Opinion ID: 1889733
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: The Principle of Unique Assignment

Text: Judge Baime recommends that the Court retain this principle. Ibid. Briefly stated, the principle is that even though a case may contain multiple identifying factors, e.g., killing a public official and robbing or torturing the official, the case is assigned to one category for salient-factor review. Judge Baime is concerned with emphasizing the quality of aggravating factors rather than the quantity, recognizing that one factor may be decisive in a jury's decision to sentence a defendant to death. Id. at 61 (noting particular strength of factors like public office of victim, prior murder convictions of defendant, multiple victims, etc.). Judge Baime acknowledges, however, that unique assignment is not ideal. Ibid. The Public Defender states that the concept of giving cases a unique assignment is a sensible system that seems to reflect reality to a great degree, but has expressed concern over Judge Baime's application of unique assignment to the process of ranking the salient-factor categories. The Public Defender notes that under the proposed system, once a case is used to calculate the sentencing rate for one category ( e.g. killing a public servant), the case is unavailable for calculating the sentencing rate for a lower category found in the same case ( e.g. torturing the victim). The Public Defender suggests ranking the categories with replacement, by which each case would be available for purposes of calculating the death-sentencing rate in each category to which the case applies. In this way, the hierarchy would be created using the replacement method, rather than unique assignment, but for comparison purposes a case would remain uniquely assigned to one category. As we understand the issue, we find no intrinsic problem with the use of the replacement method to create the hierarchy and the unique assignment method for running the salient-factors test for purposes of producing the AOC reports. We decline to order that relief now. Following the implementation of the new protocols, and after the first series of capital case reviews,the Public Defender may present the issue again to Judge Baime or his successor as Standing Master for possible reconsideration.