Opinion ID: 788338
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: fifth amendment versus eighth amendment analysis

Text: 93 My disagreement with the majority begins with its conflation of the specificity requirements of the Fifth and Eighth Amendments. In upholding his sentence of death, the majority answers Morales's Eighth Amendment challenge by concluding that the lying-in-wait special circumstance is constitutional because it does not apply to every defendant convicted of murder. See Maj. Op. at 1175. Although the inquiry under both amendments asks whether there is a meaningful distinction between those individuals that are eligible for the sentence and those that are not, the two inquiries are substantively dissimilar. 94 The Eighth Amendment demands that the death penalty not be administered in a way that is cruel and unusual. Towards this end, the criteria that make defendants eligible for the death penalty—which in California are termed special circumstances—must genuinely narrow the class of persons eligible for the death penalty and must reasonably justify the imposition of a more severe sentence on the defendant compared to others found guilty of murder. Romano v. Oklahoma, 512 U.S. 1, 7, 114 S.Ct. 2004, 129 L.Ed.2d 1 (1994) (quoting Zant, 462 U.S. at 877, 103 S.Ct. 2733). Eighth Amendment narrowing is also accomplished by the states' constitutional responsibility to tailor and apply its law in a manner that avoids the arbitrary and capricious infliction of the death penalty. Godfrey v. Georgia, 446 U.S. 420, 428, 100 S.Ct. 1759, 64 L.Ed.2d 398 (1980). Thus, aggravating circumstances must not be unconstitutionally vague. See Tuilaepa v. California, 512 U.S. 967, 972, 114 S.Ct. 2630, 129 L.Ed.2d 750 (1994). 95 Although the Fifth Amendment also demands that laws not be unconstitutionally vague, the vagueness inquiry is not parallel to the Eighth Amendment analysis. Under the Fifth Amendment, due process is satisfied so long as a penal statute define[s] the criminal offense with sufficient definiteness that ordinary people can understand what conduct is prohibited and in a manner that does not encourage arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement. Houston v. Roe, 177 F.3d 901, 907 (9th Cir.1999) (citing Kolender v. Lawson, 461 U.S. 352, 357, 103 S.Ct. 1855, 75 L.Ed.2d 903 (1983)). 96 The difference between the constitutional inquiries applied under the Fifth and Eighth Amendments can be simply stated: the Fifth Amendment only looks for the existence of a line between the categories of murder, whereas under the Eighth Amendment, that line must be drawn in the right place—where capital murder is a small fraction of first degree murder. In other words, a void-for-vagueness challenge under the Due Process Clause asks whether the statutory language distinguishes among classes of murder so that defendants have proper notice, whereas a challenge under the Eighth Amendment's cruel and unusual punishment clause asks whether the statute sufficiently narrows the application of the death penalty. Compare Kolender, 461 U.S. at 357, 103 S.Ct. 1855 (under due process, void-for-vagueness doctrine requires a penal statute to define criminal offense with sufficient definiteness that ordinary people can understand what conduct is prohibited and in a manner that does not encourage arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement) and Houston, 177 F.3d at 907 (with reference to a due process challenge, the legislature and courts have created a thin but meaningfully distinguishable line) with Godfrey v. Georgia, 446 U.S. 420, 427-28, 100 S.Ct. 1759, 64 L.Ed.2d 398 (1980) (under the Eighth Amendment, capital sentencing scheme must provide a meaningful basis for distinguishing the few cases in which the penalty is imposed from the many cases in which it is not). 97 The questions asked under the two Amendments make it easy to fall prey to mixing and matching the substantive analysis for each. Both look to see if the statutes or the state court's interpretations of the statutes meaningfully distinguish among classes of defendants so that the penalty is not imposed in an arbitrary and capricious manner. But while the two inquiries are linguistically similar, the phrase meaningfully distinguish assumes significantly different meanings under each analysis. By substituting one standard for the other, the majority fails to apply the proper scrutiny to the California lying-in-wait special circumstance. 98 Although the majority opinion does not cite to Houston in its Eighth Amendment analysis, the majority's reasoning suggests a reliance on Houston's Fifth Amendment vagueness analysis when it attempts to demonstrate that the lying-in-wait special circumstance passes Eighth Amendment scrutiny simply because murder scenarios exist that would fall outside the lying-in-wait criteria. This reasoning misses the point of the Eighth Amendment requirement of narrowness. In Houston, we concluded that, for Fifth Amendment purposes, the difference between murder while lying in wait, under the special circumstance, and murder by means of lying in wait, under the first degree murder provision, constitutes a thin but meaningfully distinguishable line between first degree murder lying in wait and special circumstances lying in wait. 177 F.3d at 907. The majority acknowledges that Houston did not consider an Eighth Amendment challenge, but nonetheless invokes the logic of Houston to uphold the constitutionality of this particular death eligibility criterion under the Eighth Amendment. This approach, although semantically smooth, is flawed. 99 Houston's Fifth Amendment analysis cannot be stretched so wide that it swallows Morales's Eighth Amendment claim. Although the majority is correct that Morales's Fifth Amendment due process argument is foreclosed by Houston, the Houston court never reached the Eighth Amendment cruel and unusual punishment question. Houston in fact lacked standing to bring such a challenge because he was not sentenced to death. Id. at 905. As Houston expressly acknowledged, a Fifth Amendment challenge to a death penalty sentencing scheme differs significantly from an Eighth Amendment challenge. Id. at 907-08 & n. 1. (declining to reach Eighth Amendment challenge to application of the death penalty but deciding Fifth Amendment void-for-vagueness challenge). 