Opinion ID: 788338
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: eighth amendment analysis: death eligibility in california

Text: 108 Morales argues that the lying-in-wait special circumstance is unconstitutional under the Supreme Court's Eighth Amendment jurisprudence. I agree. The California Supreme Court's formulation of the limiting construction is so porous that it fails to strain out non-death eligible murders in a constitutionally meaningful way. See People v. Morales, 48 Cal.3d 527, 257 Cal.Rptr. 64, 770 P.2d 244 (1989).
109 Review of an Eighth Amendment narrowing challenge is constrained by the Supreme Court's decision in Arave v. Creech. At issue in Arave was an Eighth Amendment challenge to Idaho's death penalty statute, which made a cold-blooded, pitiless slayer death eligible. The Court upheld the statute because the Idaho Supreme Court had adopted a limiting construction that satisfied constitutional requirements. See Arave, 507 U.S. at 471, 113 S.Ct. 1534. 110 In rejecting a claim that Idaho failed to apply its limiting construction consistently, the Court cautioned: Under our precedents, a federal court may consider state court formulations of a limiting construction to ensure that they are consistent. But our decisions do not authorize review of state court cases to determine whether a limiting construction has been applied consistently. Id. at 477, 113 S.Ct. 1534 (emphasis in original). That is, a reviewing court may not consider a claim of unconstitutionality on the grounds that other defendants with similar circumstances did not receive like sentences. But it remains the ardent and unmitigated duty of a reviewing federal court to ensure that state courts construe death penalty sentencing schemes in consonance with the Constitution. See, e.g., Sochor v. Florida, 504 U.S. 527, 536-37, 112 S.Ct. 2114, 119 L.Ed.2d 326 (1992). 111
112 The California death penalty statute under which Morales was convicted provides that anyone found guilty of murder in the first degree shall be punished by death or life without parole if the defendant intentionally killed the victim while lying in wait. Cal.Penal Code § 190.2(a)(15) (1989). The California Supreme Court applies a three-pronged limiting construction of the lying-in-wait special circumstance. Murder committed while lying-in-wait must contain the following elements: (1) a concealment of purpose; (2) a substantial period of watching and waiting for an opportune time to act; and, (3) immediately thereafter, a surprise attack on an unsuspecting victim from a position of advantage. See People v. Morales, 257 Cal.Rptr. 64, 770 P.2d at 260-61. Yet, far from creating a factual matrix sufficiently distinct from `ordinary' premeditated murder, id. at 261, the lying-in-wait special circumstance reaches so far that it encompasses almost all lying-in-wait first degree murders, and as a result, also includes most premeditated murders. That is, there is virtually no line between premeditated murder and lying-in-wait first degree murder, and likewise virtually no line between lying-in-wait first degree murder and the special circumstance. Whereas the Constitution demands a funnel narrowing the pool of defendants eligible for the death penalty, California gives us a bucket. Indeed, the California Supreme Court has instructed that the lying-in-wait circumstance, as outlined in the standard jury instructions, is the functional equivalent of proof of premeditation, deliberation and intent to kill. People v. Ruiz, 44 Cal.3d 589, 244 Cal.Rptr. 200, 749 P.2d 854, 867 (1988). 1 113 The concealment of purpose prong has proven so malleable that it fails to narrow significantly the class of defendants eligible for the death penalty. And the watching and waiting prong, as construed by the California Supreme Court, makes it indistinguishable from any other premeditated murder. All that remains is the third prong, the surprise element, which, because of the way it has been interpreted, overlaps with the first prong. To me, a test in which almost anyone found guilty of premeditated murder satisfies all three parts is no test at all, and provides 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 433, 100 S.Ct. 1759. 114 Ironically, the concealment prong, which by virtue of plain English adheres to the conventional and ordinary understanding of lying-in-wait as ambush, see e.g., People v. Merkouris, 46 Cal.2d 540, 297 P.2d 999, 1011-12 (1956), has been expanded rather than narrowed by the California courts. Instead of the traditional rule that lying-in-wait requires evidence of physical concealment or surprise, California has no definitive requirement for actual physical concealment. See Morales, 257 Cal.Rptr. 64, 770 P.2d at 259 ([T]he concealment element `may manifest itself by either an ambush or by the creation of a situation where the victim is taken unawares even though he sees his murderer. ') (emphasis in original); see also People v. Sutic, 41 Cal.2d 483, 261 P.2d 241, 245-46 (1953) (concealment in ambush unnecessary). Rather, the concealment portion of the lying-in-wait test is satisfied by the concealment of purpose, not physical concealment. See Morales, 257 Cal.Rptr. 64, 770 P.2d at 259; see also People v. Tuthill, 31 Cal.2d 92, 187 P.2d 16, 21 (1947). Thus, the cases preceding Morales established that the concealment criterion extended to more than mere ambush, as the term is commonly understood. Concealment, it turns out, can sometimes mean no more than a murderer's failure to announce his intentions or a desire to conceal the murderous plan from the victim. What, then, is the difference between concealment and surprise? 