Opinion ID: 1728613
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: use of aggravating and mitigating circumstances to accomplish particularized sentencing

Text: At the second stage of the death penalty procedure, at which the jury is required to consider aggravating and mitigating circumstances in order to achieve particularized sentencing, the Court has not given sufficient guidance in the use of aggravating and mitigating circumstances. The Court has, instead, it seems to me, searched for some basis on which to affirm the sentence of death despite a misuse of aggravating circumstances, most often by a finding of harmless error. This constitutionally mandated function is accomplished by requiring the jury to find beyond a reasonable doubt the existence of one or more statutory aggravating circumstances and that, beyond a reasonable doubt, the aggravating circumstances outweigh any mitigating circumstances. T.C.A. § 39-13-204(g). Implicit in this exercise is the rational consideration of the substance of each aggravating and mitigating circumstance and an understanding of their practical use in accomplishing the stated purpose of determining that the defendant is not only a member of the death eligible class, but also one of the worst of the death eligible class. There should be sufficient evidence to support each aggravating circumstance found. More than one aggravating circumstance should not be based on the same acts of the defendant. See Provence v. State, 337 So.2d 783, 786 (Fla. 1976); but see also State v. Carter, 714 S.W.2d 241 (Tenn. 1986). Aggravating circumstances which are factually inconsistent should not be given effect. See State v. Black, 815 S.W.2d at 197 (Reid, C.J., concurring and dissenting). The jury should be instructed as to the meaning of each aggravating circumstance so as to aid the jury in its application. See, e.g., State v. Hines, 758 S.W.2d 515, 523 (Tenn. 1988); State v. Williams, 690 S.W.2d 517, 527, 532 (Tenn. 1985); State v. Moore, 614 S.W.2d 348, 350-351 (Tenn. 1981). The problems often associated with the definition and application of aggravating circumstances are not present in this case, even though one invalid aggravating circumstance was charged. The defendant was charged with aggravating circumstances T.C.A. § 39-13-204(i)(2), having previously been convicted of one or more felonies involving violence to the person; (i)(6), committing the murder to prevent the lawful arrest or prosecution of the defendant; and (i)(7), committing the murder during the course of a felony. The jury found aggravating circumstances (i)(2) and (i)(7). Aggravating circumstance (i)(7) was found in State v. Middlebrooks, 840 S.W.2d at 341-47, to be an invalid aggravating circumstance on the charge of first-degree felony murder, and the case was remanded for re-sentencing. However, the Court has found in this case that charging (i)(7) was harmless error, and has affirmed the sentence of death. I have indicated previously that harmless error analysis is inappropriate whenever one of the aggravating circumstances found by the jury is found to be invalid on appeal. I still subscribe to that view with regard to the previous cases considered by the Court and in all cases where the Court must make a subjective decision regarding the effect of the aggravating circumstance found to be harmless. However, even though in the present case, the court improperly submitted to the jury the aggravating circumstance of felony murder, T.C.A. § 39-13-204(i)(7), I concur in the majority's finding that under the circumstances of this case, this error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt, and that the sentence would have been the same had the invalid aggravating circumstance not been charged. Stringer v. Black, 503 U.S. ___, ___, 112 S.Ct. 1130, 1137, 117 L.Ed.2d 367 (1992). The issue on harmless error analysis is whether the Court can conclude that beyond a reasonable doubt the invalid aggravating circumstance did not influence the jury in its determination that the sentence would be death. Id. 503 U.S. at ___, 112 S.Ct. at 1136. The issue is not the extent to which the aggravating and mitigating circumstances were supported by the evidence or whether the aggravating circumstances outweighed the mitigating circumstances. A finding that the evidence in support of the valid aggravating circumstance was overwhelming and the evidence in mitigation was meager may, and in this case does, support the jury's finding that beyond a reasonable doubt the aggravating circumstance outweighed the mitigating circumstances, but it does not necessarily follow that the jury was not influenced by the invalid aggravating circumstance. And, further, the Court must conclude that admission of the invalid aggravating circumstance was harmless error before it can consider whether the record supports the jury's finding that aggravating circumstances outweighed mitigating circumstances. In Middlebrooks , the Court found that: Even though the evidence amply supports the aggravating circumstance of the murder being especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel in that it involved torture or depravity of mind, Tenn. Code Ann. § 39-2-203(i)(5) (1982), we are unable to conclude that the elimination of the aggravating circumstance (i)(7) is harmless error beyond a reasonable doubt. 