Opinion ID: 2598537
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Constitutionality of Wyoming's Death Penalty Statute

Text: [ś 89] In his first issue relating to the sentencing phase of his trial, Olsen contends that Wyoming's death penalty statute is ambiguous and, therefore, unconstitutional. His precise concern is its lack of guidance in determining the effect of aggravating and mitigating circumstances in deciding between a death sentence and a life sentence. The State contends that the statute complies with the mandates of the pertinent decisions of the United States Supreme Court (the Court).
[ś 90] In 1972, the Court declared all death penalty statutes unconstitutional as constituting cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, 92 S.Ct. 2726, 33 L.Ed.2d 346 (1972). The basis for that conclusion was explained through five concurring opinions. Four years later, when new statutory schemes from various states were presented to the Court, several plurality decisions pinpointed the precise deficiency of the previous statutes to be the untrammeled discretion permitted juries in deciding whether to impose or withhold the death penalty. In those opinions, the Court upheld Georgia, Florida, and Texas' new statutory schemes and struck down two other states' statutes, namely, North Carolina's scheme which mandated the death sentence, and Louisiana's statutory scheme which required a sentencer to consider lesser offenses even when not a scintilla of evidence supported that lesser charge. Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153, 96 S.Ct. 2909, 49 L.Ed.2d 859 (1976); Proffitt v. Florida, 428 U.S. 242, 96 S.Ct. 2960, 49 L.Ed.2d 913 (1976); Jurek v. Texas, 428 U.S. 262, 96 S.Ct. 2950, 49 L.Ed.2d 929 (1976); Woodson v. North Carolina, 428 U.S. 280, 96 S.Ct. 2978, 49 L.Ed.2d 944 (1976); Roberts v. Louisiana, 428 U.S. 325, 96 S.Ct. 3001, 49 L.Ed.2d 974 (1976). In 1977, we considered the constitutionality of Wyoming's death penalty statute. In declaring it unconstitutional because it mandated the death penalty, we noted that [t]o constitutionally exact a death penalty the statute must contain standards provided by the legislature controlling the exercise of the discretion of the sentencing authority, which are totally lacking in our statute. The lessons of Gregg v. Georgia , Roberts v. Louisiana , Jurek v. Texas , Proffitt v. Florida , and Woodson v. North Carolina demonstrate that to successfully withstand attack upon constitutional grounds there must be provided in the statute standards to guide and control the exercise of discretion by the sentencing authority in its determination of the propriety of the application of the death sentence, or the alternative of a term of life imprisonment. There must further be provided a procedure by which the fact finder can consider and examine any and all aggravating and mitigating circumstances and the character and situation of the individual defendant, upon which the final determination is made. A proper record of the findings which are used as the basis for the infliction of this penalty must be preserved to enable a reviewing court to determine the reasonableness and the propriety of the application of such sentence. The Wyoming statute under scrutiny does not meet these requirements. Kennedy v. State, 559 P.2d 1014, 1016 (Wyo.1977) (citations omitted). [ś 91] In the following years, thirty-eight states passed death penalty statutes and, as various issues came before the Court, the conceptual basis of aggravating and mitigating circumstances' role in a jury's reasoned moral response was further defined, evolving into the principle that a capital sentencing scheme 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. Engberg, 820 P.2d at 90 (quoting Zant v. Stephens, 462 U.S. 862, 877, 103 S.Ct. 2733, 2742, 77 L.Ed.2d 235 (1983)). Besides its mandate that a statute limit the jury's discretion, the Court required the admission of all relevant mitigating evidence: There is no perfect procedure for deciding in which cases governmental authority should be used to impose death. But a statute that prevents the sentencer in all capital cases from giving independent mitigating weight to aspects of the defendant's character and record and to circumstances of the offense proffered in mitigation creates the risk that the death penalty will be imposed in spite of factors which may call for a less severe penalty. When the choice is between life and death, that risk is unacceptable and incompatible with the commands of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U.S. 586, 605, 98 S.Ct. 2954, 2965, 57 L.Ed.2d 973 (1978). The Court emphasized that a sentence of death is not a fact-finding exercise, but, instead, must reflect an ethical judgment about the moral guilt of the defendant and the reasoned moral response of the sentencer. Penry v. Lynaugh, 492 U.S. 302, 328, 327-28, 109 S.Ct. 2934, 2951, 106 L.Ed.2d 256 (1989); see Enmund v. Florida, 458 U.S. 782, 800-01, 102 S.Ct. 3368, 3378, 73 L.Ed.2d 1140 (1982). [ś 92] In 1994, the Court explained these complementary doctrines of its capital punishment jurisprudence in Tuilaepa v. California, 512 U.S. 967, 114 S.Ct. 2630, 129 L.Ed.2d 750 (1994). The Court explained that its decisions require that a jury's discretion in sentencing defendants to death must be genuinely narrowed; however, once that is accomplished, the jury must be allowed the widest possible discretion to not choose death. To accomplish these constitutional requirements, there are two different aspects of the capital decision-making process: the eligibility decision and the selection decision. Id. at 971, 114 S.Ct. at 2634. A defendant is eligible for the death penalty in a homicide case when the trier of fact finds one aggravating