Opinion ID: 1282788
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: accuracy standards in capital cases

Text: The death penalty measure that was put on the ballot by initiative and enacted in 1984 may well be impossible to square with requirements under the federal Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments repeatedly stated by the United States Supreme Court. The reasons for this conclusion are spelled out in Part V of this opinion. In the present case, however, there are compelling independent reasons of Oregon law why the proceeding as a whole fell short of those required for a valid death sentence, though a maximum sentence short of death might be affirmed. Because the procedures and indeed the present death penalty scheme are unprecedented in Oregon, it is necessary to state those reasons in detail. First, American law has long recognized the difference between punishment by death and all other punishments and given it important procedural consequences. The fact that defendants stood in deadly peril of their lives is what more than a half-century ago made an effective appointment of counsel a matter of federal due process in Powell v. Alabama, 287 U.S. 45, 71, 53 S.Ct. 55, 65, 77 L.Ed. 158 (1932), and compare Betts v. Brady, 316 U.S. 455, 464, 62 S.Ct. 1252, 1257, 86 L.Ed. 1595 (1942). Justice Harlan wrote that capital cases stand on quite a different footing than other offenses.    I do not concede that whatever process is `due' an offender faced with a fine or a prison sentence necessarily satisfies the requirements of the Constitution in a capital case, the distinction being literally that between life and death. Reid v. Covert, 354 U.S. 1, 77, 77 S.Ct. 1222, 1262, 1 L.Ed.2d 1148 (1957) (Harlan, J., concurring). The passage most often quoted in the Supreme Court's recent death penalty cases is from Woodson v. North Carolina, 428 U.S. 280, 305, 2991, 96 S.Ct. 2978, 49 L.Ed. 944 (1976): [T]he penalty of death is qualitatively different from a sentence of imprisonment, however long. Death, in its finality, differs more from life imprisonment than a 100-year prison term differs from one of only a year or two. Because of that qualitative difference, there is a corresponding difference in the need for reliability in the determination that death is the appropriate punishment in a specific case. See also Eddings v. Oklahoma, 455 U.S. 104, 117, 102 S.Ct. 869, 878, 71 L.Ed.2d 1 (1982) (O'Connor, J., concurring). Oregon law also has long imposed stricter safeguards on potential capital cases than on other criminal proceedings. In the state's early years, the death penalty here as elsewhere was imposed much like other punishments, regardless whether defendant was represented by counsel or offered any defense. See, e.g., State v. Rathie, 101 Or. 339, 199 P. 169 (1921), Ex parte Harrell, 57 Or. 95, 110 P. 493 (1910). Even then, this court recognized that scrupulous adherence to the rules and methods which the law has itself provided was required especially in capital cases. State v. Olds, 19 Or. 397, 427, 24 P. 394, 401 (1890). Later constitutional amendments introduced important differences. Article I, section 11, was amended in 1932 to permit defendants to waive trial by jury and be tried by the judge alone, but capital cases were expressly excluded. A further amendment in 1934 relaxed the existing requirement of a unanimous verdict in criminal cases and authorized ten jurors to render a verdict of guilty or not guilty, but the amendment again excluded verdicts of guilty of first degree murder, which continued to require a unanimous jury verdict. A final, important difference arises from the adoption of the present death penalty law itself. That is the difference in this court's scope of review of death penalty cases. It, too, finds support in constitutional decisions of the United States Supreme Court. This court's duty in a death penalty case is to subject the judgment of conviction and sentence of death to automatic and direct review. ORS 163.150(1)(f). The death penalty law was not enacted by the Legislative Assembly. It was adopted upon popular initiative, over the deep opposition of a significant minority of Oregon's voters. The assurance that death sentences would receive automatic review by the state's highest court was part of the proponents' promise to the voters, to those who decided to vote for the measure as well as those who opposed it. November 1984 Voters' Pamphlet at 33. This assurance makes a crucial change from the court's responsibility in an ordinary criminal appeal. The court does not meet its responsibility whenever it satisfies itself that it disposes of whatever arguments a defendant presents, as the majority proceeds in this case. The court's responsibility is not merely to the defendant; it is to the law that limits the unique penalty of death. The point of automatic Supreme Court review is not to save a defendant the trouble of filing an appeal and, if necessary, a petition for review. The point is not to give a defendant the opportunity to save his life, if he has the desire and the help of competent counsel to do so. An ordinary appeal does that much. Nor is it to prevent a defendant's state-assisted suicide. The point of assuring that this court must automatically review every death sentence case is to make certain that the death penalty is imposed and executed only by the criteria and within the bounds set by the law itself and by the Oregon and United States Constitutions. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania relied on that state's similar provision for automatic review to invalidate a death sentence even when a defendant expressly refused to challenge it, holding that the overwhelming public interest in insuring that capital punishment comports with constitutional requirements and the irrevocable finality of the death sentence made review of its validity imperative. Commonwealth v. McKenna, 476 Pa. 428, 440-41, 383 A.2d 174, 181, (1978). Automatic review under the death penalty measure therefore is not primarily an act of concern for a defendant who may merit little concern and demand none at all. The defendant is not allowed to waive review. It is not sympathy with a killer that explains the vigils outside prisons when the state schedules the execution of one of its people. Because the court's duty is to assure that the state puts no one to death unless the sentence qualifies under all criteria of the law, the court needs a record on which the relevant issues can be determined and, to the extent that they depend on facts, have been properly determined in the circuit court. This cannot be done if a defendant, by refusing counsel or reducing them to the role of advisers and pleading guilty, eliminates potential legal and factual issues from proper determination by the court or jury. These issues are important to others than the defendant. Together, the unique nature of the death penalty, the requirements embodied in the jury trial provisions of Article I, section 11, and the purposes of automatic and direct review bar execution of the death sentence in this case.