Opinion ID: 2382857
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Proportionality Review Defined

Text: A. The best way to understand the concept of proportionality review is to understand its origin. In Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, 92 S.Ct. 2726, 33 L.Ed. 2d 346 (1972), the Supreme Court invalidated Georgia's death-penalty statute as violating the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. The teaching of Furman was that a state may not leave the decision of whether a defendant lives or dies to the unfettered discretion of the jury because such a scheme inevitably results in death sentences that are wantonly and    freakishly imposed and are cruel and unusual in the same way that being struck by lightning is cruel and unusual. Id. at 309-10, 92 S.Ct. at 2762-63, 33 L.Ed. 2d at 390 (Stewart, J., concurring). Prior to that decision, the capital-sentencing procedures in most states delegated to judges and juries plenary authority to decide when a death sentence should be imposed. The sentencer was given practically untrammeled discretion to let an accused live or insist that he die. Id. at 248, 92 S.Ct. at 2731, 33 L.Ed. 2d at 355 (Douglas, J., concurring). Following the Furman decision, many states revised their capital punishment acts. In a series of cases decided four years after Furman, the Court upheld the capital-sentencing statutes of Texas, Florida, and Georgia, concluding that those statutes contained safeguards that promised to eliminate the constitutional defects noted in Furman. See Jurek v. Texas, 428 U.S. 262, 96 S.Ct. 2950, 49 L.Ed. 2d 929 (1976); Proffitt v. Florida, 428 U.S. 242, 96 S.Ct. 2960, 49 L.Ed. 2d 913 (1976); Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153, 96 S.Ct. 2909, 49 L.Ed. 2d 859 (1976). The Supreme Court based its conclusion on the premise that those statutes insured that sentencers would be given guidance regarding the factors about the crime and the defendant that the State, representing organized society, deems particularly relevant to the sentencing decision. Gregg, supra, 428 U.S. at 192, 96 S.Ct. at 2934, 49 L.Ed. 2d at 885 (plurality opinion of Stewart, Powell, and Stevens, JJ.). Justice Stewart's plurality opinion in Gregg cited two features of Georgia's scheme that would guide and channel the exercise of sentencing discretion. Georgia's statute had a bifurcated procedure for deciding a defendant's guilt first and sentence later, and also provided for the further safeguard of meaningful appellate review of every death sentence. Id. at 195, 96 S.Ct. at 2935, 49 L.Ed. 2d at 887. When New Jersey reintroduced its Capital Punishment Act, it modeled its statute on Georgia's statute, which had generally followed the Model Penal Code's provisions with respect to the enumeration of aggravating and mitigating factors and the provision of the bifurcated procedure. Ramseur, supra, 106 N.J. at 183, 202-09, 524 A. 2d 188. Hence, as enacted, the New Jersey Capital Punishment Act required that the Supreme Court conduct proportionality review to determine whether the death sentence imposed on a defendant is disproportionate to the penalty imposed in similar cases, considering both the crime and the defendant. L. 1982, c. 111. Following the Supreme Court's decision in Pulley v. Harris, 465 U.S. 37, 104 S.Ct. 871, 79 L.Ed. 2d 29 (1984), that proportionality review was not an essential constitutional requirement of a state capital-sentencing scheme, our Legislature amended the statute to make proportionality review an option for defendants. L. 1985, c. 478. We assumed that most defendants who receive a death sentence would request proportionality review. Ramseur, supra, 106 N.J. at 327, 524 A. 2d 188. As noted, the Legislature has since limited statutory proportionality review to a comparison of death-sentenced cases. B. What did our Legislature intend when it provided for proportionality review in the context of Gregg v. Georgia ? To answer that question we must digress to distinguish between two aspects of proportionality review. The first has been referred to as substantive proportionality review, the second as procedural proportionality review. See Lisa G. Bradley, Proportionality in Capital and Non-Capital Sentencing: An Eighth Amendment Enigma, 23 Idaho L.Rev. 195, 206-08, 211-15 (1986-87). We may think of those two aspects of proportionality review as offense-oriented and offender-oriented. Simply stated, the substantive or offense-oriented proportionality review looks to whether the punishment of death is excessive for a particular offense, while procedural or offender-oriented review examines whether, when compared to factually similar cases involving the same offense, a defendant's death sentence is excessive. See David C. Baldus, Charles A. Pulaski & George Woodworth, Comparative Review