Opinion ID: 852913
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The 2002 Amendment to the Indiana Death Penalty Statute

Text: The first issue presented by the 2002 statute is whether the trial judge has any alternatives to imposing the sentence recommended by the jury, and if so what those alternatives are and how they are to be exercised. The majority opinion can be read to imply that the trial court is bound by the jury's recommendation under all circumstances. I do not believe that is a correct reading. Even if the General Assembly thought it was making the jury's recommendation binding on the trial court, the statute does not mandate blind implementation of the jury's recommendation as to penalty. Indeed, if it were read to achieve that result, under some scenarios it would deny due process. None of these issues is presented by the parties in this case, but the reasoning of the majority raises them up. For purposes of this case, the issue posed by the majority's reasoning is whether the statutory framework by itself is sufficient to eliminate error arising from the denial of a continuance at the guilt phase after the trial court reversed its position as to the binding effect of the jury's recommendation. I think it is not, though on the facts of this case, I agree that the defendant has established no prejudice from the error that occurred here. The 2002 amendments require the jury to perform two functions. First, the jury engages in a traditional fact-finding exercise to determine if one or more aggravating circumstances is found beyond a reasonable doubt. In Helsley's case, that circumstance was that Helsley murdered two people, and there seems no doubt that the jury made the requisite finding. Second, the jury is to determine whether the aggravating circumstances outweigh the mitigating circumstances. As explained elsewhere, this determination is not subject to a reasonable doubt standard, and is qualitatively different from the finding of eligibility for the penalty. Ritchie v. State, 809 N.E.2d 258, 264-68, 2004 WL 1153062 (Ind.2004); See also Ex Parte Waldrop v. Alabama, 859 So.2d 1181, 1189 (Ala.2002); People v. Prieto, 30 Cal.4th 226, 133 Cal.Rptr.2d 18, 66 P.3d 1123, 1147 (2003); Brice v. State, 815 A.2d 314, 322 (Del.2003); Oken v. State, 378 Md. 179, 835 A.2d 1105, 1120 (2003); Nebraska v. Gales, 265 Neb. 598, 658 N.W.2d 604 (2003). The jury's finding of eligibility for the penalty is a fact to be found based on evidence and subject to a reasonable doubt standard. This provision does not override the longstanding principle that the trial judge is free to act as a thirteenth juror and set aside the jury's findings as to the occurrence of an eligibility factor. The thirteenth juror concept is found in Indiana Trial Rule 59(J)(7) [1] and also appears in Trial Rule 50 governing judgments on the evidence. As we recently explained in Neher v. Hobbs, 760 N.E.2d 602, 607 (Ind.2002), under this doctrine, the trial court may order a new trial if the jury's verdict is against the weight of the evidence. See also State v. Johnson, 714 N.E.2d 1209, 1211 (Ind.App.1999) (citations omitted); Moore v. State, 273 Ind. 268, 403 N.E.2d 335, 336 (1980). The trial judge would be fully warranted in setting aside a jury's recommendation if the judge concluded the facts required for eligibility for the death penalty were not supported by the evidence. Neher, 760 N.E.2d at 607; Johnson, 714 N.E.2d at 1211; Moore, 403 N.E.2d at 336. This failure to sentence accordingly would be the result of a traditional function of the trial judge, and amounts to a finding that an element that is required to impose the enhanced penalty was not established at trial. This view of the eligibility finding was recently adopted as a matter of federal Sixth Amendment doctrine. Under Ring v. Arizona, 536 U.S. 584, 609, 122 S.Ct. 2428, 153 L.Ed.2d 556 (2002), the aggravating circumstances necessary for the death penalty under the Indiana statute must found by a jury. These findings, like any other, must be based on the evidence or record. Ring applied to death penalty statutes such as Indiana's the requirements of Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466, 490, 120 S.Ct. 2348, 147 L.Ed.2d 435 (2000), that all facts necessary to establish a crime be found by the jury. I believe the 2002 amendment was intended to respond to Apprendi and to anticipate Ring. The amendment sought to do this by eliminating the judge's power to impose death if there were no jury recommendation and therefore no clear finding by the jury that the facts warranting the death penalty were proven. To be sure, the language chosen by the legislature may be taken as a directive to implement blindly whatever result is recommended by the jury. However, the 2002 amendment was not intended to overturn traditional checks on jury error or jury discretion, or to eliminate the trial judge's function under Trial Rule 59. Rather, in light of the substantial body of law surrounding the allocation of function between judge and jury, I would take a directive from the legislature to sentence accordingly to mean according to standard jurisprudential processes. This would include setting aside findings not supported by the evidence. I believe this construction is not only desirable, but necessary to preserve the statute. There may be some issue as to the quantity of evidence that may support a finding, but I have no doubt that imposing death without any proof at all of a necessary element would constitute a denial of due process. Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 319, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979); Garner v. Louisiana, 368 U.S. 157, 164, 82 S.Ct. 248, 7 L.Ed.2d 207 (1961); Thompson v. City of Louisville, 362 U.S. 199, 206, 80 S.Ct. 624, 4 L.Ed.2d 654 (1960). Indeed, under Ring, the Sixth Amendment right to jury trial requires that the finding of eligibility for the death penalty be found by the trier of fact. There is a second problem with taking this statute to mandate rubber stamping the jury's recommendation. Because I do not read the statute to do that I do not need to address whether, if that were the thrust of the statute, it would also run afoul of state constitutional limitations on the legislature's ability to control the processes of the judicial branch. [2] It is sufficient to establish, as I believe I have, that the statute cannot be read to require the judge to implement the jury's recommendation in all circumstances. To this point, I believe there is no difference between the majority's position and mine. The effect of the jury's recommendation as to the second findingthat the aggravators outweigh the mitigatorspresents a different and more difficult problem. This second step is the process of selection of the penalty to be imposed upon the individual defendant from among those determined by the statute to be eligible. This weighing by the jury is not a finding at all in the same sense that a traditional jury finding is a determination of as to a matter of historical fact, a conclusion that something did or did not occur. Ritchie, 809 N.E.2d 258, 264-68. Rather, the finding as to weighing is a subjective assessment that is not susceptible of proof whether by a preponderance of evidence or beyond a reasonable doubt. Because the weighing process is unconstrained by the limits that reason, science and experience place on fact-finding, it is arguably free from the requirement which the law places on fact-finding that it be supported by the record. But I believe I have already demonstrated that under the 2002 amendments, the direction to sentence accordingly cannot be taken wholly literally because it would impose sentences not supported by the evidence. Thus, to make sense of this statute one must find accordingly to incorporate existing law. One well established doctrine is that the Eighth Amendment requires that a defendant be permitted to present any relevant mitigating evidence. Penry v. Johnson, 532 U.S. 782, 797, 121 S.Ct. 1910, 150 L.Ed.2d 9 (2001). This surely includes a right to present the evidence to the ultimate decision-maker. Existing law in place before the 2002 amendment required the judge before imposing sentence to review and consider a sentencing report containing a variety of matters not before the jury. Ind.Code §§ 35-38-1 et seq. (1998). Putting all of this together, it seems to me that the only way to reconcile the statute with these requirements is to conclude that a sentence imposed accordingly means a sentence that takes into account the jury's recommendation and implements it, subject to the constraints imposed by law. [3] To be sure, a judge is not free under the 2002 amendment to impose a death sentence if the jury does not recommend it. See State v. Barker, 809 N.E.2d 312, 316-18, 2004 WL 1153106 (Ind.2004). But the instruction to sentence accordingly includes the need to set aside a recommendation if it is not supported by evidence and the power to decline to impose death if, after consideration of all aggravating and mitigating factors, including those in the sentencing report, and giving due deference to the jury's recommendation, the judge concludes that death is inappropriate. Finally, as already pointed out, the 2002 amendment is susceptible to readings that produce unintended consequences. I would think the legislature may wish to consider reestablishing the requirement that the judge as well as the jury endorse the appropriateness of a death sentence. The judge's thoughtful concurrence was required under Harrison v. State, 659 N.E.2d 480 (Ind.1995). To the extent the 2002 amendment dilutes or removes that element, it injects the potential for inherent unfairness in the administration of the death penalty in this state. A recommendation to impose death plainly might be made differently by different juries presented with the same record. This produces a randomness in who is and who is not put to death that turns on the composition of each particular jury. In my view that is, if not an Eighth Amendment violation, at least a very undesirable feature of a death penalty statute. Cf., Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, 92 S.Ct. 2726, 33 L.Ed.2d 346 (1972); Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153, 194, 96 S.Ct. 2909, 49 L.Ed.2d 859 (1976). Although the legislature may prescribe the penalty for a crime, and thereby remove discretion from a sentencing judge, it is quite another thing to prescribe by statute that the jury's recommendation is binding on the judge in deciding whether to impose a death sentence. It is no answer to the randomness concern to say that the criminal process is inherently subject to jury variation because different juries might resolve factual issues differently on the same record. That is of course true, and a necessary consequence of leaving judgments to human beings. But a jury charged with making a traditional finding of fact is constrained by relatively objective and generally accepted laws of physics and other sciences, and by their common understanding of human nature. A recommendation whether the aggravators outweigh the mitigators is an entirely different exercise as to which the basic assumptions and biases of individual jurors are much more dominant. We have no better process, so we must live with the possibility of human error in the fact-finding that determines eligibility for the penalty. But there is no necessity to inject this much higher degree of randomness into the selection process.