Opinion ID: 2382857
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: The Criteria for Comparing the Cases for Disproportionality

Text: The data having been assembled and the means having been established to sort them to identify the comparison group of similar cases, the final step in the process is to develop criteria for evaluating when a particular sentence is disproportionate in relation to the other similar cases identified. Jurisdictions that conduct proportionality review use varied criteria to evaluate when a death sentence is disproportionate. Missouri classifies similar cases as those in which both death and life imprisonment were submitted to the jury, and which have had been affirmed on appeal. State v. Mercer, 618 S.W. 2d 1, 11, cert. denied, 454 U.S. 933, 102 S.Ct. 432, 70 L.Ed. 2d 240 (1981). Without elaboration, the Mercer court concluded that those cases supported affirmance of the death penalty in the subject case, stating defendant's sentence to death for the murder    is not excessive or disproportionate to the penalty imposed in similar cases considering the crime and the defendant. Id. at 11. Following prompting by Justice Exum in his dissenting opinion in State v. Pinch, 306 N.C. 1, 292 S.E. 2d 203, 230, cert. denied, 459 U.S. 1056, 103 S.Ct. 474, 74 L.Ed. 2d 622 (1982), the North Carolina Supreme Court articulated its method for comparing similar cases. That court uses all cases arising since the effective date of its capital punishment statute that have been tried as capital cases and reviewed on direct appeal by this Court and in which the jury recommended death or life imprisonment or in which the trial court imposed life imprisonment after a jury's failure to agree upon a sentencing recommendation within a reasonable period of time as a pool for comparison purposes. State v. Williams, 308 N.C. 47, 301 S.E. 2d 335, 355, cert. denied, 464 U.S. 865, 104 S.Ct. 202, 78 L.Ed. 2d 177 (1983). North Carolina does not propose to attempt to employ mathematical or statistical models involving multiple regression analysis or other scientific techniques, currently in vogue among social scientists, which have been described as having `the seductive appeal of science and mathematics.' Ibid. (quoting Blake v. Zant, 513 F. Supp. 772, 827 (S.D.Ga. 1981)). It believes that a reviewing court might tend to disregard the experienced judgments of its own members in favor of the `scientific' evidence resulting from quantitative analysis. Id. at 356. Thus, the court concluded that it would rely on its own case reports in the similar cases forming the pool that would be used for comparison purposes. Ibid. The methodology of comparison used in Williams consisted of an identification of those cases (without description), a recital of the facts of the case being reviewed (a bestial torture-rape of an one-hundred-year-old woman), and a conclusion that the murder was so brutal and so utterly senseless as to lead us to conclude that the sentence of death imposed in this case is not disproportionate or excessive considering both the crime and the defendant. Id. at 357. As stated previously, Georgia's universe of cases includes all capital-felony cases that are appealed. In order to determine proportionality, the Georgia court selects for comparison cases those that are factually similar to the subject case. See Godfrey v. State, 248 Ga. 616, 284 S.E. 2d 422, 430 (1981). It lists those cases in an appendix to its proportionality review. Without reviewing the facts of the cases in its opinion, it noted that juries had returned seven death verdicts in domestic murder cases. In multiple murder cases (Godfrey killed his wife and mother-in-law) seven death verdicts were returned. In three of those seven cases, juries returned death sentences despite the fact that the defendants had good records and a history of psychiatric disorders. Ibid. Maryland establishes a pool of similar cases for comparison purposes by examining those with similar facts. As a second factor, Maryland considers the aggravating and mitigating circumstances. Tichnell, supra, 468 A. 2d at 20-22. It recites the facts of the comparison cases in its opinion. For instance, in Tichnell it reviewed five killings committed during a robbery that involved either a police-officer or non-police-officer victim. Although four life sentences had been imposed, the court found sufficient differences in the mitigating circumstances or the actors' role in the crime to sustain Tichnell's sentence despite the pattern of life sentences