Opinion ID: 774603
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Cruel and Unusual Punishment Challenges

Text: 60 A COA was granted on the issue of whether Styron's conviction violated the cruel and unusual punishment clauses of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. In Arave v. Cheech, 507 U.S. 463, 470 (1993), the Supreme Court held that to satisfy the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments, a capital sentencing scheme must 'suitably direc[t] and limi[t]' the sentencer's discretion 'so as to minimize the risk of wholly arbitrary and capricious action.' (citing Lewis v. Jeffers, 497 U.S. 764 (1990)). The Court has set out a two-part test to determine the constitutionality of a death penalty scheme, examining both the eligibility decision and selection decision. Tuilaepa v. California, 512 U.S. 967 (1994). As Styron attacks only the eligibility requirement, only that portion of the test is relevant. To render a defendant eligible for the death penalty in a homicide case, we have indicated that the trier of fact must convict the defendant of murder and find one 'aggravating circumstance' (or its equivalent) at either the guilt or penalty phase. Tuilaepa, 512 U.S. at 972 (internal citations omitted). As we have explained, the aggravating circumstance must meet two requirements. First the circumstance may not apply to every defendant convicted of a murder; it must apply only to a subclass of defendants convicted of murder. Second, the aggravating circumstance may not be unconstitutionally vague. Id. (internal citations omitted). 61 Styron argues that former Texas Penal Code § 19.03(a)(7), now Texas Penal Code § 19.03(a)(8), 2 violates the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment because the age of a victim does not establish a principled basis for distinguishing defendants under the constraints of Arave. He asserts that there is no principled basis for distinguishing between a defendant who murdered a child under the age of six from one who murdered an older child. We disagree. Under the test presented in Tuilaepa, the aggravating circumstance for capital murder of murdering a child under the age of six is constitutionally sufficient. First, it does not apply to every defendant convicted of murder; it applies only to a certain subclass of defendants. See Tuilaepa, 512 U.S. at 972. Second, it is not unconstitutionally vague. See Henderson v. State, 962 S.W.2d 544, 563 (Tex. Crim. App. 1997) (The child-murder provision meets both tests: murderers of children under six is a subclass of murderers in general, and 'children under six' is a clear and definite category.). On the contrary, the statute is very clear unlike other statutes which the Supreme Court has found to be vague. See, e.g., Maynard v. Cartwright, 486 U.S. 356 (1988) (holding especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel to be vague). The vagueness review is quite deferential. Tuilaepa, 512 U.S. at 973. 62 Styron misses the mark when he argues that under the Eighth Amendment, conviction and imposition of the death penalty for the murder of a child under six years old is arbitrary. A vague propositional factor used in the sentencing decision creates an unacceptable risk of randomness, the mark of the arbitrary and capricious sentencing process prohibited by Furman v. Georgia. Id. at 974-75 (emphasis added). Texas Penal Code § 19.03(a)(7), now Texas Penal Code § 19.03(a)(8), has no such vague propositional factor and is not arbitrary. See Godfrey v. Georgia, 446 U.S. 420, 428 (1980) (A capital sentencing scheme must, in short, provide a 'meaningful basis for distinguishing the few cases in which [the penalty] is imposed from the many cases in which it is not. This means if a State wishes to authorize capital punishment it has a constitutional responsibility to tailor and apply its law in a manner that avoids arbitrary and capricious infliction of the death penalty. Part of a State's responsibility in this regard is to define the crimes for which death may be the sentence in a way that obviates 'standardless [sentencing] discretion.') (internal citations omitted). 63 On a more general level, the Supreme Court upheld the Texas death penalty scheme insofar as it narrowed the definition of capital murder to circumstances in which there was at least one statutory aggravating circumstance in a first-degree murder case before a death sentence may even be considered. Jurek v. Texas, 428 U.S. 262, 276 (1976). Murdering a child under six is a sufficiently narrow statutory aggravating factor. Therefore, we do not find a violation of the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.