Opinion ID: 553434
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The State Appellate Court as Sentencer.

Text: 20 The notion that a state appellate court could act as an independent sentencer without violating the Constitution appears to have originated in Zant v. Stephens, 462 U.S. 862, 103 S.Ct. 2733, 77 L.Ed.2d 235 (1983). In Stephens, the jury found three statutory aggravating circumstances from the evidence and recommended that Stephens be sentenced to death. The trial court, being bound by the jury's recommendation, imposed the death sentence. 5 While Stephens' appeal was pending in the Georgia Supreme Court, that court, in Arnold v. State, 236 Ga. 534, 224 S.E.2d 386 (1976), struck down one of the three statutory provisions on which the jury had relied in recommending that he be sentenced to death. Then, in Stephens' appeal, the Georgia Supreme Court affirmed Stephens' sentence, concluding that the two remaining aggravating circumstances supported his sentence. Stephens v. State, 237 Ga. 259, 227 S.E.2d 261, 263 (1976). 21 Stephens then petitioned a federal district court for a writ of habeas corpus, contending that the Georgia Supreme Court could not predict what the outcome of the sentencing hearing would have been had the jury not relied on the invalid aggravating circumstance. Therefore, according to Stephens, the Georgia Supreme Court acted arbitrarily in affirming his sentence and should have remanded his case to the trial court for a new sentencing hearing. The federal district court denied Stephens' petition, but the Fifth Circuit reversed and issued the writ. The Fifth Circuit concluded that [i]t is impossible for a reviewing court to determine satisfactorily that the [jury's] verdict in this case was not decisively affected by an unconstitutional statutory aggravating circumstance. Stephens v. Zant, 631 F.2d 397, 406 (5th Cir.1980) (emphasis added), modified in part, 648 F.2d 446 (5th Cir. June 1981) (per curiam). Thus, the Fifth Circuit treated the Georgia Supreme Court as a pure reviewing court--one that can point out constitutional errors in the sentencing proceeding but that cannot cure those errors by independently sentencing the defendant. Consequently, the Fifth Circuit held Georgia's sentencing scheme, as applied in Stephens, unconstitutional. 22 The United States Supreme Court initially found that it could not discern the basis upon which the Georgia Supreme Court had affirmed Stephens' sentence and therefore could not tell whether the court had acted arbitrarily and denied Stephens the due process of law. The Court consequently certified a question of state law to the Georgia Supreme Court, asking it to explain the state law premise upon which it based its affirmance of Stephens' sentence. Zant v. Stephens, 456 U.S. 410, 102 S.Ct. 1856, 72 L.Ed.2d 222 (1982). 23 When the Georgia Supreme Court answered the certified question, the Court concluded that Georgia's capital sentencing scheme, which allowed the Georgia Supreme Court to affirm a sentence after one or more aggravating circumstances had been invalidated, was constitutional as applied in Stephens' case. The Court carefully reviewed Georgia's capital sentencing scheme, noting first that the trier of fact (the jury) is required to find the existence of aggravating and mitigating circumstances. No defendant is eligible for the death penalty unless the jury finds at least one statutory aggravating circumstance. See Stephens, 462 U.S. at 871, 103 S.Ct. at 2739-40. Once such an aggravating circumstance is found, the jury has  'absolute discretion'  in deciding whether to impose the death penalty. See id., 103 S.Ct. at 2740 (quoting Zant v. Stephens, 250 Ga. 97, 297 S.E.2d 1, 3 (1982)). 