Opinion ID: 778660
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Challenges to the Mitigating Findings

Text: 80 Appellants next challenge the jury's findings regarding their ages as mitigating factors. At trial, it was undisputed that Bernard was eighteen and Vialva was nineteen at the time of the murders. The jurors, instructed to determine the existence of each particular mitigating factor by a preponderance of the evidence, unanimously found that Appellants failed to prove that their age was a mitigating factor. 16 Based on Eddings v. Oklahoma 17 and related cases, Appellants argue that their sentences violate the Eighth Amendment because the jury arbitrarily and capriciously refused to acknowledge the existence of a mitigating circumstance that clearly existed. 81 This court has previously expressed doubt regarding its authority to review jury findings relating to mitigating factors. See Hall, 152 F.3d at 413. Hall questions whether a jury's failure to find the existence of a mitigating factor is subject to appellate review, since the FDPA does not require the jury to make special findings of the existence of, or degree of jury unanimity upon, mitigating factors. Id. Assuming, however, that we have such authority, we find no constitutional error in the jury's determination that Appellants' relative youthfulness was not a mitigating factor. 82 Neither the FDPA nor Lockett and Eddings require a capital jury to give mitigating effect or weight to any particular evidence ... There is only a constitutional violation if there exists a reasonable likelihood that the jurors believed themselves precluded from considering mitigating evidence. United States v. Paul, 217 F.3d 989, 999-1000 (8th Cir.2000) (citing Boyde v. California, 494 U.S. 370, 386, 110 S.Ct. 1190, 108 L.Ed.2d 316 (1990)). In Paul, the Eighth Circuit found no constitutional error where six jury members refused to find the defendant's age a mitigating factor although it was undisputed that the defendant was eighteen at the time of his offense. Id. (The jury was certainly not precluded from considering Paul's youthful age as a mitigating factor [and] Paul has not cited authority for the proposition that a jury is somehow required to give mitigating effect to any factor, let alone this one.). 83 Appellants contend that Paul is inapposite, because the form of the verdict here misled the jurors by allowing them to find — irrationally — that neither defendant was chronologically 18 or 19 at the time of the offense, and by then preventing them from considering youthfulness as a mitigating factor. We do not read the verdict form this way, and in any event, appellants did not object to the jury instructions or verdict form regarding this mitigating factor. The jury instruction accompanying the list of mitigating factors clearly tells the jury to consider whether each listed circumstance mitigates the defendant's culpability. Thus, they were instructed to write down the number of jurors, if any, who found that the fact that Christopher Vialva was nineteen at the time of the offense was mitigating as to Vialva, and likewise for Bernard. The government plainly explained the impact of these questions in its closing argument. 84 The jurors necessarily decided that these appellants' ages were not mitigating, as they were entitled to do. While the defendants' tender years may lead a jury to exercise clemency, it need not do so. The jury had ample evidentiary basis to believe that these appellants' acts climaxed a pattern of gang activities and made them older, criminally, than their chronological ages. The jury did not have to balance youthfulness, since they did not regard it as mitigating, against the aggravating factors. 85