Opinion ID: 2068009
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Unadjudicated criminal conduct in other states may be used to establish the course of conduct statutory aggravator.

Text: Norman asserts that under 11 Del. C. § 204(a)(1), Delaware may punish only where [e]ither the conduct or the result which is an element of the offense occurs within Delaware.... [57] He argues that because Peters's death neither occurred in nor was caused by conduct in Delaware, by using that homicide to elevate his life sentence for the murder of Weston to a sentence of death, the State is punishing him for conduct it lacks jurisdiction to adjudicate. Delaware has historically admitted evidence of criminal conduct in other states for purposes of criminal sentencing proceedings. For example, in Stewart v. State, [58] the defendant was sentenced as a repeat offender after being convicted of driving under the influence (DUI) in Delaware because of his prior DUI conviction in Florida. On appeal, we noted that the sentencing statute expressly allowed convictions or findings of guilt from a similar statute of any state or local jurisdiction within five years to constitute a prior offense, enabling [the defendant] to be correctly sentenced as a repeat offender. [59] Similarly, Delaware's habitual offender statute expressly permits the consideration of a conviction from another state in tallying felonies for purposes of sentencing: Any person who has been 2 times convicted of a felony or an attempt to commit a felony hereinafter specifically named, under the laws of this State, and/or any other state, United States or any territory of the United States, and who shall thereafter be convicted of a subsequent felony hereinafter specifically named, or an attempt to commit such specific felony, is declared to be an habitual criminal, and the court in which such third or subsequent conviction is had, in imposing sentence, shall impose a life sentence upon the person so convicted unless the subsequent felony conviction requires or allows and results in the imposition of capital punishment. [60] Another example directly relating to the death penalty statute is Delaware's prior felony statutory aggravator, which allows a convicted murderer to be sentenced to death if the defendant was previously convicted of another murder or manslaughter or of a felony involving the use of, or threat of, force or violence upon another person. [61] In Red Dog v. State, [62] the defendant had previously been convicted of robbery in Montana in 1973, and two counts of murder in the second degree in California in 1978. We found that these out-of-state convictions  which were evidenced by testimony of eyewitnesses and investigating officers, certified copies of court records, and admission by the defendant  were sufficient to establish the statutory aggravating circumstance beyond a reasonable doubt. [63] Many other jurisdictions have statutory aggravators that are substantially similar to Delaware's prior felony aggravator. [64] Like Delaware, they have allowed the use of prior convictions in other states to support their own state's use of that aggravator in sentencing. Some states do so pursuant to express language in the statute itself. [65] One such state is Illinois, where a defendant becomes eligible for the death penalty if the defendant has been convicted of murdering two or more individuals under [Illinois law] or under any law of the United States or of any state which is substantially similar to [Illinois law] regardless of whether the deaths occurred as the result of the same act or of several related or unrelated acts ... [66] Other states, including Delaware, do so without such express language in the statute. [67] For example, the Supreme Court of Nevada upheld the death sentence for a defendant convicted of first-degree murder based on a sixteen-year-old conviction for manslaughter in Iowa. [68] The conviction was used as evidence to support the use of the prior felony statutory aggravator. [69] Other states have even allowed a guilty plea from another state proceeding (as opposed to a jury conviction) to be admitted in the sentencing phase of a criminal trial. The Supreme Court of Mississippi upheld the death sentence for a defendant who was convicted of capital murder, where the jury based the prior felony statutory aggravator (among other statutory aggravators) upon the defendant's guilty plea to a murder in Tennessee that had occurred just hours after the murder for which the defendant was charged. [70] Although the Mississippi court found that the defendant's claim that the jury was improperly instructed was procedurally barred, it agreed that the statutory language permitted the use of an out-of-state guilty plea to a felony involving the use or threat of violence satisfied the statutory aggravator. [71] Similarly, the Supreme Court of Washington upheld the death sentence for a defendant who was convicted of two counts of murder. [72] It affirmed the trial court's decision to admit evidence of the defendant's guilty plea to an assault charge in Montana as an aggravation consideration (not a statutory aggravator). The Washington court reasoned that despite case law prohibiting the evidence of alleged criminal behavior other than convictions, the defendant's guilty plea was sufficiently reliable to warrant admission. [73] Finally, other jurisdictions have used evidence of unadjudicated criminal conduct in states outside of their own to support either aggravation in general or specific statutory aggravators. For example, California has allowed unadjudicated criminal conduct to be presented in the sentencing phase of a criminal trial to support aggravation (and not a specific statutory aggravator). The Supreme Court of California allowed evidence of six murders in Oregon and two murders in Michigan to be admitted in the sentencing of a criminal defendant who had been convicted of sixteen murders, representing victims from over the course of more than a ten year span, in one trial. [74] The Supreme Court of Louisiana has also allowed evidence of unadjudicated criminal conduct that is relevant and reliable. [75] For example, in State v. Comeaux, [76] the court allowed evidence of an unadjudicated rape and murder in Arkansas to support Louisiana's prior felony statutory aggravator for the rape and two murder charges for which he was prosecuted in Louisiana. [77] Unadjudicated criminal conduct has also been used to support the use of the course of conduct/multiple-killing statutory aggravator. In two Texas cases, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the use of evidence of a murder in Kansas to show that the defendants had engaged in a course of conduct that elevated a murder in Texas to a capital offense. [78] Addressing the challenge to the use of a murder outside of Texas to elevate a charged murder to capital murder in Texas, the court held: this state has the authority to prosecute the offense even though some of the elements of the aggravating offense [ i.e., the murder of another person in the same course of conduct [79] ] occurred outside the state's boundaries. [80] The court also found no geographical or time restrictions in the statutory aggravator itself that would have precluded it from using the Kansas murder. [81] An Ohio case provides yet another example. There, the defendant admitted to killing five people in four states within two years. After pleading guilty and being convicted of one of the murders in Alaska, he was prosecuted for another murder in Ohio. [82] A statutory aggravator that the prosecution relied on in seeking the death penalty was the course of conduct aggravator. Although the Supreme Court of Ohio did not specifically address the fact that the other murders had occurred in other states, it declared that the evidence established beyond a reasonable doubt that the murder ... was part of a course of conduct involving the purposeful killing of five people. [83] In this case, the State relied on a second, unadjudicated homicide in Maryland as the evidence of Delaware's course of conduct / multiple-killing statutory aggravator, a position supported by Delaware's jurisprudence. First, as discussed above, Delaware has a history of considering criminal conduct outside of the state in its procedures for sentencing criminal defendants. Additionally, case law throughout the country demonstrates that criminal conduct occurring outside the state of prosecution has been used in criminal sentencing proceedings. Second, although the conduct was unadjudicated, the jury was required to find the existence of the killing of Peters beyond a reasonable doubt. The jury instructions provided by the lower court adequately instructed the jurors of this requirement, which stems from the United States Supreme Court's decision in Ring v. Arizona. [84] Therefore, Norman received the procedural protections of the jury having to find that he caused the death of the second victim in Maryland beyond a reasonable doubt. Norman's claim that Delaware lacks jurisdiction to impose a death sentence in this case based upon a second death in Maryland is meritless.