Opinion ID: 4535848
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Stromberg Error

Text: Smith argues that the Nevada Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the death verdict for Wendy’s murder was contrary to clearly established federal law because it was impossible to tell whether the jury unanimously found mutilation. Nev. Rev. Stat. § 200.033(8). The State responds that the depravity instruction was constitutionally sound under federal law, and that the rule the Nevada Supreme Court set forth in Robins is a state law requirement that is immaterial to relief under § 2254(d). A conviction is subject to challenge where a jury was instructed on alternative theories of guilt and it may have relied on an invalid one. Hedgpeth v. Pulido, 555 U.S. 57, 58 (2008) (per curiam) (citing Stromberg v. California, 283 U.S. 359 (1931)). In Hedgpeth, the Supreme Court observed that Yates v. United States, 354 U.S. 298 (1957) extended Stromberg’s rule to convictions based on multiple theories of guilt where it is shown that one of the prosecution’s theories was not unconstitutional but was legally flawed. See Hedgpeth, 555 U.S. at 60. Such is the case here. In Smith II, 40 SMITH V. BAKER the Nevada Supreme Court invalidated the depravity-of-mind instructions used at Smith’s second penalty hearing, and we do not second-guess that determination. Smith II, 953 P.2d at 267; see Estelle v. McGuire, 502 U.S. 62, 68 (1991) (observing “it is not the province of a federal habeas court to reexamine state-court determinations on state-law questions”). The State’s argument that the depravity-of-mind instructions comported with federal law amounts to disagreement with the degree of specificity the Nevada Supreme Court requires for its statutory aggravator. The State fails to explain why we would question the Nevada Supreme Court’s state law requirement. The jury was not instructed that it must agree on which of the three underlying theories supported the statutory aggravator, or that, per Robins, it must find evidence of mutilation or torture to find depravity of mind. We can see no other clues in the record—such as jury polling—indicating whether the jury unanimously agreed on mutilation. From the jury’s check marks next to “depravity” and “mutilation” on the special verdict form pertaining to Wendy’s murder, it is impossible to tell whether the jury split their votes between the invalid depravity theory and the valid mutilation theory. We therefore conclude that Smith demonstrated Stromberg error. See Hedgpeth, 555 U.S. at 58. In Valerio v. Crawford, an en banc panel of our court reviewed a jury’s death verdict premised on two statutory aggravators, one unconstitutionally vague and one permissible. 306 F.3d 742, 759 (9th Cir. 2002) (en banc). Our en banc court ruled that “[a] state appellate court cannot ‘affirm a [trial] court without a thorough analysis of the role an invalid aggravating factor played in the sentencing process.’” Id. (quoting Stringer v. Black, 503 U.S. 222, 230 SMITH V. BAKER 41 (1992)). The court announced three avenues by which a state appellate court can engage in close appellate scrutiny of an invalid aggravator and affirm imposition of the death penalty. Id. First, a state appellate court may affirm by finding the error harmless under the standard set forth in Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18 (1967). Valerio, 306 F.3d at 756. To do so, the state appellate court must conclude, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the same result would have been obtained without relying on the invalid aggravator. Id. Here, the State conceded at oral argument before our court, that Smith II did not engage in a Chapman harmless error analysis. Valerio’s second method for affirming a death verdict where a jury may have relied on an invalid aggravator instruction is to re-weigh the aggravating and mitigating evidence pursuant to Clemons v. Mississippi, 494 U.S. 738 (1990). Valerio, 306 F.3d at 757. Clemons described that a state appellate court may set aside an invalid aggravator and re-weigh the remaining aggravating and mitigating factors to determine whether an invalid instruction was harmless. Id. But it is clear the Smith II court did not re-weigh aggravating and mitigating evidence because Nev. Rev. Stat. § 200.033(8) was the single aggravating circumstance alleged in Smith’s case. Valerio’s third proffered method is a Walton analysis, see Walton v. Arizona, 497 U.S. 639 (1990), in which a state appellate court “act[s] as a primary