Opinion ID: 1244833
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: State Law: Article I, Sections 7 (Due Process) and 9 (Cruel and Unusual Punishment, Unnecessary Rigor)

Text: The Utah Constitution's Declaration of Rights contains a due process guarantee that is this court's obligation and prerogative to construe. Due process of law in each particular case means, such an exertion of the powers of government as the settled maxims of law permit and sanction, and under such safeguards for the protection of individual rights as those maxims prescribe for the class of cases to which the one in question belongs. Thomas Cooley, Constitutional Limitations 741 (8th ed.1927). Although we rarely have discussed article I, section 7 without referring to federal due process jurisprudence, we have on occasion predicated holdings solely on state due process principles. For example, in State v. Copeland, 765 P.2d 1266, 1271-72 (Utah 1988), we held that subsections (c) and (d) of Utah Code Ann. ง 77-35-21.5(4) violated article I, section 7 of the Utah Constitution because their operation was arbitrary and capricious and their content was not rationally related to the criminal sentencing process at issue. Likewise, we have reviewed statutory sentencing schemes and particular sentences under article I, section 9. See State v. Russell, 791 P.2d 188 (Utah 1990); State v. Gentry, 747 P.2d 1032 (Utah 1987); State v. Bishop, 717 P.2d 261 (Utah 1986). For a Utah due process analysis in the civil context, see Berry v. Beech Aircraft, 717 P.2d 670, 675-76 (Utah 1985). I submit that this court should independently articulate the minimum standards that apply under the Utah Constitution for our death penalty statutes. Cf. California v. Ramos, 463 U.S. 992, 1014, 103 S.Ct. 3446, 3460, (1983) (States are free to provide greater protections in their criminal justice system than the Federal Constitution requires.). A comprehensive review of current state constitutional death penalty jurisprudence is found in James R. Acker & Elizabeth R. Walsh, Challenging the Death Penalty Under State Constitutions, 42 Vand.L.Rev. 1299 (1989) [hereinafter Acker & Walsh]. The authors comment on the differences in perspective and structural placement that affect legal development by state courts in this area: State supreme courts may not be as willing to tolerate the structural and procedural deficiencies in capital punishment legislation as has a majority of the United States Supreme Court. They may be persuaded for a number of reasons that state constitutions permit or require them to diverge from the judicial gloss Supreme Court precedent attaches to the eighth amendment. The Supreme Court is constrained by principles of federalism, its duty of fixing minimal constitutional standards for fifty individual states with tremendously varied histories and cultures, and by the inhibiting effect that federal constitutional adjudication has upon the states' abilities to adapt criminal laws and procedures to their unique needs. State supreme courts can be responsive to the values and traditions reflected in state constitutional provisions and to contemporary notions of fairness and decency in their states. Further, their decisions are not so wide reaching and typically not so immutable as the decisions of the Supreme Court. Id. at 1361 (citations omitted). As the foregoing article documents, a significant number of states have independently reviewed their death penalty statutes pursuant to the provisions of their state constitutions. Other opinions have been issued since the article was published in 1989. See, e.g., State v. Black, 815 S.W.2d 166 (Tenn.1991) (analyzing the constitutionality of the death penalty under numerous state provisions, including Tennessee's cruel-and-unusual-punishment clause). Courts in only two states, California and Massachusetts, have ever declared the death penalty unconstitutional per se, see People v. Anderson, 6 Cal.3d 628, 100 Cal. Rptr. 152, 493 P.2d 880, cert. denied, 406 U.S. 958, 92 S.Ct. 2060, 32 L.Ed.2d 344 (1972); District Atty. for Suffolk Dist. v. Watson, 381 Mass. 648, 411 N.Ed.2d 1274 (1980), and in both states voters have subsequently amended their constitutions to affirm that death is a permissible penalty. Even after the amendments, however, both courts have asserted that although the death penalty itself cannot violate the amended constitution on a per se basis, any given statutory scheme is subject to judicial review under traditional state protections for due process and against cruel and unusual punishment. See People v. Superior Court of Santa Clara County, 31 Cal.3d 797, 183 Cal.Rptr. 800, 805-06, 647 P.2d 76, 81-82 (1982) (death penalty statute invalidated on state due process grounds); Commonwealth v. Colon-Cruz, 393 Mass. 150, 470 N.E.2d 116, 120-23 (1984) (same). As mentioned above, numerous state courts have reviewed the validity of death penalty statutes under various provisions of their state constitutions. See, e.g., People ex rel. Rice v. Cunningham, 61 Ill.2d 353, 336 N.E.2d 1 (1975) (sentence review method in statute violated direct appeal