Opinion ID: 6105527
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Discussion of the Motion and Underlying Merits

Text: In its earlier decision, the court relied on Gleason I, 299 Kan. at 1196-98, to provide guidance for the burden-of-proof instruction issue on remand. The court advised that a district judge in Kansas must instruct a penalty-phase jury that the existence of mitigating factors need not be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. R. Carr, 300 Kan. at 302-03. The court noted further that the failure to give this instruction would have required it to vacate R. Carr's death sentence on Eighth Amendment grounds, were it not already doing so because of the failure to sever. 300 Kan. at 303. 50 In Kansas v. Carr, the United States Supreme Court held the Eighth Amendment does not require the instruction. 577 U.S. at 122. Thereafter, R. Carr filed his motion with our court, arguing the instruction is compulsory under state law and the district court's failure to give it was reversible error. R. Carr claimed we had effectively made that state law determination in Gleason I and nothing in the United States Supreme Court's opinion prevented this holding under state law. He also argued the instructions created a reasonable likelihood the jurors applied a beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard to his proffered mitigation evidence when considered as a whole. We deny R. Carr's motion because it is an inappropriate procedural vehicle to advance this new, state-law instructional issue. See Cheever II, 306 Kan. at 774 (denying similar motion on same instruction issue); Gleason II, 305 Kan. at 798 (same). Nevertheless, we address the merits of the claim given our statutory obligation in capital appeals to both consider the question of sentence and notice unassigned errors appearing of record if the ends of justice would be served thereby. K.S.A. 2020 Supp. 21-6619(b); Cheever II, 306 Kan. at 774 (electing to reach merits of similar issue [u]nder the unique circumstances of [the] case and in the interest of judicial economy); Gleason II, 305 Kan. at 798-99 (same). Turning to the merits, we conclude the failure to give the instruction was not error under Kansas law. Granted, under the first component of the four-part framework, both R. Carr and J. Carr preserved this challenge by requesting the mitigating circumstances burden-of-proof instruction at trial. See State v. Perez, 306 Kan. 655, 667-68, 396 P.3d 78 (2017) (holding first step satisfied when defendant challenged on appeal district court's failure to give requested instruction). 51 But our resolution of the issue turns on whether step two is also satisfied—i.e., whether the instruction as given is legally appropriate. State v. Pabst, 273 Kan. 658, 659, 44 P.3d 1230 (2002) (focusing analysis on whether instruction given fairly and accurately stated the law as applied to the facts of the case where requested instruction denied). In Cheever II, a majority of the court held that K.S.A. 21-4624(e) provides greater protection to a death-eligible defendant than required by the federal Constitution. In Kansas, a capital jury must be instructed that mitigating circumstances need not be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. 306 Kan. 760, Syl. ¶ 5. Although this court had not previously addressed the burden-of-proof issue as a matter of state law, the Cheever II court concluded that pronouncements in Kleypas I, although dicta, had recognized a construction of the statute that requires a capital sentencing jury be instructed that mitigating circumstances need not be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Cheever II, 306 Kan. at 784; see Kleypas I, 272 Kan. at 1078. The court acknowledged that the earlier rulings had been framed in the context of federal constitutional claims (claims that were subsequently rejected by the Kansas v. Carr Court), but nonetheless concluded that state statute independently required such an instruction. The court reiterated this position in Gleason II, 305 Kan. at 798-806. Despite this court's previous pronouncements, we revisit the issue today, and we conclude that the district judge's instructions to R. Carr and J. Carr's jury correctly stated the law. We recognize [t]he doctrine of stare decisis provides that 'points of law established by a court are generally followed by the same court and courts of lower rank in later cases in which the same legal issue is raised.' State v. Clark, 313 Kan. 556, 565, 486 P.3d 591 (2021). Application of the doctrine promotes stability within the legal system, and 'we do not lightly disapprove of precedent.' 313 Kan. at 565. But 'stare decisis is not an inexorable command.' 