found in similar cases. Ibid. In Delaware, the court looks to those cases in which a capital-sentencing proceeding has been conducted to select its pool of similar cases, Flamer v. State, 490 A. 2d 104, 139 (Del. 1984). From that group, the court draws cases with similar objective factors to determine the proportionality of the death sentence in the subject case. Dawson, supra, 581 A. 2d at 1108. Delaware is quite explicit in its analyses. Although it recognizes that definitive comparison of cases is almost impossible and necessarily touches upon the realm of speculation, Flamer, supra, 490 A. 2d at 144, it does search for a pattern of death sentences, e.g., multiple murders of helpless elderly, ibid., and other objective distinctions, e.g., perpetrators were surprised during burglary, or were juvenile show-offs. Ibid. Finally, as noted, Pennsylvania uses the measure of aggravating factors in a case. See Pirela, supra, 507 A. 2d at 32; Commonwealth v. Maxwell, 505 Pa. 152, 477 A. 2d 1309, 1318, cert. denied, 469 U.S. 971, 105 S.Ct. 370, 83 L.Ed. 2d 306 (1984). Pennsylvania also looks to the salient factors that may bear on a defendant's character. Commonwealth v. Travaglia, 502 Pa. 474, 467 A. 2d 288, 304 (1983), cert. denied, 467 U.S. 1256, 104 S.Ct. 3547, 82 L.Ed. 2d 850 (1984). Justice Utter, in his separate dissent in State v. Jeffries, 105 Wash. 2d 398, 717 P. 2d 722, cert. denied, 479 U.S. 922, 107 S.Ct. 328, 93 L.Ed. 2d 301 (1986), suggested the use of a balancing approach superimposed upon a `salient factors' approach to identify the pool of similar cases. [2] Id. 717 P. 2d 722 at 744. That approach involves two steps. The first step requires a court to select similar cases from the statutorily-defined pool by choosing three or four of the most important factors of the subject case. Ibid. The second step would compute the frequency of death sentences within the pool of similar cases. Ibid. That would assure that no death sentence is affirmed unless in similar cases throughout the state the death penalty has been imposed generally and not `wantonly and freakishly imposed.' Id. at 743 (citing Moore v. State, 233 Ga. 861, 213 S.E. 2d 829, 832 (1975), cert. denied, 428 U.S. 910, 96 S.Ct. 3222, 49 L.Ed. 2d 1218 (1976) (quoting Furman v. Georgia, supra, 408 U.S. at 310, 92 S.Ct. at 2763, 33 L.Ed. 2d at 390 (Stewart, J., concurring))). The National Center summarizes the various approaches as follows: The first is to rely on generalized notions of reasonableness, based on the court's own values, experience, and general familiarity with prior cases.    The second is the precedent-seeking approach. Using this approach, the court: (a) identifies the relevant aggravating and mitigating factors; (b) makes a judgment regarding the proportionality or excessiveness of the sentence based upon those factors; and (c) identifies one or more comparable cases that support its decision. The third is the frequency approach. This method involves: (a) specifying which features of the review case should be used to find comparable cases; (b) identifying the other cases that share the selected characteristics; (c) determining the percentage of defendants in the similar cases who were sentenced to die; and (d) deciding whether death sentences were imposed with sufficient frequency within this class of similar cases [so] as to    serve as an effective deterrent    or to constitute a justifiable form of retribution in light of contemporary community standards. [National Center for State Courts, Proportionality Review Project 2-3 (1984) (footnotes omitted) (quoting Baldus and Pulaski I, supra, 74 J.Crim.L. & Criminology at 668-69).] We discuss the frequency method first. 1. Frequency Approach As noted, Justice Utter believed that the frequency analysis is the most acceptable approach to proportionality review. Use of the word generally suggested to him that the threshold frequency at which a death sentence becomes appropriate is significantly greater than 50 percent. Jeffries, supra, 717 P. 2d at 744. He viewed that approach as simple, maintaining a reasonable amount of objectivity by defining a genuine `threshold frequency,' and identifying the specific factors by which to select `similar cases.' Ibid. Nonetheless, he had to concede that to employ that test in some cases where a limited selection of salient factors will make the case unique is not feasible. Ibid. In such situations, the court, in his view, probably would have to turn to a more subjective comparison of the `severity' of dissimilar cases. Id. at 745. The Public Defender, we believe misperceiving the Gregg reference to whether death sentences have been imposed generally in similar cases, has suggested that we are bound to disapprove a sentence of death whenever there is a predictable frequency rate of less than eighty percent. As we noted in Part II, these concepts of generally imposed are not transferrable from the Eighth Amendment context. In Ramseur, supra, we predicted the difficulty of reconciling the concepts of predictability of sentencing with individualized sentencing. 