Opinion ID: 1742511
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Alleged Mitigation Exception Under the Eighth Amendment

Text: The defense also argues that Louisiana's hearsay rules must give way to the overriding Eighth Amendment requirement that juries have the opportunity to consider and act upon all mitigating evidence offered by the defendant. He cites Green v. Georgia, 442 U.S. 95, 99 S.Ct. 2150, 60 L.Ed.2d 738 (1979). The Supreme Court's per curiam opinion in Green v. Georgia , is so easily distinguished from this case that it hurts Langley's cause. In Green, a capital case, the trial court excluded as hearsay a statement made by the defendant's co-perpetrator who had previously been tried and sentenced to death on the basis of the statement. The co-perpetrator, Moore, had confessed to a close friend that he had sent the defendant off to run an errand before he shot and killed the victim. Moore's statement that he alone killed the victim out of the defendant's presence was highly relevant to the issue of punishment at the defendant's trial, and it was only under these unique circumstances, that the Supreme Court overturned the defendant's conviction and death sentence. Id., 442 U.S. at 97, 99 S.Ct. at 2151. The Green Court emphasized that substantial reasons existed to assume [the statement's] reliability: The statement had been made spontaneously to a close friend; it was amply corroborated by the other evidence at trial; it was clearly against the co-perpetrator's interest and made for no apparent ulterior motive; and [p]erhaps most important, the state considered the testimony sufficiently reliable to use it against Moore, and to base a sentence of death upon it. Id. (footnote omitted). By contrast, Langley's statements are essentially exculpatory, and were made long after his crime to a witness the defense planned to call at trial. In short, they possessed no indicia of reliability that would justify admitting them. This argument fails.