circumstance or its equivalent at either the guilt or sentencing phase. Id. at 972, 114 S.Ct. at 2634. Aggravating circumstances must meet two requirements: the circumstance may not apply to every defendant convicted of murder; it must apply only to a subclass of defendants convicted of murder (genuine narrowing), and the circumstance must not be unconstitutionally vague. Id., 114 S.Ct. at 2635. [ś 93] The selection decision determines whether an eligible defendant should receive the death penalty and requires an individualized determination on the basis of the character of the individual and the circumstances of the crime. Id. The individualized determination requirement is met when the jury can consider relevant mitigating evidence of the character and record of the defendant and the circumstances of the crime. Id. The eligibility decision requires an answer to the factual question of what was the rationale for imposing a sentence of death while the selection decision does not necessarily have to answer a factual question, but can be open-ended in assessing the defendant's culpability. Id. at 973, 114 S.Ct. at 2635. The Court observed that the objectives of the eligibility and selection inquiries can be in some tension but the principle common to both decisions is that the State must ensure that the process is neutral and principled so as to guard against bias or caprice in the sentencing decision. Id. This is the controlling objective when examining eligibility and selection factors for vagueness and the reason why neither can be too vague. Id. [ś 94] It is on the issue of invalid aggravating circumstances that the Court began to develop decisions based on whether it considered a particular statutory scheme as weighing or nonweighing. The Court has declared that, on review, the distinction between weighing and nonweighing schemes is not one of semantics, but is one of critical importance. Stringer v. Black, 503 U.S. 222, 231-32, 112 S.Ct. 1130, 1137, 117 L.Ed.2d 367 (1992); Hopkinson v. State, 664 P.2d 43, 60 (Wyo.1983) ( Hopkinson II ) (The scales must not be tipped by impermissible factors leaving us in a quandary as to what the jury would have done had impermissible factors not been present.); see also Hopkinson v. State, 632 P.2d 79, 170-72 (Wyo.1981) ( Hopkinson I) . In a weighing state, where the aggravating and mitigating factors are balanced against each other, it is constitutional error for the sentencer to give weight to an unconstitutionally vague aggravating factor, even if there are other valid aggravating factors. Richmond v. Lewis, 506 U.S. 40, 46, 113 S.Ct. 528, 534, 121 L.Ed.2d 411 (1992). In a nonweighing state, aggravating circumstances serve only to make a defendant eligible for the death penalty and not to determine punishment, and the invalidation of one aggravating circumstance does not necessarily require the appellate court to vacate a death sentence and remand to a jury. Zant, 462 U.S. at 890, 103 S.Ct. at 2749-50. [ś 95] Because weighing states require sentencers to balance aggravating circumstances against mitigating circumstances, one invalid aggravating circumstance requires the reviewing court to either remand the case for a new sentencing determination, reweigh the evidence itself, or conduct harmless error analysis to decide if, beyond a reasonable doubt, the sentence would have been the same despite the invalid aggravating circumstance. By contrast, in nonweighing states the jury must find the existence of one aggravating factor before imposing the death penalty, but aggravating factors as such have no specific function in the jury's decision whether a defendant who has been found to be eligible for the death penalty should receive it under all the circumstances of the case. Instead, ..., in making the decision as to the penalty, the factfinder takes into consideration all circumstances before it from both the guilt-innocence and the sentence phases of the trial. These circumstances relate both to the offense and the defendant. Stringer, 503 U.S. at 229-30, 112 S.Ct. at 1136 (quoting Zant, 462 U.S. at 872, 103 S.Ct. at 2740). If the reviewing court concludes that the sentencer found at least one valid aggravating circumstance and that the invalid factor did not affect the sentencer's determination in imposing the death penalty, the sentence may stand despite an invalid aggravating circumstance. Stringer, at 232, 112 S.Ct. at 1137; Zant, at 881, 103 S.Ct. at 2745. The Court said: Assuming a determination by the state appellate court that the invalid factor would not have made a difference to the jury's determination, there is no constitutional violation resulting from the introduction of the invalid factor in an earlier stage of the proceedings. But when the sentencing body is told to weigh an invalid factor in its decision, a reviewing court may not assume it would have made no difference if the thumb had been removed from death's side of the scale. When the weighing process itself has been skewed, only constitutional harmless-error analysis or reweighing at the trial or appellate level suffices to guarantee that the defendant received an individualized sentence. This clear principle emerges not from any single case ... but from our long line of authority setting forth the dual constitutional criteria of precise and individualized sentencing. Stringer, at 232, 112 S.Ct. at 1137. In this particular case, both Olsen and the State describe Wyoming's current statute as a weighing statute; however, while Olsen contends this statutory language unconstitutionally fails to properly channel the sentencer's discretion and allows arbitrary imposition of the death penalty, the State argues that the weighing/nonweighing distinction is important only to this court's reviewing process.