106 N.J. at 330-31, 524 A. 2d 188. We believe that in the individualized-sentencing process mandated by Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U.S. 586, 98 S.Ct. 2954, 57 L.Ed. 2d 973 (1978), and by our own Capital Punishment Act, that death be neither normal nor general in capital sentencing is inevitable. If we are correct that death need not be normal or general to be a licit sentence, the frequency approach will not provide a sole-source, fail-safe method of proportionality review. For even were we to establish a threshold level of acceptability (let us say the fifty percent suggested by Justice Utter), to ignore striking disproportion between death-sentenced cases and those in the life-sentenced pool could be unfair to those in the death-sentenced pool. Given the inevitable role of mercy in the death-sentencing process, there will be those whose life sentences will not yield to statistical analysis. Although the Master endorses the frequency approach, he has not suggested that we substitute a numerical process for a reasoned process of decision. [The Master's] endorsement of the frequency approach does not carry with it, however, a recommendation that the Court quantify mathematically its judgments of the death-sentencing frequency among similar cases. Several courts have expressed concern that the application of a strictly quantitative approach to the subject could lead to arbitrary line drawing and limit the legitimate exercise of judicial discretion. More importantly, such an approach may inappropriately suggest that the complex judgments involved in proportionality determinations can be expressed with mathematical precision. [ Final Report, supra, at 42-43.] Rather than employ the frequency method as a cutoff, we believe that it will serve as a coefficient of consistency. The higher the frequency of a death sentence among the comparison group of similar cases, the more certain the determination that the sentence is proportionate. The lower the frequency, the more strictly the Court must scrutinize the case for the possible influence of impermissible factors. We believe that the frequency approach will help us to review cases in terms of the substantive principle that we believe should be controlling in these cases, namely, [a] death sentence is comparatively excessive if other defendants with similar characteristics generally receive sentences other than death for committing factually similar offenses in the same jurisdiction. Tichnell, supra, 468 A. 2d at 17 n. 18. We need not go so far as to suggest that the ratios tip very strongly in the opposite direction to justify the invalidation of a sentence on the basis of the frequency approach. Within its limits, the scientific method is an aid to the Court. A frequency approach with a broad universe can cull a group of comparable cases from a larger group of death-eligible cases. In this way, the proportion of life and death sentences within this similar group can be estimated and an empirical assessment of comparative excessiveness can be made. [Raymond Paternoster & AnnMarie Kazyaka, An Examination of Comparatively Excessive Death Sentences in South Carolina 1979-1987, 17 N.Y.U.Rev.L. & Soc.Change 475, 486 (1989-1990).] The greater the statistical frequency of life sentencing in the comparison group of similar cases, the greater will be the need for the Court to focus on the real people involved in the defendant's and other similar cases. We have a data base system that can define similar cases in three ways: salient factors, the numerical preponderance of aggravating and mitigating factors, and the index of outcomes. Examining each of those pools in terms of relative frequency will help us to identify comparable cases and to determine whether offenders like Marshall have received, or usually will receive, a life sentence. If so, then those comparable pools will allow us to consider what characteristics in Marshall's case might sustain the imposition of a death sentence. 2.