24 In the case before it, the Court found that the evidence admitted to establish the invalid statutory aggravating circumstance still would have been fully admissible in the sentencing phase under another Georgia statute. Id. at 886-87, 103 S.Ct. at 2747-48. The Court then noted that the invalid circumstance arguably might have caused the jury to give somewhat greater weight to [the evidence]. Id. at 888, 103 S.Ct. at 2749. Nevertheless, the Court concluded that the Georgia Supreme Court did not err in finding the impact of the improper labeling to be inconsequential. Id. at 888-89, 103 S.Ct. at 2749. 25 This holding is puzzling at first given (1) the jury's absolute discretion in deciding whether to impose the death penalty and (2) the Court's finding that the invalid label might have influenced the jury's decision-making process. How can a pure reviewing court decide that a jury with absolute discretion would not have reached a different conclusion under admittedly different circumstances? I submit that it cannot. As I have stated on another occasion, a state scheme that allows a reviewing court to affirm a sentence when it cannot tell whether the ... sentencing court would have imposed the same sentence absent the error found on review raises serious problems of arbitrary review. Ford v. Strickland, 696 F.2d 804, 837 (11th Cir.) (en banc) (Tjoflat, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part), cert. denied, 464 U.S. 865, 104 S.Ct. 201, 78 L.Ed.2d 176 (1983). Therefore, the Court's holding can be understood only in light of a key statement: Our decision in this case depends in part on the existence of ... the mandatory appellate review of each death sentence by the Georgia Supreme Court to avoid arbitrariness and to assure proportionality. Stephens, 462 U.S. at 889-90, 103 S.Ct. at 2749. Thus, the Court was willing to allow the Georgia Supreme Court to do something the Fifth Circuit would not allow, i.e., to cure any uncertainty remaining after harmless error review by independently finding the sentence to be proportionate to sentences imposed in other cases. See Ford, 696 F.2d at 837 (Tjoflat, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). In essence, the Court approved a certain degree of appellate sentencing. 6 26 The idea of appellate sentencing was further developed in Cabana v. Bullock, 474 U.S. 376, 106 S.Ct. 689, 88 L.Ed.2d 704 (1986). In Bullock, the Court addressed the question whether an Enmund finding (that the defendant has killed, attempted to kill, or intended that a killing take place or that lethal force be employed) can be made only by a jury or whether the finding can be made at some other step in the state's criminal process. See Enmund v. Florida, 458 U.S. 782, 102 S.Ct. 3368, 73 L.Ed.2d 1140 (1982). The Court held, in Bullock, that Enmund did not add any elements to the state's substantive offense; it merely defined the class of persons that, under the eighth amendment, could be sentenced to death. See Bullock, 474 U.S. at 385, 106 S.Ct. at 696. The Court went on to hold that, although an Enmund finding requires a factual determination, [t]he State has considerable freedom to structure its capital sentencing system as it sees fit and that the finding may be made by any state court that has the power to find the facts and vacate the sentence. Id. at 386-87, 106 S.Ct. at 697. 27 Stephens and Bullock, taken together, implicitly support the proposition that state appellate courts, consistent with the eighth amendment, may independently reweigh evidence and sentence capital defendants. The Supreme Court, however, recently made this implicit holding explicit in Clemons v. Mississippi, --- U.S. at ----, 110 S.Ct. at 1441.
