Opinion ID: 1391736
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Controlling the Discretion of the Sentencing Authority at the Trial Level

Text: The Supreme Court has indicated that once an individual has been convicted of a capital offense, there must be an informed, focused, guided, and objective inquiry into the question whether he should be sentenced to death. ( Proffitt, supra, 428 U.S. at p. 259 [49 L.Ed.2d at p. 927].) At this proceeding, the sentencing authority is to be both apprised of the information relevant to the imposition of sentence and provided with standards to guide its use of the information. ( Gregg, supra, 428 U.S. at p. 195 [49 L.Ed.2d at p. 887], italics added; see also, id., at p. 192 [49 L.Ed.2d at p. 885].) California's 1977 law does permit the introduction of relevant evidence, but it fails to provide (1) standards by which the sentencing authority can evaluate that evidence, (2) safeguards to ensure that the judge or jury does in fact focus on the important or permissible sentencing considerations, (3) a mechanism to ensure that any decision imposing a sentence of death is reliable, and (4) a procedure to enable a reviewing court to meaningfully evaluate a sentencer's decision to take a person's life. Whatever may validly be said as to the lack of clarity of the United States Supreme Court in this area (see, e.g., Frierson, supra, 25 Cal.3d at pp. 190-195 (conc. opn. of Mosk, J.)), it is a highly questionable assertion that the high court would uphold this legislative scheme with all its shortcomings. Preeminent among the shortcomings of the 1977 legislation is its complete failure to provide meaningful standards. The sentencing authority is directed by former section 190.3 to consider the aggravating and mitigating circumstances referred to in this section.... However, the section explicitly allows consideration of any circumstance which the sentencing authority deems to be extenuating. (See former § 190.3, subd. (j).) The statute fails to inform the sentencing authority whether its consideration of aggravating circumstances is similarly open-ended. [21] Standing alone, this imprecision might not be sufficient to invalidate the 1977 procedures, since former section 190.3 does direct the sentencing authority to consider at least the particular factors set forth in subdivisions (a) through (j). The United States Supreme Court has suggested that the constitutional requirement of sentencing guidelines may be satisfied if the sentencing authority is given guidance regarding those factors which the State, representing organized society, deems particularly relevant to the sentencing decision.  ( Gregg, supra, 428 U.S. at p. 192 [49 L.Ed.2d at p. 885], italics added (opn. of Stewart, Powell, Stevens, JJ.).) The thrust of this language in Gregg appears to be to ensure that the state inform the sentencing authority of the primary penological purposes it seeks to advance through its use of capital punishment so that consistency of decision is possible. (See McGautha v. California (1971) 402 U.S. 183, 280-287 [28 L.Ed.2d 711, 768-773, 91 S.Ct. 1454] (dis. opn. of Brennan, J.).) Since the 1977 legislation fails to inform the sentencing authority as to which of the enumerated factors are aggravating circumstances and which are mitigating, the requirements of Gregg are not satisfied. If the state intends to advance some penological goal by directing the attention of the sentencing authority to certain specified factors, how can the judge or jury know what that policy is? As a direct result, death penalty verdicts will be random and sporadic rather than consistent. Different conclusions will be reached by different judges or juries as to whether a specified factor is aggravating or mitigating. For example, former section 190.3 lists as one of the enumerated factors [w]hether or not at the time of the offense the capacity of the defendant to appreciate the criminality of his conduct or to conform his conduct to the requirements of law was impaired as a result of mental disease or the effects of intoxication. (Subd. (g).) Some sentencing authorities, who find the evidence supports this factor, may come to the conclusion that this is a mitigating circumstance. Others, considering the tenor of our times, may consider this a factor favoring execution. The point is that neither sentencing authority can determine whether its version is correct. As a result, identically situated defendants will be sentenced differently. The Legislature, in directing the attention of the sentencing authority to these factors but omitting to indicate whether their presence or absence is a mitigating or aggravating circumstance, set up a statutory scheme that ensures inequality of treatment. Significantly, none of the death penalty statutes upheld in Gregg et al. had the flaw which is part of the 1977 legislation. The Georgia statute directed the sentencing authority's attention to ten factors it deemed to be aggravating; [22] the Florida law enumerated eight aggravating and seven mitigating circumstances; [23] and in Texas the jury was informed that yes answers to each of the three statutory penalty questions would result in a death sentence. [24] There is another important flaw. The statutes in Georgia, Florida, and Texas all required the sentencing authority to find at the penalty trial that at least one of the statutorily enumerated aggravating factors was present to justify a decision that a particular defendant should be executed. Also, findings by the sentencing authority had to be in written form. [25] Unfortunately, the California statute has neither of these provisions. These interrelated provisions serve to ensure that the sentencing authority's discretion has in fact operated within statutory limits. They focus the sentencing authority's attention on the particularly relevant [26] sentencing factors. These provisions ensure that persons will not be sentenced to die unless the important penological goals of the state will be advanced. The risk that a death sentence will be imposed for a trivial or impermissible reason is lessened. To this extent, these provisions promote consistency of decision-making. Finally, the requirement that the findings be in writing enables meaningful judicial review of a decision imposing a death sentence. In People v. Frierson, supra, 25 Cal.3d 142, three justices of this court found no merit in an