factfinder” by applying a corrected instruction to the evidence and determining de novo whether the state’s evidence satisfied the aggravator. Valerio, 306 F.3d at 757. This option was also unavailable in Smith’s case because, as we explained in Valerio, a state appellate 42 SMITH V. BAKER court may not undertake a Walton analysis if the penaltyphase factfinder was a jury. Id. at 758. The Nevada Supreme Court failed to undertake any of the options explained in Valerio, so there is no question that it did not engage in close appellate scrutiny of the invalid depravity instructions used at Smith’s second penalty hearing. Instead, the state court relied on its conclusion that the evidence was sufficient to support the mutilation theory. Smith II, 953 P.2d at 267–68. But as the court recognized in Smith I, 881 P.2d at 655, sufficiency of the evidence is not the issue; Smith’s argument is that the jury may not have been unanimous. Valerio held that the resulting Stromberg error is not structural, so we do not assume prejudice. Rather, we assess the effect of the invalid depravity instructions and resulting Stromberg error under the harmless error standard set forth in Brecht v. Abrahamson, 507 U.S. 619 (1993). See Hedgpeth, 555 U.S. at 61–62 (concluding that a Brecht harmless error analysis is appropriate where the jury was instructed on alternative theories of guilt and may have relied on an invalid one); Valerio, 306 F.3d at 760–61. Brecht’s harmlessness test asks whether we are left with “grave doubt” about whether “the actual instruction had a ‘substantial and injurious effect or influence’ on the jury’s verdict, in comparison to what the verdict would have been if the narrowed instruction had been given.” Valerio, 306 F.3d at 762; see also Hedgpeth, 555 U.S. at 58. As the Nevada Supreme Court stated in Smith II, the narrowed construction of depravity of mind based on Nev. Rev. Stat. § 200.033(8) “requir[es] torture, mutilation or other serious and depraved physical abuse beyond the act of killing itself, as a qualifying requirement to an aggravating circumstance SMITH V. BAKER 43 based in part upon depravity of mind.” Smith II, 953 P.2d at 266 (quoting Robins, 798 P.2d at 570). We therefore compare the result obtained with Instructions 10 and 11 against “what the verdict would have been if the [Robins] instruction had been given.” Valerio, 306 F.3d at 762. The juxtaposition of the evidence pertaining to Kristy’s murder and the evidence pertaining to Wendy’s murder leads us to conclude that the invalid instruction did not have a substantial and injurious effect on the jury’s verdict. The second jury heard the medical examiner’s testimony about the extent of both of the murdered step-daughters’ wounds. The medical examiner explained that Kristy, age twelve, suffered four wounds—three to the head, and one to the neck—and that there was a laceration on her finger. The medical examiner then moved on to Wendy’s much more substantial injuries, and told the jury that Wendy suffered thirty-two blunt-force wounds to her head (including skull fractures), and that the extensive wounds Wendy suffered demonstrated that she fought for her life. The examiner testified that Wendy’s wounds appeared to have been inflicted with the claw end of a hammer, and that her left ear was nearly cut in two. The examiner found prominent abrasions on Wendy’s neck, and that she had defensive wounds on her hands. Despite these brutal injuries, the actual cause of Wendy’s death was strangulation. The medical examiner opined that Smith likely used hammer blows to subdue his victims and then strangled them to death.2 2 On appeal, the State argued there was “overwhelming evidence” of mutilation because Wendy was attacked with the claw end of a hammer. The State overlooks that the jury was instructed that, under Nevada law, mutilate “means to cut off or permanently destroy a limb or essential part of the body or to cut off or alter radically so as to make imperfect,” and 44 SMITH V. BAKER The numerous blunt-force wounds that fractured Wendy’s skull, coupled with the medical examiner’s testimony that a large laceration inside her ear almost cut her outer ear in two, do not leave us with grave doubt about whether the jury would have unanimously found mutilation. Photos and the medical examiner’s testimony graphically illustrated that the wounds Wendy suffered radically altered essential parts of her body, and we are confident the invalid instruction did not have a substantial and injurious effect on the jury’s verdict.