28 Chandler Clemons, convicted of capital murder in Mississippi state court, was sentenced to death. The jury, in mandating the death penalty, 7 found two aggravating circumstances: (1) the murder was committed during the course of a robbery or for pecuniary gain and (2) the murder was especially heinous, atrocious or cruel. Id. at ----, 110 S.Ct. at 1445. On direct appeal to the Mississippi Supreme Court, the court noted that the especially heinous circumstance had been held unconstitutionally vague in Maynard v. Cartwright, 486 U.S. 356, 108 S.Ct. 1853, 100 L.Ed.2d 372 (1988). See Clemons v. State, 535 So.2d 1354, 1362 (Miss.1988). In Maynard, the United States Supreme Court refused to reinstate the death penalty because the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals would not attempt to save the death penalty when one of several aggravating circumstances found by the jury was found invalid. 486 U.S. at 365, 108 S.Ct. at 1860. The Mississippi Supreme Court, however, distinguished Maynard from the case before it because: 29 [the Mississippi Supreme] Court has placed a limiting construction on the aggravating circumstance of especially heinous, atrocious or cruel; ... Mississippi law holds one invalid aggravating circumstance will not suffice to overturn a death penalty where one or more valid aggravating circumstance(s) remains; ... brutal and torturous facts surround[ed] the murder ...; ... narrowing instructions [were] given to the jury by the lower court; ... [and] beyond a reasonable doubt ... the jury's verdict would have been the same with or without the especially heinous, atrocious or cruel aggravating circumstance. 30 Clemons, 535 So.2d at 1364. 31 Clemons argued before the United States Supreme Court that, in affirming the death sentence, the Mississippi Supreme Court engaged in an independent weighing of the (valid) aggravating and mitigating circumstances 8 in violation of the sixth and eighth amendments. The Court held, however, that neither the sixth amendment, 9 eighth amendment, 10 nor any other constitutional provision prohibits a state appellate court from independently weighing aggravating and mitigating circumstances. 32 In refuting Clemons' eighth amendment argument, the Court held that appellate weighing of aggravating and mitigating circumstances was perfectly consistent with the goals of measured consistent application of the state's death penalty and fairness to the defendant. Indeed, such appellate weighing occurs in a state appellate court's proportionality review. See Clemons, --- U.S. at ----, 110 S.Ct. at 1448. Thus, the Court concluded that state appellate courts can and do give each defendant an individualized and reliable sentencing determination based on the defendant's circumstances, his background, and the crime. Id. at ----, 110 S.Ct. at 1449. 33 Despite this holding, the Court remanded the case to the Mississippi Supreme Court. According to the Court, it could not tell whether the Mississippi Supreme Court had (1) conducted an individualized weighing of the aggravating and mitigating circumstances, (2) applied a state rule that required automatic affirmance of the death penalty when at least one valid aggravating circumstance remains, or (3) applied the harmless error analysis of Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18, 87 S.Ct. 824, 17 L.Ed.2d 705 (1967). See Clemons, --- U.S. at ----, 110 S.Ct. at 1449-51. 34 The language in the Mississippi Supreme Court opinion is ambiguous--portions of it are consistent with each of the three approaches, but it does not completely correspond with any of them. For example, in conducting its proportionality review, the court determined that [i]n our opinion ... the punishment of death is not too great when the aggravating and mitigating circumstances are weighed against each other.... Clemons, 535 So.2d at 1365. This remark suggests that the Mississippi Supreme Court reweighed the aggravating and mitigating circumstances in this case--presumably by applying the proper definition to the especially heinous factor--and concluded that Clemons still should be sentenced to death. Alternatively, however, the court may have disregarded the especially heinous factor and affirmed on the ground that, as a matter of law, a single valid aggravating factor supports a sentence of death. In accordance with this approach, the court noted that its precedent established unequivocally ... that when one aggravating circumstance is found to be invalid or unsupported by the evidence, a remaining valid aggravating circumstance will nonetheless support the death penalty verdict. Id. at 1362. While this language may imply merely that the Mississippi courts do not automatically invalidate a death sentence when an aggravating circumstance is found to be invalid, it arguably indicates that Mississippi appellate courts affirm all death sentences that are supported by at least one valid aggravating circumstance. Finally, in another portion of the opinion, the court's language corresponds with Chapman harmless error analysis. According to the Mississippi Supreme Court, it was beyond a reasonable doubt that the jury's verdict would have been the same with or without the 'especially heinous, atrocious or cruel' aggravating circumstance. Id. at 1364 (emphasis added); see Clemons, --- U.S. at ----, 110 S.Ct. at 1451. 11 Because of the ambiguity, the Court remanded the case to the Mississippi Supreme Court for further proceedings and, presumably, for a determination of the basis upon which Clemons' sentence was affirmed. 35 Clemons thus stands for the proposition that state appellate courts in weighing states 12 may independently weigh aggravating and mitigating circumstances and thereby cure certain errors that might have occurred at the sentencing phase of a trial; they may act as sentencers. The question then becomes whether the Florida Supreme Court acted as a sentencer in the case at hand. 36