115 But even concealment of purpose is not always necessary, as subsequent cases demonstrate. In People v. Hillhouse, the California Supreme Court held that a defendant could be death eligible under the lying-in-wait special circumstance despite the fact that he announced his purpose to his victim, stating I ought to kill you prior to committing the murder. 27 Cal.4th 469, 117 Cal.Rptr.2d 45, 40 P.3d 754, 775 (2002). Under this recent iteration of the rule, criminal defendants meet the concealment test regardless of whether they are hidden or seen, and even whether they conceal their intentions or reveal them. Thus, rather than curing the overbreadth of the first part of the lying-in-wait test, subsequent cases manifest the same if not more problematic infirmities than those that existed before Morales's case. 116 The second element of the limiting construction is even more permeable than the first. California requires a substantial period of watching and waiting for an opportune time to act. 2 People v. Morales, 257 Cal.Rptr. 64, 770 P.2d at 261. The paradigmatic understanding of watching and waiting would require—as the term suggests-an actual period of time spent waiting. Although imposing a specific quantum of time may prove both unnecessary and impractical, the Eighth Amendment requires death eligibility factors to include at least some means of distinguishing death penalty cases from others. 117 Despite the need to distinguish cases eligible for the death penalty, the California Supreme Court has consistently construed the temporal requirement of the lying-in-wait circumstance to be no more than that of ordinary premeditated or deliberate murder. Thus, in People v. Ruiz, 244 Cal.Rptr. 200, 749 P.2d at 866 n. 3, the court reaffirmed the constitutionality of the lying-in-wait murder provision: The lying-in-wait need not continue for any particular period of time provided that its duration is such as to show a state of mind equivalent to premeditation or deliberation. The formulation is the same for the lying-in-wait special circumstance. See Edwards, 1 Cal.Rptr.2d 696, 819 P.2d at 474 n. 16. Indeed, this broad construction of the watching and waiting requirement is identical to the definition of lying-in-wait given in the standard jury instruction at the time of Morales's conviction. 3 118 Both the standard jury instructions regarding the lying-in-wait special circumstance and the California court's construction of the test lead to the conclusion that any premeditated or deliberate murder would satisfy the watching and waiting requirement. Under such a construction, the second part of the so-called limiting construction is without any limiting parameters. 119 The third and final element of California's three-part test requires the defendant to attack by surprise from a position of advantage. The California Supreme Court held that Morales satisfies this prong of the limiting construction because he was sitting behind the victim in a car. Under the loose construction of the first and second parts of the lying-in-wait test, Morales's eligibility for the death penalty ultimately turns on whether he killed his victim by surprise. That is, even after a jury applies the first and second parts of the lying-in-wait test, the question of surprise is all that remains as a truly narrowing factor. And yet, taking a page from the California courts' book on concealment, surprise apparently can be nothing more than concealment of purpose. Standing alone, I fail to see how this singular factor significantly narrows the pool of defendants eligible for the death penalty, and for that reason, it is not a proper litmus test for death eligibility under the Eighth Amendment. 120 The majority provides examples of cases in which the lying-in-wait special circumstance would not apply, and suggests that the scheme is overbroad only if unimaginative about the way murders are committed. Maj. Op. at 1176. I do not dispute that, with imagination and creativity, one can explain away the constitutional infirmities of the California death penalty. But that is beside the point. Under the Eighth Amendment, it is not enough that a death penalty statute applies to some but not all murder defendants. Rather, the inquiry is whether the statute is narrow enough-whether the subclass of death eligible defendants is sufficiently smaller than the overall class of murder defendants. See Maynard, 486 U.S. at 361, 108 S.Ct. 1853. The majority's litany of examples underscores precisely the way in which the majority misconstrues the Eighth Amendment inquiry. By applying Fifth Amendment scrutiny to Morales's Eighth Amendment challenge, the majority is able to sidestep the long reach of California's construction of the lying-in-wait provision. 