Opinion ID: 3152191
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Morgan Standard

Text: In Morgan v. Illinois, the United States Supreme Court concluded: A juror who will automatically vote for the death penalty in every case will fail in good faith to consider the evidence of aggravating and mitigating circumstances as the instructions require him to do. Indeed, because such a juror has already 29 formed an opinion on the merits, the presence or absence of either aggravating or mitigating circumstances is entirely irrelevant to such a juror. Therefore, based on the requirement of impartiality embodied in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, a capital defendant may challenge for cause any prospective juror who maintains such views. If even one such juror is empaneled and the death sentence is imposed, the State is disentitled to execute the sentence. 504 U.S. 719, 729 (1992). The standard is whether jurors’ “views would prevent or substantially impair the performance of their duties in accordance with their instructions or their oath.” Id. at 728 (quoting Wainwright v. Witt, 469 U.S. 412, 424 (1985) (internal quotations omitted)). The United States Supreme Court has explained that when the state’s capital punishment scheme requires the jury to weigh and consider mitigating evidence, “[a]ny juror who states that he or she will automatically vote for the death penalty without regard to the mitigating evidence is announcing an intention not to follow the instructions to consider mitigating evidence . . . .” Id. at 738. Thus, jurors who “deem mitigating evidence to be irrelevant to their decision to impose the death penalty,” and those jurors who “refuse to give such evidence any weight” should be disqualified for cause. Id. at 736. This is because “consideration of the character and record of the individual offender and the circumstances of the particular offense [is] a constitutionally indispensable part of the process of inflicting the penalty of death.” Woodson v. North Carolina, 428 U.S. 280, 304 (1976). To make this determination, courts look to the entirety of the juror’s responses regarding their views toward capital punishment. Thus, while jury questionnaires may squarely address Morgan issues, a juror may be rehabilitated in voir dire, and the trial judge has discretion to determine whether the juror’s views would prevent or substantially impair his ability to perform his duties as an impartial juror. See, e.g., Treesh v. Bagley, 612 F.3d 424, 438 (6th Cir. 2010) (weighing juror’s initial responses with later explanations to determine that juror could take into account mitigating factors); Ledford v. Georgia, 709 S.E.2d 239, 250 (Ga. 2011) (looking to potential juror’s responses “as a whole”); Sanchez v. Oklahoma, 223 P.3d 980, 997 (Okla. Crim. App. 2009) (“A review of the entire voir dire shows that the District Court could readily distinguish between the prospective jurors who were initially befuddled by the automatic death penalty question and those irrevocably committed to imposing the death penalty for murder.”). Indeed, “[i]t is not uncommon for jurors to express themselves in ambiguous and seemingly contradictory ways,” and thus, given the superior ability of the judge to observe the prospective juror, we extend substantial deference to the trial judge’s assessment as to which statements and 30 assertions best demonstrate the juror’s actual conceptions. New Hampshire v. Addison, 87 A.3d 1, 64 (N.H. 2013) (citing Paton v. Yount, 467 U.S. 1025, 1038–40 (1984)). We now address each juror whom Dunlap alleges to have been substantially impaired. In each instance, the district court determined that Dunlap could not show prejudice resulting from SAPD’s failure to raise the claim because the district court found the challenged juror was not biased.