Opinion ID: 629067
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The Remedy For the State's Unconstitutional Action

Text: 41 Under Idaho law, the state court in a capital case determines the appropriateness of the death penalty in a particular case by weighing the aggravating circumstances against the mitigating ones. See Idaho Code Sec. 19-2515. 10 When the death penalty has been imposed as a result of such a weighing process, the subsequent elimination as invalid of one of the aggravating factors alters the balance and, as a result, renders the state court's prior determination that death is the appropriate penalty unreliable. See Clemons v. Mississippi, 494 U.S. 738, 751, 110 S.Ct. 1441, 1449, 108 L.Ed.2d 725 (1990). Thus, our determination that an aggravating factor relied on by the Idaho court was unconstitutional as applied would ordinarily require us to vacate the death sentence. See Creech, 947 F.2d at 885, vacated on other grounds, --- U.S. ----, 113 S.Ct. 1534, 123 L.Ed.2d 188 (1993). 42 In this case, however, the trial court also found that, as a result of Beam's poor chances for rehabilitation, any one of the aggravating circumstances found by this Court to exist outweighs the mitigating circumstances. The state argues that this additional finding requires us to uphold Beam's death sentence even if the state court's application of one of the aggravating factors was unconstitutional. The additional finding, however, is subject to the identical constitutional objection that required us to invalidate the continuing threat determination. The additional finding, like the continuing threat determination, was founded upon the court's impermissible reliance upon Beam's past non-violent, consensual or involuntary sexual conduct, see, e.g., Beam, 766 P.2d at 700 (discussing Beam's non-existent prognosis for rehabilitation); discussion supra Sec. II.B.2. Thus, we conclude that the additional finding also violates Beam's rights under the Eighth Amendment. 43 In sum, the trial judge's finding that Beam's sexual history demonstrated that there was no possibility of rehabilitation is invalid. As that finding served as a basis for the court's conclusion that any one aggravating circumstance would outweigh all of the mitigating circumstances, that conclusion is also invalid. The only other basis on which the state court determined that Beam deserved the death penalty was its finding that all three aggravating circumstances, when combined, outweighed all the mitigating ones. However, we have already determined that, when weighing all the aggravating and mitigating factors together, the state court impermissibly applied the continuing threat aggravating circumstance. Accordingly, we cannot rely on the balancing of aggravating and mitigating circumstances performed in Beam's case, and his death sentence--which resulted from an invalid weighing of factors--must be vacated. See Creech, 947 F.2d at 885, vacated on other grounds, --- U.S. ----, 113 S.Ct. 1534, 123 L.Ed.2d 188 (1993). 11