121 Under the California Supreme Court's broad interpretation, it is difficult to see how the limiting construction selects those more deserving of the ultimate punishment. See Zant, 462 U.S. at 877, 103 S.Ct. 2733. To the extent that the special circumstance can be said to limit death eligibility, it does so in an arbitrary and capricious manner. See Godfrey, 446 U.S. at 428, 100 S.Ct. 1759. The lying-in-wait special circumstance has expanded so far beyond a constitutional foundation that it collapses under its own volume. Indeed, several commentators have underscored the infirmity of the California scheme. See Steven F. Shatz & Nina Rivkind, The California Death Penalty Scheme: Requiem for Furman?, 72 N.Y.U. L.Rev. 1283 (1997); Garth A. Osterman & Colleen Wilcox Heidenreich, Note, Lying in Wait: A General Circumstance, 30 U.S.F. L.Rev. 1249 (1996). And in benchmarking the breadth of the scheme, it is useful to reference the words of one of our colleagues: The majority must come to realize ... [i]ncreasing the number of crimes punishable by death, widening the circumstances under which death may be imposed ... will not do a single thing to accomplish the objective, namely to ensure that the very worst members of our society ... are put to death. Alex Kozinski & Sean Gallagher, Death: The Ultimate Run-On Sentence, 46 Case W. Res. L.Rev. 1, 29 (1995). 122 Absent proper limiting by the California courts, the lying-in-wait special circumstance does not survive Eighth Amendment scrutiny because it fails to narrow sufficiently the class of people eligible for the death penalty. For these reasons, I respectfully dissent with respect to the determination of death penalty eligibility. Notes: 1 The majority criticizes the reliance on cases that deal with lying-in-wait first degree murder as opposed to the lying-in-wait special circumstance, suggesting that the discussion in this section relies on mistaken use of quotations and citations pulled out of context from some California cases. Maj. Op. at 1176. But as we and the California Supreme Court have noted before, the only discernable difference between the two lying-in-wait provisions was that the special circumstance requires the murder be committed while lying in wait—a distinction the California Legislature has since removed See Houston, 177 F.3d at 907; People v. Gutierrez, 28 Cal.4th 1083, 124 Cal.Rptr.2d 373, 52 P.3d 572, 612-13 (2002). Thus, it is entirely appropriate to look at how California distinguishes between ordinary premeditated murder, lying-in-wait first degree murder, and the lying-in-wait special circumstance. What the majority fails to acknowledge is that the divisions along this spectrum are indiscernible, and are certainly not the kind of genuine narrowing required by the Eighth Amendment. Although, at the time Morales was convicted, the first degree murder provision and the special circumstance were separated by the paper-thin limiting construction that the murder occur while lying in wait, other prongs of the lying-in-wait test are identical. For example, in People v. Edwards, 54 Cal.3d 787, 1 Cal.Rptr.2d 696, 819 P.2d 436 (1991), which is a special circumstances case, the California Supreme Court held that there is no difference in the temporal requirement between the special circumstance and the first-degree murder provision. Id. at 474 n. 16. Indeed, the Edwards court relied on People v. Ruiz, 44 Cal.3d 589, 244 Cal.Rptr. 200, 749 P.2d 854 (1988), a lying-in-wait first degree murder case, to interpret the special circumstance provision. Considering that the California Supreme Court itself recognizes the interchangeableness of the two provisions, I see no reason why we should not look to lying-in-wait first degree murder cases for California's construction of the same prongs in the special circumstance. 2 Even the watchful and waiting element-perhaps the essence of lying-in-wait-has failed to restrain the applicability of the special circumstance. A defendant need not actually watch the victim, as long as he is watchful, or alert and vigilant, while waiting See People v. Sims, 5 Cal.4th 405, 20 Cal.Rptr.2d 537, 853 P.2d 992, 1007-08 (1993). Yet, paradoxically, a defendant can be alert and vigilant even if he falls asleep while waiting for his intended victim. See People v. Tuthill, 187 P.2d at 21. 3 The standard jury instructions for the lying-in-wait special circumstance explicitly incorporates by definition the instructions for lying-in-wait murder See CALJIC 8.81.15. Those instructions read: The term `lying-in-wait' is defined as waiting and watching for an opportune time to act, together with a concealment by ambush or some other secret design to take the other person by surprise. The lying-in-wait need not continue for any particular period of time provided that its duration is such as to show a state of mind equivalent to premeditation or deliberation. CALJIC 8.25 (West 4th Rev. Ed.1979).