Opinion ID: 6288
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Constitutionality of the Texas Capital Murder Statute

Text: 64 Anderson finally mounts a challenge to the constitutionality of the Tex.Penal Code Ann. Sec. 19.03(a)(2), which states that a person commits capital murder if he intentionally commits the murder in the course of committing or attempting to commit kidnapping, burglary, robbery, aggravated sexual assault, or arson. Anderson contends that the failure to define the phrase in the course of committing ... robbery renders the provision unconstitutionally vague. He relies on Walton v. Arizona, 497 U.S. 639, 110 S.Ct. 3047, 111 L.Ed.2d 511 (1990), for the proposition that such vagueness is impermissible as an aggravating circumstance used to impose a death sentence, unless courts apply a limiting construction. 65 Anderson's argument, or one close to it, appears to have been rejected by this Court in Fierro v. Lynaugh, 879 F.2d 1276, 1278 (5th Cir.1989), cert. denied, 494 U.S. 1060, 110 S.Ct. 1537, 108 L.Ed.2d 776 (1990). However, because Anderson relies on the subsequent Walton decision, and in order to cover any possible difference between Anderson's contention and the one rejected in Fierro, we will consider his argument. 66 In Walton, the Supreme Court confronted the Arizona sentencing scheme, which requires a sentencing determination by the court alone after a capital murder conviction. The court is to decide the existence or nonexistence of various aggravating and mitigating circumstances, including whether the offense was especially heinous, cruel, or depraved. The defendant claimed that the sentencer's discretion was not channeled as required by the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments, relying on Maynard v. Cartwright, 486 U.S. 356, 108 S.Ct. 1853, 100 L.Ed.2d 372 (1988), and Godfrey v. Georgia, 446 U.S. 420, 100 S.Ct. 1759, 64 L.Ed.2d 398 (1980), in which the Court had declared similarly broad factors invalid. The Court found the Arizona situation distinguishable, because sentencing was by the trial judge, who could be presumed to know the law, rather than by a jury that was given only the bare statutory language, and because the appellate courts could make independent determinations of whether such an aggravating circumstance was met. Id. 497 U.S. at 653, 110 S.Ct. at 3057. 67 The phrase in the course of committing ... robbery is, of course, not technically an aggravating circumstance, but rather an element of the substantive offense. However, this distinction is perhaps not constitutionally significant in light of the Supreme Court's statements that designating aggravating circumstances and restricting the categories of murder for which death may be imposed serve, in the statutes of different states, the equivalent function of narrowing the class of persons eligible for the death penalty. See Lowenfield v. Phelps, 484 U.S. 231, 243-45, 108 S.Ct. 546, 554-55, 98 L.Ed.2d 568 (1988). The Supreme Court relied on this narrowing at the guilt/innocence phase in upholding the Texas capital sentencing scheme. See Jurek v. Texas, 428 U.S. 262, 269-71, 96 S.Ct. 2950, 2955-56, 49 L.Ed.2d 929 (1976) (plurality opinion). 68 The most important distinction between this case and Walton (or, more accurately, between this case and Maynard and Godfrey ) is that both the nature of the phrase and the practice of Texas courts prevent the jury from being given unbridled discretion. Whereas in Godfrey the Georgia Supreme Court had affirmed a death sentence based on no more than a finding that the offense was outrageously or wantonly vile, horrible or inhuman, and, in the words of the United States Supreme Court, there was no principled way to distinguish this case, in which the death penalty was imposed, from the many cases in which it was not, Godfrey, 446 U.S. at 434, 100 S.Ct. at 1767, there are principled ways to distinguish applications of section 19.03(a)(2). To a much greater degree than words such as outrageous, wanton, vile, or inhuman, the phrase in the course of committing ... robbery is grounded in the objective proof of the particular case; it does not appeal to the sensibilities of the jurors or invite imposition of a subjective standard. A robbery, as defined in the statute, must have been committed or attempted, and the murder must have had some temporal proximity and factual connection to the robbery. The only real room for uncertainty is how far one can expand the temporal proximity if the logical connection exists. For instance, could the killing of someone who locates the hiding bank robbers three days after the event be so considered? 69 This is the sort of question that might (at a stretch) be left open on the face of section 19.03(a)(2) alone. However, questions like this are ones that can readily be, and in fact have been, resolved by judicial construction 17 or by definitions elsewhere in the Penal Code, and thereafter applied in a manner leaving very little discretion. Section 29.01(1) defines In the course of committing theft to mean conduct that occurs in an attempt to commit, during the commission, or in immediate flight after the attempt or commission of theft. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has deemed this definition applicable to section 19.03(a)(2) as well, Riles v. State, 595 S.W.2d 858, 862 (Tex.Crim.App.1980), and Anderson's jury was given this definition word-for-word. So defined, section 19.03(a)(2) entails even less discretion and bears little resemblance at all to the statutes at issue in Maynard and Godfrey. We therefore hold that Anderson's constitutional challenge is without merit.