[ś 96] We have not considered the death penalty statute since it was amended in 1989, although we held the previous version was constitutional in Hopkinson I, 632 P.2d at 152. Hopkinson I considered a statute that instructed that aggravating circumstances proved beyond a reasonable doubt must outweigh any and all mitigating circumstances. If this conclusion is reached, the defendant can be sentenced to death. Id. at 153. Specifically, at that time the statute required the jury to determine [w]hether sufficient mitigating circumstances exist ... which outweigh the aggravating circumstances found to exist. Wyo. Stat. Ann. § 6-2-102(d)(i)(B) (Michie 1977). The 1989 amendment to the statute removed the weighing language and now reads, in pertinent part: The jury shall consider aggravating and mitigating circumstances unanimously found to exist, and each individual juror may also consider any mitigating circumstances found by that juror to exist. § 6-2-102(d)(ii). Both parties contend that Wyoming's statute should be considered weighing although it does not use that specific term. Both contend it is weighing because the statute limits the jury's consideration to statutorily-defined aggravating factors by the express language in § 6-2-102(d)(ii), which states that the jury must unanimously determine whether the defendant should be sentenced to death or life imprisonment based upon the consideration of aggravating and mitigating circumstances found to exist. The State argues that consider is a synonym of weigh and the jury's discretion is channeled. The defense contends that the statute is too unclear to be constitutional because it does not give the jury guidance or direction on how the aggravators and mitigators should be considered. The defense claims this nonweighing element causes the statute to be ambiguous, the court cannot determine legislative intent, and the statute must be declared unconstitutionally vague. Using dictionary definitions, the State contends that the statutory language, consider aggravating and mitigating circumstances, is a directive that the jury is to weigh them in some fashion and affords it discretion to evaluate this evidence in whatever manner it chooses. [ś 97] Our earlier discussion of the differences between weighing and nonweighing statutory language indicates that Wyoming's statutory language does not impose a nonweighing scheme. Olsen contends that eliminating the directive outweigh requires finding the statute too ambiguous to be constitutional. Proffitt specifically addressed the issue of whether a statute is constitutional when it gives no guidance as to how the mitigating and aggravating circumstances should be weighed in any specific case. The Court responded: While these questions and decisions may be hard, they require no more line drawing than is commonly required of a factfinder in a lawsuit. For example, juries have traditionally evaluated the validity of defenses such as insanity or reduced capacity, both of which involve the same considerations as some of the above-mentioned mitigating circumstances. While the various factors to be considered by the sentencing authorities do not have numerical weights assigned to them, the requirements of Furman are satisfied when the sentencing authority's discretion is guided and channeled by requiring examination of specific factors that argue in favor of or against imposition of the death penalty, thus eliminating total arbitrariness and capriciousness in its imposition. The directions given to judge and jury by the Florida statute are sufficiently clear and precise to enable the various aggravating circumstances to be weighed against the mitigating ones. As a result, the trial court's sentencing discretion is guided and channeled by a system that focuses on the circumstances of each individual homicide and individual defendant in deciding whether the death penalty is to be imposed. Proffitt, 428 U.S. at 257-58, 96 S.Ct. at 2969. [ś 98] The Florida scheme considered in Proffitt, however, specifically instructed the jury to determine if the aggravating circumstances outweighed the mitigating circumstances before imposing the death penalty. Olsen complains that the Wyoming statute fails to include this directive while limiting the jury's deliberations to discrete statutory aggravating circumstances. He contends a statute that contains components of both a weighing and a nonweighing statute is unconstitutionally vague for failing to comply with federal requirements that the sentencing jury's discretion be properly channeled. [ś 99] In Richmond v. Lewis , the Court ruled that Arizona was a weighing state despite the absence of the term. Richmond, 506 U.S. at 47, 113 S.Ct. at 534-35. The provision in question stated: In determining whether to impose a sentence of death ... the court shall take into account the aggravating and mitigating circumstances included in ... this section and shall impose a sentence of death if the court finds one or more of the aggravating circumstances ... and that there are no mitigating circumstances sufficiently substantial to call for leniency. Id. As previously discussed, when an invalid aggravating factor is used in a weighing state, the reviewing court must either reweigh, remand, or conduct a harmless error review. The Court ruled that the Arizona Supreme Court's failure to reweigh required that the judgment be reversed and remanded. Id. at 52, 113 S.Ct. at 537. [ś 100] In Williams v. Calderon, 52 F.3d 1465 (9th Cir.1995), Richmond was interpreted to mean that the United States Supreme Court's weighing/non-weighing distinction does not turn simply on whether the word weighing appears in a state's statute. Id. at 1477. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals said: Instead, the distinction can be understood functionally in one of two ways. First, when a jury is specifically instructed to weigh statutory aggravating and mitigating circumstances, and its decision is tied to the outcome, the decisional process necessarily becomes infected by the improper consideration. In states where no such procedure is mandated, the factor need not infect the process; the jury is under no obligation to weigh the factor as part of its calculus. Second, when a jury is limited to the consideration of discrete aggravating factors, consideration of an invalid factor may allow consideration of somethingâ the circumstances supporting the factorâ that could not have otherwise been considered. In contrast, when a jury is permitted to consider any evidence it deems relevant in aggravation, the consideration of an invalid factor adds only an improper labelâ the state's aggravating factor imprimaturâ to underlying circumstances which could have been taken into account anyway. Consequently, the Supreme Court's weighing/ nonweighing distinction may involve both procedural and substantive components. Procedurally, is the sentencer restricted to a weighing of aggravation against mitigation? Substantively, is the sentencer prevented from considering evidence in aggravation other than discrete, statutorily-defined factors? Our review of federal and state court decisions reveals that where both constraints are present, the regimes involved are uniformly treated as weighing; where neither is present, the regimes are uniformly treated as non-weighing; and where one but not the other is present, disagreement has arisen. Id. at 1477-78 (citations and footnotes omitted). [ś 101] The Williams approach has been adopted by the Washington State Supreme Court, and we too apply its approach and conclude that we agree with both parties that the Wyoming statute constitutes a weighing statute. State v. Brown, 132 Wash.2d 529, 940 P.2d 546, 592 (1997). We reach this conclusion despite the absence of weighing language because the Wyoming statute permits the sentencer to consider only those aggravating circumstances enumerated in the statute and does not permit the jury to consider nonstatutory aggravating evidence as aggravating circumstances. Our conclusion necessarily raises the issue of whether the jury must be instructed to determine if the aggravating circumstances outweigh mitigating circumstances before the death penalty is imposed. The State contends that it is obvious the jury is going to weigh all those circumstances found to exist in some fashion; however, in our later discussion of mitigation, we conclude that the State's concession does require the jury to be instructed using the term outweigh. [ś 102] Our conclusion that the statute must be considered a weighing statute does not require that we find that the Court's constitutional precedent mandates that the statute, itself, direct the jury to find that aggravating circumstances outweigh mitigating circumstances or be unconstitutional. In reviewing Georgia's nonweighing scheme, the Court, as it had in Proffitt, held that the Constitution does not require a state to adopt specific standards for instructing the jury in its consideration of aggravating and mitigating circumstances. Zant, 462 U.S. at 890, 103 S.Ct. at 2750. We conclude that federal precedent does not require that we find unconstitutional a statute containing elements of both weighing and nonweighing statutes, so long as Wyoming's death penalty statute genuinely narrows the class of defendants eligible for the death penalty and provides for an individualized determination and appellate review.
[ś 103] Changing the statutory term from weigh to consider did not transform the statutory scheme from weighing to nonweighing, and we hold that Wyoming's death penalty statute is a constitutional, weighing statute. We reach this conclusion despite the absence of weighing language because the Wyoming statute permits the sentencer to consider only those aggravating circumstances enumerated in the statute and does not permit the jury to consider nonstatutory aggravating evidence as aggravating circumstances. Because the statute requires that the sentencing jury consider those aggravating circumstances and all relevant mitigating evidence to reach a decision of death or life imprisonment, the jury should be instructed that it must find that any aggravating circumstance found to exist beyond a reasonable doubt must outweigh all mitigating circumstances.