, that the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments require that the sentencer    not be precluded from considering, as a mitigating factor, any aspect of a defendant's character or record and any of the circumstances of the offense that the defendant proffers as a basis for a sentence less than death. Eddings v. Oklahoma, 455 U.S. 104, 110, 102 S.Ct. 869, 71 L.Ed.2d 1 (1982) (quoting Lockett, 438 U.S. at 604, 98 S.Ct. 2954 (ellipses in Eddings; original emphasis omitted)). In adopting that rule, the court noted that, [i]n some cases, such evidence properly may be given little weight. Id. at 115, 102 S.Ct. 869. Lockett and its progeny stand for the proposition that, under the Eighth Amendment, a court must allow a defendant to present at sentencing, and a sentencer must be able to consider, any evidence relevant to any circumstances of the offense that mitigates against imposition of the death penalty. As demonstrated by Lockett and Bell, that includes evidence that a defendant played an insignificant role in the offense or otherwise possessed a less culpable mens rea, notwithstanding an earlier guilt finding of intentional participation in capital murder. Further, the Court's statement in Eddings, 455 U.S. at 110, 102 S.Ct. 869, that a sentencer is free to accord a defendant's proffered mitigating evidence little weight clarifies that evidence that is not particularly trustworthy still is admissible under the command of the Eighth Amendment if it is relevant to a defendant's character or record, or to the circumstances of the offense. See also generally Sawyer v. Whitley, 505 U.S. 333, 342-43, 112 S.Ct. 2514, 120 L.Ed.2d 269, reh. den., 505 U.S. 1244, 113 S.Ct. 21, 120 L.Ed.2d 948 (1992) ( Lockett and its progeny hold that capital defendants permitted to introduce wide variety of mitigating evidence). The foregoing reading of Lockett and Bell generally supports the admission of defendant's alibi evidence, because that evidence concerned circumstances of the offense ( i.e., defendant's professed lack of involvement, notwithstanding his earlier murder convictions) that, if believed, would have mitigated against imposition of the death penalty. However, we acknowledge that the juries in Lockett and Bell appear to have based their respective guilty verdicts for capital murder on factual findings that the defendants actively had participated in the underlying felonies of aggravated robbery ( Lockett ) and aggravated kidnapping ( Bell ), which, by operation of state law, allowed the juries also to find the defendants guilty of capital murder. Such guilt-phase findings therefore would have left open the possibility that proffered sentencing-phase evidence that the defendants had not intended to kill the victims, or otherwise had played only peripheral parts in the underlying felonies (although with the requisite intent respecting those felonies), would mitigate against imposition of the death penalty, notwithstanding the earlier capital murder convictions. Defendant in this case, by contrast, was convicted of the aggravated murdersdefined in part as intentionally causing death, ORS 163.095; ORS 163.115(1)(a); ORS 163.005 of both victims. Defendant's alibi evidence was inconsistent with those convictions; by contrast, the mitigating evidence at issue in Lockett and Bell was consistent with the underlying convictions, because the defendants could have been convicted of capital crimes notwithstanding their lessened culpability respecting the capital murders. However, the foregoing factual distinction between Lockett and Bell, on the one hand, and the case at bar, on the other, is of no consequence in light of the Supreme Court's decision in Green v. Georgia, 442 U.S. 95, 99 S.Ct. 2150, 60 L.Ed.2d 738 (1979), issued the year after Lockett and Bell. The defendant in Green had been convicted of murder, as had a codefendant. Unlike the defendants in Lockett and Bell, it appears that the defendant in Green had been convicted of the murder itselfthat is, of the intentional killing of the victimrather than of more limited, intentional participation in an underlying capital felony. [26] At sentencing, the defendant sought to introduce testimony of a third person that the codefendant had stated to that person that the codefendant had killed the victim after sending the defendant on an errand. The defendant had not sought to introduce that testimony during the guilt phase of his trial. The trial court excluded the evidence on hearsay grounds, and the Georgia Supreme Court affirmed. 442 U.S. 95-96, 99 S.Ct. 2150; Green v. State, 242 Ga. 261, 272-73, 249 S.E.2d 1, 9-10 (1978). [27]