Opinion ID: 1723757
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 16

Heading: trial counsel was ineffective for submission of an instruction on mitigating evidence.

Text: ¶ 67. Ricky Chase raised the following issue during his direct appeal on the merits: The instructions given Ricky Chase's jury impermissibly limited the consideration of mitigation evidence. This Court stated first as to one instruction, D-38: The court instructed the jury in Jury Instruction D-38 as follows: The Court instructs the jury that a mitigating circumstance does not have to be proved beyond a reasonable doubt to exist. You must find that a mitigating circumstance exists if there is any substantial evidence to support it. Chase contends that the jury should not be limited to substantial evidence, but Chase was the party submitting this instruction. His complaint should not be considered. Chase, 645 So.2d at 859. ¶ 68. Chase now argues that his counsel was ineffective for submitting this instruction as the substantial apparently should properly have been deleted or replaced by any. Chase cites Boyde v. California, 494 U.S. 370, 377-78, 110 S.Ct. 1190, 1196-97, 108 L.Ed.2d 316 (1990), for the proposition that [t]he Eighth Amendment requires that the jury be able to consider and give effect to all relevant mitigating evidence offered by petitioner. Boyde attacked California's statutes concerning mitigating factors, stating that the statutes did not allow for jury consideration of non-crime-related factors, such as his background and character, which might provide a basis for a sentence less than death. Boyde, 494 U.S. at 378, 110 S.Ct. at 1197. The Supreme Court adopted the following standard: The claim is that the instruction is ambiguous and therefore subject to an erroneous interpretation. We think the proper inquiry in such a case is whether there is a reasonable likelihood that the jury has applied the challenged instruction in a way that prevents the consideration of constitutionally relevant evidence. Although a defendant need not establish that the jury was more likely than not to have been impermissibly inhibited by the instruction, a capital sentencing proceeding is not inconsistent with the Eighth Amendment if there is only a possibility of such an inhibition. This reasonable likelihood standard, we think, better accommodates the concerns of finality and accuracy than does a standard which makes the inquiry dependent on how a single hypothetical reasonable juror could or might have interpreted the instruction. There is, of course, a strong policy in favor of accurate determination of the appropriate sentence in a capital case, but there is an equally strong policy against retrials years after the first trial when the claimed error amounts to no more than speculation. Jurors do not sit in solitary isolation booths parsing instructions for subtle shades of meaning in the same way that lawyers might. Differences among them in interpretation of instructions may be thrashed out in the deliberative process, with commonsense understanding of the instructions in the light of all that has taken place at the trial likely to prevail over technical hairsplitting. Boyde, 494 U.S. at 380-81, 110 S.Ct. at 1197-98. The Supreme Court found that the instruction in question did not lead the jury to believe that it could ignore Boyde's background and character evidence in mitigation. ¶ 69. The State cites numerous other instructions which also dealt with mitigating circumstances in an all-inclusive manner and did not include the substantial evidence standard. The question is whether there is a reasonable likelihood that the jury, because of the word substantial in Instruction D-38, refused to consider relevant mitigation evidence. We find that this reasonable likelihood has not been met, and that Chase's trial counsel was not ineffective solely because of the submission of this single instruction. ¶ 70. This Court further stated the following in Chase: The other complaint concerns Instruction S-1. Chase wrongly argues that this instruction requires unanimity among the jurors on mitigating circumstances. Chase states that seven times during the instruction the jury was told it must make unanimous findings or unanimously agree. These refer to the Enmund finding, the aggravating circumstances, and the sentence of death. None remotely refers to mitigating circumstances. Chase also argues that when given the examples in mitigation and told that they could consider any other circumstance brought to you during the trial of this cause which you, the Jury, deem to be mitigating on behalf of the defendant, the jury would conclude that the mitigating factors also must be unanimously agreed on by the jury. This interpretation does not follow from the language in the instruction and there is not a reasonable likelihood that the jury will make this interpretation. As the State notes, a similar argument was addressed in Hansen v. State, 592 So.2d 114, 150 (Miss. 1991). The Court recognized that the instruction did not violate the holding in McKoy v. North Carolina, 494 U.S. 433, 110 S.Ct. 1227, 108 L.Ed.2d 369 (1990) and McNeil v. North Carolina, 494 U.S. 1050, 110 S.Ct. 1516, 108 L.Ed.2d 756 (1990) or Mills v. Maryland, 486 U.S. 367, 108 S.Ct. 1860, 100 L.Ed.2d 384 (1988). The Court also noted that similar arguments had been addressed and rejected in Turner v. State, 573 So.2d 657, 668 (Miss. 1990); Ladner v. State, 584 So.2d at 760; Willie v. State, 585 So.2d at 681 and Shell v. State, 554 So.2d at 905. The Hansen Court concluded: In Shell the words unanimous or unanimously did not appear in the mitigating circumstances portion of the jury instructions but instead were found only in the aggravating circumstances portion. We held the instructions did not offend Mills' prohibitory injunction and that Mills contained no affirmative one. Such is the case now before this Court. The mitigating circumstances portion of the instruction does not contain unanimous or unanimously. Only the aggravating circumstances part contains these words. No instruction says, implies or intimates to any reasonably literate juror that he or she should await unanimity before considering a mitigating circumstance. 592 So.2d at 150. There is no merit to Chase's claims even despite a failure to timely object. This claim is procedurally barred. Chase, 645 So.2d at 859-60. ¶ 71. Chase now makes essentially the same argument as was made during the appeal on the merits but couches his argument in terms of ineffective assistance of counsel, stating that trial counsel should have objected to Instruction S-1. Chase cites the same authority in support as that cited on direct appeal. As the Court has found that Instruction S-1 was not faulty, then trial counsel was not ineffective for failure to object to it.