of Death Sentences: An Empirical Study of the Georgia Experience, 74 J.Crim.L. & Criminology 661, 665-66 (1983) (hereinafter Baldus and Pulaski I). Gregg is particularly instructive because it illustrates the two differing aspects of proportionality review and gives insight into the most probable meaning of our statutory provision. The Gregg Court spoke of the useful function of proportionality review and characterized it as assuring that `no death sentence is affirmed unless in similar cases throughout the state the death penalty has been imposed generally   .' Gregg, supra, 428 U.S. at 205, 96 S.Ct. at 2939, 49 L.Ed. 2d at 892 (quoting Moore v. State, 233 Ga. 861, 213 S.E. 2d 829, 832 (1975)); see also Jarrell v. State, 234 Ga. 410, 216 S.E. 2d 258, 270 (1975) (asking whether juries generally throughout the state have imposed the death penalty), cert. denied, 428 U.S. 910, 96 S.Ct. 3223, 49 L.Ed. 2d 1218 (1976). The kind of proportionality review that asks whether the death penalty is generally imposed is an Eighth Amendment inquiry into substantive proportionality  does the punishment fit the crime? (That analysis has also been used to analyze Eighth Amendment disproportionality for certain classes of offenders, e.g., minors, Stanford v. Kentucky, 492 U.S. 361, 109 S.Ct. 2969, 106 L.Ed. 2d 306 (1989), or mildly retarded, Penry v. Lynaugh, 492 U.S. 302, 109 S.Ct. 2934, 106 L.Ed. 2d 256 (1989).) That type of substantive review is best perceived in the context of cases such as Coker v. Georgia, 433 U.S. 584, 97 S.Ct. 2861, 53 L.Ed. 2d 982 (1977), and Enmund v. Florida, 458 U.S. 782, 102 S.Ct. 3368, 73 L.Ed. 2d 1140 (1982). In Coker, for example, the Court held that the imposition of the death penalty for rape violated the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment because it was grossly disproportionate and excessive punishment for the commission of that crime. 433 U.S. at 592, 97 S.Ct. at 2866, 53 L.Ed. 2d at 989. In reaching that conclusion, the Court paid particular attention to such factors as public attitudes concerning a particular sentence  history and precedent, legislative attitudes, and the response of juries reflected in their sentencing decisions. Ibid. Similarly, in Enmund, the Court found that the imposition of the death penalty is disproportionate for one who aids and abets a felony in the course of which a murder is committed by others but who does not himself kill, attempt to kill, or intend that a killing take place or that lethal force will be employed. 458 U.S. at 797, 102 S.Ct. at 3376, 73 L.Ed. 2d at 1151. Tracking the analysis followed in Gregg and Coker, the Enmund Court held that when [t]he evidence is overwhelming that American juries have repudiated imposition of the death penalty for [particular] crimes [such as rape or accomplice-murder], id. at 794, 102 S.Ct. at 3374, 73 L.Ed. 2d at 1150, death is an unconstitutional penalty absent a showing that the actor killed, attempted to kill, or intended to participate in or facilitate a murder. Id. at 798, 102 S.Ct. at 3377, 73 L.Ed. 2d at 1152. The Court observed that if prosecutors rarely sought the death penalty for accomplice felony murder    it would tend to indicate that prosecutors, who represent society's interest in punishing crime, consider the death penalty excessive for accomplice felony murder. Id. at 796, 102 S.Ct. at 3376, 73 L.Ed. 2d at 1151. When legislatures and juries [have] firmly rejected the penalty of death, id. at 814, 102 S.Ct. at 3385, 73 L.Ed. 2d at 1162 (O'Connor, J., dissenting), for a particular offense, then the imposition of the death penalty for that crime is a substantially disproportionate and excessive punishment. In later applications of that doctrine, as in Tison v. Arizona, 481 U.S. 137, 107 S.Ct. 1676, 95 L.Ed. 2d 127 (1987) (imposition of death penalty for reckless indifference murder not overwhelmingly repudiated), the Court has adhered to that basic premise of substantive or Eighth Amendment disproportionality. Only in that context must the type of near-unanimous generality be found, and it is not a case-by-case generality but rather a jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction generality of rejection. When the Gregg court spoke favorably of the Georgia Supreme Court's requirement that the offense be one in which the death penalty has been imposed generally, it was actually referring to the Eighth Amendment, substantive analysis, because Gregg involved two sentences of death: one for armed robbery and one for murder. (At that time armed robbery standing alone was a statutory basis for capital punishment in Georgia.) The Georgia court vacated the death sentence for armed robbery but affirmed the sentence of death for murder. Gregg v. State, 210 S.E. 2d 659, 667 (1974). In the case of robbery, it simply noted that the imposition