100 The Supreme Court's decision in Maynard v. Cartwright, 486 U.S. 356, 108 S.Ct. 1853, 100 L.Ed.2d 372 (1988), illustrates the distinction between the levels of scrutiny under each challenge. In Maynard, the Court considered an Eighth Amendment challenge to Oklahoma's especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel statutory aggravating circumstance, which makes a defendant eligible for the death penalty. In its defense, the State argued that the statutory provision was not unconstitutionally vague because certain classes of convicted murderers would fall outside its definition. The Court rejected this approach: The difficulty with the State's argument is that it presents a Due Process Clause approach to vagueness and fails to recognize the rationale of our cases construing and applying the Eighth Amendment. Id. at 361, 108 S.Ct. 1853. 101 Here, the majority adopts the rationale rejected in Maynard. The majority posits that the California lying-in-wait special circumstance does not violate the Eighth Amendment because the special circumstance embraces some first-degree murders, but not all. Maj. Op. at 1175. This rationale mistakes the Fifth Amendment for the Eighth Amendment and ignores the differences between the requirements of the two amendments. Although Houston found a thin but meaningful distinction with respect to the due process problem of notice, the due process bar is not only different but is also lower than what the Eighth Amendment requires under Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, 92 S.Ct. 2726, 33 L.Ed.2d 346 (1972), and its progeny. That is, a statute may very well satisfy due process because adequate notice only demands that statutes distinguish crimes in a way that embraces some ... but not all. But the very same statute would nonetheless fail to meet the requirements of the Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause if it does not genuinely narrow the class of persons eligible for the death penalty and ... reasonably justify the imposition of a more severe sentence on the defendant compared to others found guilty of murder. Zant, 462 U.S. at 877, 103 S.Ct. 2733. 102 The majority's reliance on Tuilaepa v. California does not cure its problematic bootstrapping of the Fifth Amendment vagueness analysis. Despite the logical neatness with which the majority attempts to present the relationship among Houston, Tuilaepa, and the present case, the analysis is not parallel. Tuilaepa considered and rejected a narrowness challenge against jury discretion in sentencing a defendant to death during the penalty phase, not a narrowness challenge against eligibility for the death penalty. 512 U.S. at 980, 114 S.Ct. 2630. No special circumstance was at issue, and thus the case does not inform our understanding of what the Eighth Amendment requires with respect to death eligibility—the issue now before us. 103 Because the concept of narrowness is so crucial to proper Eighth Amendment scrutiny, as well as in distinguishing Tuilaepa, a few words of background are helpful. The Eighth Amendment requires that the types of conduct that render a defendant eligible for the death penalty must be sufficiently narrow to result in a significantly small subclass of murder defendants who qualify for death penalty consideration. This narrowing occurs at a stage known as death eligibility. The Eighth Amendment also requires that the actual selection of the death penalty as punishment for an individual defendant must meet certain criteria, such as having proper consideration of aggravating and mitigating circumstances. This narrowing occurs at a stage known as death selection. Although the Eighth Amendment demands that capital sentencing schemes sufficiently narrow the possible application of the death penalty at both death eligibility and death selection, the concept of narrowness takes on different forms of analysis during the two stages. 104 At the first stage, eligibility for the death penalty must be restricted to a class of crimes in which death is a proportionate punishment. See, e.g., Coker v. Georgia, 433 U.S. 584, 595-96, 97 S.Ct. 2861, 53 L.Ed.2d 982 (1977) (death penalty as punishment for rape unconstitutional). Eligibility for the death penalty is not a matter of juror discretion. Eligibility factors almost of necessity require an answer to a question with a factual nexus to the crime or the defendant so as to `make rationally reviewable the process for imposing a sentence of death.' Tuilaepa, 512 U.S. at 973, 114 S.Ct. 2630 (quoting Arave v. Creech, 507 U.S. 463, 471, 113 S.Ct. 1534, 123 L.Ed.2d 188 (1993)). 105 At the second stage, the Eighth Amendment requires the actual selection of the death penalty for a particular defendant be based upon an individualized determination directed to the individual and the circumstances of the crime. See Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U.S. 586, 601, 98 S.Ct. 2954, 57 L.Ed.2d 973 (1978); Woodson v. North Carolina, 428 U.S. 280, 304, 96 S.Ct. 2978, 49 L.Ed.2d 944 (1976). Because of the constitutional demand for greater consideration of the individual at the selection phase, state sentencing schemes must afford juries greater discretion in the selection phase than the eligibility phase. See Tuilaepa, 512 U.S. at 973, 114 S.Ct. 2630. 106 Thus, narrowing is achieved in different ways at the two stages, and as a result, analysis of death selection in Tuilaepa cannot serve as a substitute for the required analysis of death eligibility. Nor is the fact that a statute fulfills the requirements of due process, as in Houston, dispositive of whether it is sufficiently narrow to meet Eighth Amendment standards. It is thus improper to extend the thin but meaningful distinction of Houston and not separately analyze whether the lying-in-wait special circumstance is sufficiently narrow under the Eighth Amendment. I turn now to that analysis. 107