Opinion ID: 2611126
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: the majority exceeds the bounds of interpretation

Text: Had this court in 1988 correctly understood that the 1984 measure violated constitutional standards, the court would have so held, and the present case would have been over. It then would have been left to the legislative process to reexamine the death penalty in light of due process requirements and of the experience with trials under the 1984 law, including all the issues debated in the earlier opinions in this case. It is ironic that only because the court was wrong in 1988 can it now seize upon the Supreme Court's remand to try some further, more drastic, rewriting of the 1984 measure. The majority now adopts what it correctly rejected in Wagner I. This second rewriting is far beyond the bounds of interpreting the 1984 law. The sleight-of-hand by which it is done is easily exposed, if that mattered. It appears at the outset, when the majority puts the question whether the statute permits the trial court to ask the jury whether the death penalty is appropriate for this defendant, considering all aspects of his life and crime. 309 Or. at 7, 786 P.2d 94. The majority's phrasing is not whether the statute calls for such an inquiry or requires such an inquiry or whether the answer is an element of the statutory plan. The answer in each case is no. When the majority shifts the question from what the statute means to what the statute does not preclude, 309 Or. at 10-11, 786 P.2d 95-96, it acts in a way that, in a context of life and death, might be criticized as cynical: Instead of holding the lawmakers to the burden of specifying the conditions under which a person may be condemned to death, as other courts have done, the majority shifts to the defendant the burden of showing that the statute excludes each possible additional requirement, not enacted by anyone, that may be needed to allow a valid execution. The point of legislation, however, is to state expressly what is required, not to state expressly what is excluded; and I thought we were long past the era of common law definitions of crimes and punishments. Apparently not. The majority contends that ORS 163.150(1)(e) did not mandate a sentence of death upon affirmative answers to the three issues specified in subsection (1)(b), because subsection (1)(e) referred to each issue considered under this section rather than under subsection (1)(b). The argument is specious. The entire section specified three issues, and three issues only, to be decided by the jury. As the Voters Pamphlet explanation stated, if the jury decided each issue affirmatively, the sentence must be death by lethal injection. Second, the majority quotes passages from Wagner I concerning the defendant's right to present mitigating evidence and to have that evidence considered by the jury. But those passages do not help the majority's argument. As the majority itself points out, the statute refers to evidence that the court deems relevant to sentence. ORS 163.150(1)(a). And Wagner I, quoted by the majority, construed the statute to allow any competent evidence relevant to mitigation on any of the three issues.  (Emphasis added.) 305 Or. at 156-57, 752 P.2d 1136. The point of the passage was that mitigating evidence might be relevant to all three statutory issues, not only to the second issue where the statute expressly mentioned it. But the passage contradicts rather than supports the current majority's attempt to create an entirely new issue beyond the three that the statute made decisive. Another passage is quoted by the majority to claim that Wagner I allowed the jury to consider non statutory mitigating circumstances. 305 Or. at 161, 752 P.2d 1136. But the passage merely referred to evidence of circumstances beyond those that the statute applied to the second issue, ORS 163.150(1)(b)(B). Obviously Wagner I did not mean circumstances wholly outside the three statutory issues, because the 1984 measure denied the jury any way to act outside those issues. Given that Wagner I affirmed a conviction in which the jury was allowed no such opportunity, Wagner I cannot well be quoted to hold that the 1984 measure contemplated additional nonstatutory issues as well as consideration of nonstatutory circumstances bearing on the jury's findings on the three issues specified in the law. The court's basis for its decision was clearly stated in Wagner I, 305 Or. at 166, 752 P.2d 1136: Our review of [the] post- Jurek opinions leads us to the conclusion that the Supreme Court of the United States will uphold a scheme such as that presented in Jurek if the sentencer is allowed to consider all competent evidence relevant to any of the three questions presented. ORS 163.150(1) specifically provides for the introduction of any evidence relevant to the three questions, and, as we have noted above, even if the statute did not do so, relevant and competent evidence is admissible on any issue presented to the trier of fact. This conclusion proved to be wrong. The current majority's attempt now to reconstruct the opinion in Wagner I fails normal legal analysis as badly as does the majority's effort to reconstruct the 1984 measure, the measure that was submitted to the voters on the basis that upon affirmative findings on the specified issues, the sentence must be death. This is not a case in which due process under the Fourteenth Amendment simply requires some procedural safeguard not mentioned in a statute, some form of notice or an opportunity to meet the basis for a government action adverse to one's interests. Such procedural due process is readily provided without rewriting the substantive elements of the state's law. Nor is the issue here what evidence may be admitted, or what use the jury may make of that evidence. Those issues were settled in Wagner I. Here we deal not with evidence, or procedure, or even instructions, but with the substance of the statutory test for life or death. The 1984 measure adopted an unmistakable substantive standard, a policy to put to death any person convicted of