attack on these procedural defects. Two reasons were tendered in support of their conclusion. First, the justices relied on former section 190.4, subdivision (e), which provides for an automatic application for modification of a verdict whenever a jury has returned a death sentence. (25 Cal.3d at p. 179 (opn. of Richardson, J.).) In ruling on the motion, the trial court must review the evidence, consider the aggravating and mitigating circumstances, make its own independent determination as to the weight of the evidence supporting the jury's findings and verdict, and state on the record the reasons for its findings. The three justices in Frierson concluded that the proceedings on such a new trial motion were roughly comparable ( ibid. ) to those in the Florida death penalty scheme, which was upheld in Proffitt. The analogy to the Florida statutes is just plain wrong. In Florida, the jury determination of penalty was advisory only; the final decision as to punishment was given to the trial judge. In California, the situation is quite different. As Justice Mosk has noted, under our statute the authority with primary responsibility for fixing the penalty is the jury. ( Frierson, supra, 25 Cal.3d at p. 193, fn. 7 (conc. opn.).) The jury's role is not that of advisor. If there were any doubt as to this fact, section 190.3 declares no less than three times that in the penalty phase the trier of fact shall `determine' the punishment to be inflicted. ( Ibid. ) Further, the trial judge has no power to overturn a jury verdict of life imprisonment. In short, the jury is the sentencing authority under the 1977 law. The United States Supreme Court's cases make clear that it is the sentencer's discretion that must be channeled and guided by clear, objective, and specific standards. ( Godfrey, supra, 446 U.S. at p. 437 [64 L.Ed.2d at p. 411, 100 S.Ct. at p. 1769], original italics (conc. opn. of Marshall, J.).) [27] The second basis on which the Frierson plurality sought to overcome these objections was to point out that at the guilt phase of a capital trial the jury must return a verdict of true on at least one allegation of special circumstances before the penalty phase may commence. (25 Cal.3d at p. 179.) Since the existence of a special circumstance is one of the factors specifically enumerated in former section 190.3 and since the jury's verdict on that allegation at the guilt phase is signed by the jury foreperson, any constitutional need for specific findings in writing was met. However, the duty of the sentencing authority to return a verdict at the guilt phase does not serve as a check against arbitrary and capricious decision-making at the penalty phase. A jury which has found a special circumstance allegation to be true is still fully entitled to return a verdict of life imprisonment. The fact that a jury has returned a verdict of true at the guilt phase does not in any way imply that the existence of the special circumstance is one of this jury's reasons for sentencing this particular defendant to die. Indeed, the finding of truth of the special circumstance is made at a time when the jury is specifically instructed not to consider punishment in arriving at its verdict. (Former CALJIC No. 17.43 (3d ed. 1970).) The trial level procedures provided by the 1977 death penalty legislation contain another defect; i.e., there are inadequate procedures to ensure the greater degree of reliability that is constitutionally required when the death sentence is imposed. ( Lockett, supra, 438 U.S. at p. 604 [57 L.Ed.2d at p. 989] (plur. opn. of Burger, C.J.).) Of course, it is not possible to eliminate all mistaken sentences of death  there is always in litigation a margin of error, representing error in factfinding.... ( Speiser v. Randall (1958) 357 U.S. 513, 525 [2 L.Ed.2d 1460, 1472, 78 S.Ct. 1332].) Nevertheless, in an analogous context, the Supreme Court has recognized that mistakes in decision-making can and constitutionally must be reduced by imposing upon the government a strong burden of proof. Thus, [w]here one party has at stake an interest of transcending value  as a criminal defendant his liberty  this margin of error is reduced as to him by the process of placing on the other party the burden of producing a sufficiency of proof in the first instance, and of persuading the factfinder at the conclusion of the trial of his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. ( Id., at pp. 525-526 [2 L.Ed.2d at p. 1472].) Just as the risks of an erroneous deprivation of liberty justify placing a heavy burden of proof on the government, so must the risks of an erroneous deprivation of life require the government to establish convincingly both the appropriateness of the ultimate sanction and the existence of the aggravating circumstances upon which that sanction is based. Death is, after all, profoundly different from all other penalties and [w]hen the choice is between life and death, [the] risk [that the death penalty will be improperly applied in a particular case] is unacceptable and incompatible with the commands of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. ( Lockett, supra, 438 U.S. at p. 605 [57 L.Ed.2d at p. 990] (plur. opn. of Burger, C.J.).) Far from imposing a substantial burden of proof upon the government at the penalty phase, the 1977 California statutes impose no burden at all. How can legislative silence be deemed an adequate response to the constitutional interest in reliability? ( Gardner v. Florida, supra, 430 U.S. at p. 359 [51 L.Ed.2d at p. 403] (plur. opn. of Stevens, J.).) [28] Another safeguard which would enhance the reliability of any death verdict would be a requirement that the sentencing jury be unanimous as to each aggravating circumstance which the jury deems sufficient to impose a sentence of death. The 1977 law contains no such provision. Indeed, it does not even require a majority of the jurors to agree upon the existence of such a factor. Certainly, the constitutional requirement of reliability is not met by a law which allows a death sentence to be imposed for the combined reasons of all jurors, none of which could garner a majority vote. If the death penalty is to be imposed, it must be done under a system which ensures fair and consistent results at the trial court level. Since the old 1977 California statute fails to meet those essential requirements, a judgment of death based upon it cannot stand.