Opinion ID: 680760
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: the practice of the arizona supreme court confirms the ambiguity.

Text: 77 The ambiguities discussed above might be less significant if it were otherwise clear that the Arizona Supreme Court understood the requirements of the Eighth Amendment and consistently conducted the required inquiry at the time it delivered the opinion in State v. Jeffers. But that is not the case. Rather, a fair reading of Arizona Supreme Court cases on the books in 1983, when State v. Jeffers was decided, suggests that that court did not understand the requirements that Clemons later explained; moreover, the court was not even clear about whether Arizona was a weighing state. 78 In fact, the Arizona cases cited in the passages quoted above refer to a kind of review different from that required by Clemons. In State v. Richmond, decided in 1976, the Arizona Supreme Court described its appellate review process. The court explained that in non-capital cases [i]t has been our policy not to disturb the sentence imposed by the trial court, absent a clear abuse of discretion. 114 Ariz. at 196, 560 P.2d at 51. In capital cases, however, we painstakingly examine the record to determine whether it has been erroneously imposed. Id. In this context, it is clear that the independent review and reweighing, referred to by the court in State v. Richmond and in State v. Jeffers, involve appellate review for error, rather than the de novo resentencing required by Clemons and its progeny. As the Arizona Supreme Court explained in State v. Rumsey, [w]hile we have an independent duty of review, we perform it as an appellate court, not as a trial court. 136 Ariz. 166, 173, 665 P.2d 48, 55 (1983), aff'd, 467 U.S. 203, 104 S.Ct. 2305, 81 L.Ed.2d 164 (1984). 79 The Arizona death penalty statute, and its interpretive caselaw, provoked a great deal of confusion that was not resolved until 1992, when the U.S. Supreme Court decided Richmond v. Lewis. In Richmond v. Lewis, the Court for the first time squarely determined that Arizona is a weighing state, and therefore invalidated an Arizona Supreme Court decision in which a majority of the Arizona Supreme Court had failed to reweigh the aggravating and mitigating factors as required by Clemons. Richmond v. Lewis, --- U.S. at ----, 113 S.Ct. at 537. Before the U.S. Supreme Court decided Richmond v. Lewis, however, the Arizona Attorney General argued to the three judge panel which first heard the instant case in 1986 that Arizona was not a weighing state. Another panel of our court accepted this argument when it decided the case that was reversed by the Supreme Court in Richmond v. Lewis. Richmond v. Lewis, 948 F.2d 1473, 1489 (9th Cir.1990), rev'd, --- U.S. ----, 113 S.Ct. 528, 121 L.Ed.2d 411 (1992). As we then read the statute, 80 a conclusion by the Arizona Courts that there are no substantial mitigating circumstances is separate from and independent of any conclusion regarding the existence of aggravating circumstances. Invalidation of an aggravating circumstance does not mandate reweighing or require resentencing where the court has found that the prosecution has met its burden of establishing aggravation sufficient to warrant the state's harshest penalty ... and that the defense has failed to establish mitigating circumstances sufficiently substantial to call for leniency.... Nothing in the Arizona statute suggests the need for plenary reweighing where the record still reveals that there are one or more of the enumerated aggravating circumstances and that there are no mitigating circumstances sufficiently substantial to call for leniency. 81 Id. at 1488-89 (emphasis added, citations and internal quotations omitted, and alterations modified). 82 In other words, the Arizona Attorney General, at least some Arizona Supreme Court Justices, and the Ninth Circuit were all of the view that Arizona was not a weighing state. It was in this context that the Arizona Supreme Court decided State v. Jeffers, which was issued nine years before the Supreme Court held to the contrary in Richmond v. Lewis, --- U.S. at ----, 113 S.Ct. at 527, and seven years before Clemons was decided. 83 Under such circumstances, it is not reasonable to assume that the Arizona Supreme Court engaged in the requisite reweighing in Jeffers's case. Nor should boilerplate, ambiguous references to reweighing be held to demonstrate clearly that the Arizona Supreme Court actually reweighed as we understand the concept. Clemons, 494 U.S. at 752, 110 S.Ct. at 1450. Something more is required. For example, where the requisite de novo analysis is performed we would generally expect to see some discussion of the relative weight assigned to the aggravating and mitigating factors and of the reasons for assigning such weight, or at a minimum, some discussion of the two types of factors in relation to each other. Such analysis is completely absent here. 84 It is instructive to compare the conclusory treatment of reweighing in Jeffers v. State with that in State v. Bible, 175 Ariz. 549, 858 P.2d 1152 (1993), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 114 S.Ct. 1578, 128 L.Ed.2d 221 (1994), a case that was decided after Clemons and Richmond v. Lewis. In Bible, the court noted that in many cases it is simply impossible to determine how the trial judge--who heard the evidence and saw the witnesses--evaluated and weighed that evidence and testimony. Without these imperative determinations, the aggravating and mitigating factors cannot be balanced. Id. 175 Ariz. at 608, 858 P.2d at 1211. The Arizona Supreme Court in Bible went on to conclude that henceforth it would remand, rather than engage in a de novo resentencing, in all but the rarest of cases. The dissent agrees with the Arizona Supreme Court's views in this regard. 85 In sum, we dissent because we believe that Mr. Jeffers may not have received his constitutionally mandated de novo resentencing. We also believe that the better practice, now followed by the Arizona Supreme Court, is to require reweighing by the tribunal best equipped to handle that process--the trial court. 86