Opinion ID: 1244833
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Federal Constitutional Requirements

Text: The United States Supreme Court has held that a trial court's failure to ask whether the defendant would like to make a statement prior to sentencing was not constitutional error and hence not reversible in a collateral appeal. Hill v. United States, 368 U.S. 424, 82 S.Ct. 468, 7 L.Ed.2d 417 (1962). But the Court has never addressed whether denying allocution to a defendant who has affirmatively requested it is constitutional error. See McGautha v. California, 402 U.S. 183, 218 n. 22, 91 S.Ct. 1454, 1473 n. 22, 28 L.Ed.2d 711 (1971); Hill, 368 U.S. at 429, 82 S.Ct. at 472. Although the lead opinion states that the federal courts of appeals have generally determined that the right to allocution is not a constitutionally protected right, none of the lead opinion's cited cases addresses the issue that both McGautha and Hill explicitly left unresolved. The one federal appellate court that has squarely considered whether there is a constitutional right to allocution when the defendant requests it concluded that it is a denial of due process not to grant the defendant's request. Ashe v. State, 586 F.2d 334, 336 (4th Cir.1978), cert. denied, 441 U.S. 966, 99 S.Ct. 2416, 60 L.Ed.2d 1072 (1979). Because death is different, the state imposes capital punishment only after following the strictest legal and constitutional safeguards. The United States Supreme Court has protected Eighth Amendment rights to be free from cruel and unusual punishment by requiring that capital punishment be imposed only by means of carefully channelled discretion and individualized determination regarding every defendant. Further, defendants are entitled to present any mitigating factor to the sentencing body. See, e.g., Eddings v. Oklahoma, 455 U.S. 104, 112, 102 S.Ct. 869, 875-76, 71 L.Ed.2d 1 (1982); Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U.S. 586, 604, 98 S.Ct. 2954, 2964-65, 57 L.Ed.2d 973 (1978); Jurek v. Texas, 428 U.S. 262, 276, 96 S.Ct. 2950, 2958, 49 L.Ed.2d 929 (1976); Woodson v. North Carolina, 428 U.S. 280, 303-05, 96 S.Ct. 2978, 2990-92, 49 L.Ed.2d 944 (1976); State v. Wood, 648 P.2d 71, 86 (Utah), cert. denied, 459 U.S. 988, 103 S.Ct. 341, 74 L.Ed.2d 383 (1982). The Court has also protected Fourteenth Amendment due process rights in capital cases by requiring an especially vigilant concern for procedural fairness. Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 704, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 2073, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984) (Brennan, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). As I have argued above, allocution can provide significant mitigating information. As I also have discussed above, the United States Supreme Court has never decided whether denial of allocution when specifically requested is a due process violation. Nor has the Court decided in the post- Furman era whether denial of allocution to a capital defendant violates the Court's rigorous Eighth Amendment capital sentencing safeguards. In light of the Court's silence on these issues and given the Court's concern in other contexts for reliability, procedural fairness, and preserving the opportunity to present any mitigating information, I conclude that the denial of Young's requested allocution violated his federal rights. Foreclosing the jury's opportunity to hear Young's personal statement prevented the jury from making the individualized sentencing determination required by the Eighth Amendment. Given that Utah mandates, by statute, an opportunity for allocution, its refusal in a capital trial violates the Fourteenth Amendment's requirement of procedural fairness. Our reference in State v. Lorrah, 761 P.2d 1388, 1390 (Utah 1988), to a defendant's due process right of allocution may have been without analysis, as the lead opinion points out, but it was correct.