aggravated murder upon three specified findings. That measure was unconstitutional in 1984, and it was unconstitutional when it came before this court in 1988, as the Supreme Court now has confirmed. The majority now wants to pretend that the 1984 measure did not mean what it said, what the people were told that it said, what the Department of Justice and the courts consistently maintained, what this court one year ago held that the measure meant, and what the Attorney General told the United States Supreme Court in this very case. Rather, the majority now has the measure mean something very different, death or life upon unspecified individual circumstances considered by the jury. This judicially rewritten statute is not the measure adopted in 1984. Moreover, it creates unexamined new constitutional problems of standardless and potentially unequal application under Article I, sections 20 and 21, of the Oregon Constitution. [3] If these problems and the choice of a different scheme were properly studied and resolved by the appropriate lawmaking process, future constitutional issues could be decided by this court without a prior commitment to the validity of the revised scheme. The court's consideration of these issues should not be burdened, or appear to be burdened, by the fact that the court itself promulgated the revised version of the law, as the majority does today. This is not the first state court to face the question whether it could or should reconstruct a death penalty law after a decision of the United States Supreme Court showed that the law as enacted was unconstitutional. Other courts have refused to do so. Thus, when an Indiana trial court modified the procedures prescribed by that state's death penalty law in order to make them comply with federal standards, the Indiana Supreme Court reversed and remanded the case with instructions to vacate the death sentence. Bond v. State, 273 Ind. 233, 403 N.E.2d 812 (1980). The court wrote: The State concedes that the statute has been ruled unconstitutional, but argues that as long as certain procedures are followed which guarantee the defendant's due process rights, the death penalty may, nevertheless, be imposed.    The fixing of penalties for crimes is solely up to the Legislature, as the elected representative body, not the trial courts.    The judiciary cannot usurp a legislative function by creating standards for imposing the death penalty. 403 N.E.2d at 815-16 (citations omitted). Similarly, after it was established that an Idaho death penalty statute failed the test of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Idaho Supreme Court refused the state's request to reconstruct the statute so as to make it constitutional. The court wrote that [t]o do so would require that we rewrite substantive statutory law, quoting and agreeing with the California Supreme Court that `[d]ecisions as to which criminal defendants shall suffer the death penalty, whether these decisions shall be made by judge or jury, whether and to what extent a jury determination is reviewable by the trial court and/or the reviewing court, and the scope of responsibility to be given this court to safeguard against arbitrary imposition of the death penalty are matters of legislative concern. Were this court to attempt to devise the necessary procedures and criteria we would not only invade the legislative province, but would also be in the position of having to pass objectively on the constitutionality of procedures of our own design.' State v. Lindquist, 99 Idaho 766, 589 P.2d 101, 105 (1979), quoting from Rockwell v. Superior Court, 18 Cal.3d 420, 134 Cal. Rptr. 650, 665, 556 P.2d 1101, 1116 (1976). The Idaho Supreme Court continued: The argument that the Idaho first degree murder statute imposing the death penalty can be construed by this Court to make it constitutional is subject to another infirmity. Such a retroactive construction, if applied to the facts of this case, poses serious ex post facto problems under Art. I, § 9, of the United States Constitution and Art. I, § 16, of the Idaho Constitution. 589 P.2d at 105, citing to the same effect Commonwealth v. Harrington, 367 Mass. 13, 323 N.E.2d 895 (1975). The Rhode Island Supreme Court similarly refused a request by the state to conform its death penalty statute to the requirements of the United States Constitution, stating that [t]he task which the state wishes us to perform is one that comes within the exclusive purview of the legislative branch of our state government. State v. Cline, 121 R.I. 299, 397 A.2d 1309 (1979). The Wyoming Supreme Court gave the same response to that state's request to conform its death penalty statute to constitutional requirements, pointing out the additions to and changes in the statute that would be required, and concluding: In addition, it would be necessary to add a phrase modifying this penalty and providing certain guidelines, which we, not the legislature, would be forced to promulgate. This would clearly be violative of the authorities above mentioned. Kennedy v. State, 559 P.2d 1014, 1017 (Wyo 1977). Most telling is the response of the Ohio courts to the decisions of the Supreme Court in Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U.S. 586, 98 S.Ct. 2954, 57 L.Ed.2d 973 (1978), and Bell v. Ohio, 438 U.S. 637, 98 S.Ct. 2977, 57 L.Ed.2d 1010 (1978). It is most telling because Lockett was one of the decisions that showed the invalidity of the 1984 Oregon death penalty measure. After the Supreme Court's reversal in Lockett, the Ohio court did not send it and other similar cases back for another penalty hearing; instead it ordered entry of sentences of life imprisonment in 54 pending capital cases. See State v. Cornely, 56 Ohio St.2d 1, 7, 381 N.E.2d 186 (1978); State v. Bridgeman, 55 Ohio St.2d 261, 265, 381 N.E.2d 184 (1978); State v. Collins, No. C-77614 (Ohio Ct App 1979). This court should follow the example of the Ohio Supreme Court and other state courts that have refused to reverse their prior interpretations of state laws when death sentences under the existing law proved to be invalid.