of death sentences for that crime were unusual in that they are rarely imposed for [armed robbery]. Id. at 667. Recognizing that the magnitude of the punishment imposed must be related to the degree of harm inflicted on the victim, absent the victim's murder, juries generally would not impose the sentence of death for armed robbery. But that offense-oriented analysis is not the review that we exercise here. Rather, we ask whether the punishment fits the criminal. The procedural, offender-oriented proportionality review undertaken by the Georgia Supreme Court with respect to the murder count consisted simply of a recital of a series of cases considered by that court in making its proportionality analysis and a statement that [a]fter considering both the crimes and the defendant and after comparing the evidence and the sentences in this case with those of previous murder cases, we are    of the opinion that these two sentences of death are not excessive or disproportionate to the penalties imposed in similar cases. Ibid. That court did not suggest or require that the sentence of death be generally imposed in the sense of near unanimity in the comparison cases. C. When the Supreme Court later held in Pulley v. Harris that proportionality review was not constitutionally required, it made clear that it was not discarding the Eighth Amendment proportionality analysis. The Pulley Court emphasized: At the outset, we should more clearly identify the issue before us. Traditionally, proportionality has been used with reference to an abstract evaluation of the appropriateness of a sentence for a particular crime. Looking to the gravity of the offense and the severity of the penalty, to sentences imposed for other crimes, and to sentencing practices in other jurisdictions, this Court has occasionally struck down punishments as inherently disproportionate, and therefore cruel and unusual, when imposed for a particular crime or category of crime.         The proportionality review sought by Harris    and provided for in numerous state statutes [referring specifically to Georgia's] is of a different sort. This sort of proportionality review presumes that the death sentence is not disproportionate to the crime in the traditional sense. It purports to inquire instead whether the penalty is nonetheless unacceptable in a particular case because disproportionate to the punishment imposed on others convicted of the same crime. [465 U.S. at 42-43, 104 S.Ct. at 875-76, 79 L.Ed. 2d at 35-36 (footnotes omitted).] The dissenting members in Pulley suggested not that in any sense there be a requirement of generality or nearly unanimous death verdicts for those convicted of the same crime, but rather suggested only `that discretion must be suitably directed and limited so as to minimize the risk of wholly arbitrary and capricious action', id. at 63, 104 S.Ct. at 886, 79 L.Ed. 2d at 49 (Brennan, J.) (quoting Gregg, supra, 428 U.S. at 189, 96 S.Ct. at 2932, 49 L.Ed. 2d at 883), and have `insiste[d] that capital punishment be imposed fairly, and with reasonable consistency, or not at all.' Ibid. (quoting Eddings v. Oklahoma, 455 U.S. 104, 112, 102 S.Ct. 869, 875, 71 L.Ed. 2d 1, 9 (1982)). In their view, proportionality review, [a]lthough clearly no panacea,    often serves to identify the most extreme examples of disproportionality among similarly situated defendants. Id. 465 U.S. at 71, 104 S.Ct. at 890, 79 L.Ed. 2d at 53. That, we believe, is an acceptable understanding of the intentions of the framers of our Act  that statutory proportionality review should seek to ensure that the death penalty is being administered in a rational, non-arbitrary, and evenhanded manner, fairly and with reasonable consistency. That review serves as a means through which to monitor the imposition of death sentences and thereby to prevent any impermissible discrimination in imposing the death penalty. Ramseur, supra, 106 N.J. at 327, 524 A. 2d 188. In conducting such proportionality review, then, one need not search for the nearly unanimous degree of generality that attends the Eighth Amendment rejection of the death penalty for particular crimes or categories of crimes as being disproportionate punishment. The quest in some ways is for the antithesis of that argument. Maryland has expressed its search for proportionality thus: [A] death sentence is comparatively excessive if other defendants with similar characteristics generally receive sentences other than death for committing factually similar offenses in the same jurisdiction. Tichnell v. State, 297 Md. 432, 468 A. 2d 1, 17 n. 18 (1983) (citing David C. Baldus, Charles A. Pulaski, George Woodworth & Frederick A. Kyle, Identifying Comparatively Excessive Sentences of Death: A Quantitative Approach, 33 Stan.L.Rev. 1 (1980) (hereinafter Baldus and Pulaski II)).