840 S.W.2d at 347. The dissent in Middlebrooks emphasized that: This torture-murder of a kidnapped child unquestionably is one of the most aggravated killings that this Court has seen. The fourteen-year-old victim's ordeal, as described in the majority opinion, began at 7:30 p.m. and ended at 11 p.m. This brutal and tragic murder is certainly one of the worst of the bad. Id. at 350 (Drowota, J. concurring and dissenting). However, there was no insistence in the dissent that the admission of aggravating circumstance (i)(7), if error, was harmless error. The main opinion undertakes a principled explanation of its conclusion that admission of the invalid aggravating circumstance was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. That explanation is that the quantum and quality of all relevant evidence in aggravation and mitigation must be examined and fully considered. The problem with this objective and logical procedure is that jurors are not required to be objective or logical in determining the sentence. This Court in State v. Terry, 813 S.W.2d 420 (Tenn. 1991), unanimously found that the erroneous instruction of aggravating circumstance (i)(7) was not harmless error beyond a reasonable doubt. The Court stated, quoting State v. Pritchett, 621 S.W.2d 127, 139 (Tenn. 1981), We have no way of knowing and cannot speculate whether the jury would have imposed the death penalty with one of the two aggravating circumstances withdrawn from their consideration and with the necessity of weighing the one remaining aggravating circumstance against the mitigating circumstances. State v. Terry, 813 S.W.2d at 425. The decision of whether a defendant lives or dies requires a profoundly moral evaluation of the defendant's character and crime, in which the sentencer, by constitutional mandate, is afforded substantial discretion. Satterwhite v. Texas, 486 U.S. 249, 261, 108 S.Ct. 1792, 1800, 100 L.Ed.2d 284 (1988) (Marshall, J., dissenting). Because of the moral character of a capital sentencing determination and the substantial discretion placed in the hands of the sentencer, predicting the reaction of a sentencer to a proceeding untainted by constitutional error on the basis of a cold record is a dangerously speculative enterprise. As the Court recognized in Caldwell v. Mississippi, 472 U.S. 320, 330, 105 S.Ct. 2633, 2640, 86 L.Ed.2d 231 (1985), [w]hatever intangibles a jury might consider in its sentencing determination, few can be gleaned from an appellate record. In the same vein, an appellate court is ill equipped to evaluate the effect of a constitutional error on a sentencing determination. Such sentencing judgments, even when guided and channeled, are inherently subjective, and the weight a sentencer gives an instruction or a significant piece of evidence that is later determined to violate a defendant's constitutional rights is nowhere apparent in the record. In McCleskey v. Kemp, [481 U.S. 279, 107 S.Ct. 1756, 95 L.Ed.2d 262 (1987)], the Court acknowledged that [i]ndividual jurors bring to their deliberations `qualities of human nature and varieties of human experience, the range of which is unknown and perhaps unknowable,' and their collective judgment of the appropriate sentence is marked by an inherent lack of predictability. Id., 481 U.S., at 311, 107 S.Ct., at 1776-1777, quoting Peters v. Kiff, 407 U.S. 493, 503, 92 S.Ct. 2163, 2169, 33 L.Ed.2d 83 (1972) (opinion of Marshall, J.). The threat of an erroneous harmless-error determination thus looms much larger in the capital sentencing context than elsewhere.       Harmless-error analysis impinges directly on the reliability of the capital sentencing decision by allowing a court to substitute its judgment of what the sentencer would have done in the absence of constitutional error for an actual judgment of the sentencer untainted by constitutional error. Id. 407 U.S. at 242, 243, 92 S.Ct. at 262, 263 (Marshall, J., dissenting). However, even though the Court cannot reasonably discover the impact of erroneously considered material on an essentially subjective decision, [2] a court can conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that there was no evidence before a jury which could influence its decision. It is on this basis that I concur with the finding of harmless error in this case. The most significant fact in harmless error analysis is whether the error permitted the sentencers to consider evidence that would not otherwise have come before them. Cf. State v. Harris, 839 S.W.2d at 54, 83 (Tenn. 1992) (Reid, C.J., dissenting) (evidence of other offenses not properly before jury absent error at guilt phase). In this case, as stated in the main opinion, [3] the jury heard no evidence in support of the invalid aggravating circumstance that was not admissible to prove the elements of the crime. Submission of the felony murder aggravator to the jury exposed the sentencers to no evidence which they would not have properly heard at the guilt phase even if the State had not relied upon that aggravating circumstance. Under our statute and the federal constitution, the jury can properly consider evidence of the nature, facts and circumstances of the crime in making its determination as to whether a sentence of death is warranted. See T.C.A. § 39-13-204(c) (formerly § 39-2-203(c)); Clemons v. Mississippi, 494 U.S. 738, 748, 110 S.Ct. 1441, 1448, 108 L.Ed.2d 725 (1990). The evidence of the offense and its nature was thus properly before the jury at sentencing. Consequently, there was no inadmissible evidence that could have affected the jury's decision. The argument of the prosecutor regarding the invalid aggravating circumstance did not go beyond statements that were permissible with reference to the commission of the offense of which the defendant was convicted. As a result, the jury heard nothing that was not appropriate, except that numerically, there were two aggravating circumstances rather than one. Finding prejudicial error on this super-technical ground would require the absolute rejection of the principle of harmless error found in Rule 52 of the Tennessee Rules of Criminal Procedure and Rule 36(b) of the Tennessee Rules of Appellate Procedure. Where there was in fact error but, as in this case, the error could not have affected the verdict of the jury, it is appropriate to find the error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. No issue is made of the aggravating circumstance found under T.C.A. § 39-13-204(i)(2). The record shows that the defendant's prior convictions supporting this aggravating circumstance were two convictions of armed robbery, one conviction of first degree murder and one conviction of attempt to commit first degree murder. The evidence in mitigation was meager. Accordingly, I concur that the record supports the jury's finding that the aggravating circumstance outweighed the mitigating circumstances and the imposition of the sentence of death.