provision of state constitution); State v. Ramseur, 106 N.J. 123, 524 A.2d 188 (1987) (upholding death penalty statute under state constitutional provisions and analyzing challenges to jury qualification process and jury instructions pursuant to state constitution); State v. Rondeau, 89 N.M. 408, 553 P.2d 688 (1976) (capital punishment statute a deprivation of state due process provision); State v. Wagner, 305 Or. 115, 752 P.2d 1136 (1988) (upholding state death penalty statute under numerous provisions of Oregon constitution), vacated, 492 U.S. 914, 109 S.Ct. 3235, 106 L.Ed.2d 583 (1989). Also, nearly all the states that have considered due process and cruel-and-unusual-punishment challenges have predicated their holdings on their state provisions along with federal provisions, even when they have not undertaken independent analysis. Finally, for an extended discussion of case law regarding challenges to the death penalty predicated on state constitutional separation of powers doctrine and other state provisions without federal counterparts, see Acker & Walsh at 1356-60. The present challenge to Utah's capital punishment statute is a question of first impression. No other state has considered the constitutionality of a statute as broad and comprehensive in its definition of death-eligible murders. A similar conceptual challenge was leveled at the Oregon statute in Wagner, 752 P.2d at 1157-58, but there, the statute contained only ten aggravating factors, as compared to Utah's seventeen. Thus, we are in uncharted territory. The Utah Constitution contains protections against unfairness and cruel and unusual punishment, requiring a scheme which insures that the death penalty is not applied in an arbitrary manner. Such a scheme, this court said in State v. Pierre, 572 P.2d 1338, 1356 (Utah 1977), cert. denied, 439 U.S. 882, 99 S.Ct. 219, 58 L.Ed.2d 194 (1978), must be structured to provide reasonably that the unique and irretrievable sanction of death will be mandated by its provisions and processes only in extreme and unusually serious and shocking crimes and when mandated โ as here โ that the risk of discrimination, arbitrariness, caprice, and irrationality is reduced to a minimum. The aggravating circumstances in Utah's statutory scheme ostensibly serve the constitutionally required function of reducing the risks of discrimination, arbitrariness, caprice, and irrationality. Given the nature of Utah's bifurcated capital trial system, the presence of an aggravating factor, to be determined at the guilt phase of a capital trial, should ensure that only extreme and unusually serious and shocking crimes become eligible for the death penalty. The jury in our system has extremely broad discretion to consider during the penalty phase any matter the court deems relevant to sentence, whether in aggravation or mitigation, Utah Code Ann. ง 76-3-207(2), and the balancing process we require during that phase, although highly individualized, does not contain any objective standards for the jury to follow. The result of the legislature's overbroad definition of capital murder is a lack of any rational distinction between capital and noncapital homicide. With no objective means to distinguish extreme and unusually serious and shocking crimes, the exercise of prosecutorial discretion becomes arbitrary and capricious by definition. The state cannot distinguish between a Mark Hofmann (who intentionally killed two people with bombs that endangered others, apparently for pecuniary gain, thus qualifying as a capital murderer under four separate categories of aggravating circumstances, but was permitted to plead guilty to second degree murder, see State v. Hofmann, No. CR86-834 (Jan. 23, 1987)), and an ElRoy Tillman (who bludgeoned the boyfriend of his former girlfriend into unconsciousness, set a fire that asphyxiated him, and was charged and convicted of capital homicide and sentenced to death, see State v. Tillman, 750 P.2d 546 (Utah 1987)). In State v. Wood, 648 P.2d 71 (Utah), cert. denied, 459 U.S. 988, 103 S.Ct. 341, 74 L.Ed.2d 383 (1982), this court vacated a death sentence, holding that the sentencing process was flawed because the aggravating factor relied on [ruthlessness and brutality] was constitutionally impermissible in this case, since it describes all murders and therefore fails to provide any guideline for channeling discretion. Id. at 86. A similar defect now plagues the constitutionality of Utah's entire statute, which defines nearly every intentional murder as death-eligible. The statute contains no principled way to distinguish death-eligible murderers from nondeath-eligible murderers. The structure of our statute thus permits caprice and arbitrariness to dictate who will be exempted and who will be charged under the statute and fails to isolate only the worst of crimes for death-eligibility. The statute violates the principles of fundamental fairness guaranteed by the due process clause of the state constitution and renders Utah's death penalty scheme cruel and unusual within the meaning of article I, section 9. We should strike it on independent state grounds.