Opinion ID: 702508
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Simmons v. South Carolina

Text: 122 Garza contends that the jury should have been told that if they decided against a death sentence, his only alternative sentence would be life imprisonment without possibility of parole. Instead, Garza's jury was informed that life without parole was a possible sentence, but not the only other sentence that the court could impose. Garza relies on Simmons v. South Carolina, --- U.S. ----, 114 S.Ct. 2187, 129 L.Ed.2d 133 (1994), which holds that when a defendant is legally ineligible for parole and the government uses the defendant's future dangerousness as an aggravator, due process requires that the jury be informed that if he is not executed, the defendant will spend the rest of his life in prison. Garza maintains his situation was analogous to Simmons because he was ineligible for anything less than a life sentence. For the following reasons, we disagree. 1) Alternative sentence 123 Under Sec. 848(e), if the jury had not recommended a death sentence, the district court could have sentenced Garza to any term of imprisonment, which shall not be less than 20 years, and which may be up to life imprisonment. The district court would then have been required to follow the Sentencing Guidelines to arrive at an appropriate sentence. Garza correctly points out that under the base offense level for Sec. 848(e) murders, the available sentence is life imprisonment. See U.S.S.G. Sec. 2A1.1 and Sentencing Table. However, the Guidelines also allow a district court to depart from the assigned offense levels and impose a lesser sentence. 124 Garza acknowledges this point but contends that the Guidelines would not have permitted a departure in his case. Garza first argues that because the jury made the aggravating findings that he intentionally killed (or caused to be killed) Matos, De La Fuente and Rumbo, Sec. 848(n)(1)(A) and (n)(1)(C) made Garza ineligible for departure under Sec. 2A1.1. He relies on comment (n. 1) to Sec. 2A1.1 which provides that a departure may be warranted if defendant did not cause death intentionally. However, assuming without deciding that the jury's findings of intentional killing would be binding on the sentencing judge and therefore prevent a downward departure, the court could not predict before the jury begins its deliberation whether it is going to find the necessary intent. Thus, when the attorneys make their final arguments in the penalty phase and when the court gives its penalty instructions, no one would know whether life imprisonment would be the only permissible sentence. 125 Garza also contends that he does not qualify for departure because none of the Guidelines' enumerated grounds for departure (substantial assistance, etc.) exist in his case. This contention is both incorrect and insufficient. Garza's jury found as a mitigator the fact that Garza was under unusual and substantial duress, which might qualify Garza for downward departure under Sec. 5K2.12. Further, Sec. 5K2.0 gives the district court broad discretion to depart for any mitigating circumstance of a kind, or to a degree, not adequately taken into consideration by the Guidelines. Thus, even if Garza did not fall within an express departure category, the court would not have been legally barred from finding a different, legitimate reason to reduce his sentence. In sum, because the Sentencing Guidelines vest the district court with discretion to adjust a life sentence downward, a life sentence was not the only legal sentence other than death that Garza might receive. In such circumstances, the district court did not err by preventing Garza from informing the jury to the contrary either in voir dire or in his closing argument, or by failing to tell them so itself. Allridge v. Scott, 41 F.3d 213, 221-22 (5th Cir.1994), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 115 S.Ct. 1959, 131 L.Ed.2d 851 (1995); Kinnamon v. Scott, 40 F.3d 731, 733 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 115 S.Ct. 660, 130 L.Ed.2d 595 (1994). 2) Reliance on future dangerousness 126 Garza further urges that, even if the government did not violate the express holding of Simmons, its emphasis on future dangerousness was inappropriate because it knew that anything less than a life sentence was unlikely. However, the record clearly shows that the government primarily focused on the danger Garza would pose while still in prison, making Garza's case materially different than Simmons. Allridge, 41 F.3d at 222 n. 12 (citing Simmons, --- U.S. at ----, 114 S.Ct. at 2194). The government did comment briefly on Garza's potential non-death sentence after Garza himself repeatedly urged the jury that life imprisonment would be sufficient punishment. In rebuttal, the government stated The defense says, well, he is going to die in prison, but the law is twenty years to life. We don't know that he is going to die in prison. The Judge can give him any term. The only people who can give him the death penalty is you. While Garza places great weight on the reference to any term, we are confident that, in the context of the entire penalty phase, the jury did not misunderstand the government's statement. Garza also complains that by having his cooperating co-conspirators testify about their reduced sentences, the government impressed the jury with the revolving-door nature of the penal system. But Garza himself repeatedly emphasized these witnesses' reduced sentences in order to attack their credibility; he cannot fairly claim now that such information contributed to a Simmons violation. 127 This does not mean that district courts should allow the government to freely hammer away on the theme that the defendant could some day get out of prison if that eventuality is legally possible but actually improbable. By this point in any penalty hearing, the judge will have heard the same evidence as the jury and will ordinarily know whether he would consider a downward departure if the jury declines to recommend death. If the court knows that a twenty-year sentence is highly unlikely, it should, in its discretion, preclude the government from arguing that the defendant may be free to murder again two decades hence. But that is not what happened in Garza's case, and we see no error in the way the district court handled the issue. 128