313 Kan. at 565 (quoting State v. Hambright, 310 Kan. 408, 416, 447 P.3d 972 [2019]). Where, as here, we are convinced that the original holding is neither sound nor firmly entrenched, it is incumbent on the court to 52 correct it. See McCullough v. Wilson, 308 Kan. 1025, 1036, 426 P.3d 494 (2018) (acknowledging this court's authority to overturn precedent where rule of law erroneous or no longer sound). The challenged instruction provides: The State has the burden to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that there are one or more aggravating circumstances and that they outweigh mitigating circumstances found to exist. The jury was also instructed that each member can decide what circumstances are mitigating and that unanimity is not required in that regard: The determination of what are mitigating circumstances is for you as jurors to decide under the facts and circumstances of the case. Mitigating circumstances are to be determined by each individual juror when deciding whether the State has proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the death penalty should be imposed. The same mitigating circumstances do not need to be found by all members of the jury in order to be considered by an individual juror in arriving at his or her sentencing decision. Similarly, the instruction describing the verdict forms reiterated these basic points. When considering an individual defendant, if you find unanimously beyond a reasonable doubt that there are one or more aggravating circumstances and that they outweigh mitigating circumstances found to exist, then you shall impose a sentence of death. If you sentence the particular defendant to death, you must designate upon the appropriate verdict form with particularity the aggravating circumstances which you unanimously find beyond a reasonable doubt. That is Verdict Form (1). 53 If you find that the evidence does not prove any of the claimed aggravating circumstances beyond a reasonable doubt, your presiding juror should mark the appropriate verdict form. That is Verdict Form (2). The court will fix a proper sentence for the particular defendant. If one or more jurors is not persuaded beyond a reasonable doubt that aggravating circumstances exist or that those found to exist do not outweigh mitigating circumstances, then you should sign the appropriate alternative verdict form indicating the jury is unable to reach a unanimous verdict sentencing the defendant to death. That is Verdict Form (3). In that event, the court will fix a proper sentence for the particular defendant. When reviewing the legal propriety of penalty phase instructions addressing mitigating circumstances, we must consider whether the instructions, considered together as a whole, fairly and accurately state the applicable law and whether a jury could have been misled into not considering certain mitigating circumstances that, by law, should have been considered. Gleason II, 305 Kan. at 820 (Stegall, J., concurring); see also In re Care and Treatment of Quillen, 312 Kan. 841, 849, 481 P.3d 791 (2021) (When reviewing jury instruction challenges, we consider '''jury instructions as a whole . . . to determine whether they properly and fairly state the applicable law or whether it is reasonable to conclude that they could have misled the jury.'). K.S.A. 21-4624(e) establishes the law governing the jury's consideration of aggravating and mitigating circumstances during the penalty phase: If, by unanimous vote, the jury finds beyond a reasonable doubt that one or more of the aggravating circumstances enumerated in K.S.A. 21-4625 and amendments thereto exist and, further, that the existence of such aggravating circumstances is not outweighed by any mitigating circumstances which are found to exist, the defendant shall be sentenced to death; otherwise, the defendant shall be sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. The jury, if its verdict is a unanimous recommendation of a sentence 54 of death, shall designate in writing, signed by the foreman of the jury, the statutory aggravating circumstances which it found beyond a reasonable doubt. If, after a reasonable time for deliberation, the jury is unable to reach a verdict, the judge shall dismiss the jury and impose a sentence of imprisonment of life without the possibility of parole and shall commit the defendant to the custody of the secretary of corrections. In nonjury cases, the court shall follow the requirements of this subsection in determining the sentence to be imposed. K.S.A. 21-4624(e); see also K.S.A. 2020 Supp. 21-6617(e) (same). The challenged instruction was patterned after this court's then-controlling interpretation of K.S.A. 21-4624(e). See Kleypas I, 272 Kan. 894, Syl. ¶¶ 45-58 (holding equipoise weighing equation favoring State unconstitutional, reformulating language to require aggravating circumstances outweigh mitigating circumstances), overruled by Marsh, 278 Kan. at 544-45. Thus, the instruction properly and fairly stated the law governing mitigating circumstances in Kansas. Cf. State v. Woods, 222 Kan. 179, 183, 563 P.2d 1061 (1977) (generally, an instruction patterned after the statute is valid). Furthermore, there is no reasonable likelihood the instruction misled jurors and prevented them from considering relevant mitigating evidence as required under K.S.A. 21-4624(e). As the United States Supreme Court observed: The instruction makes clear that both the existence of aggravating circumstances and the conclusion that they outweigh mitigating circumstances must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt; mitigating circumstances themselves, on the other hand, must merely be 'found to exist.' . . . 'Found to exist' certainly does not suggest proof beyond a reasonable doubt. . . . Not once do the instructions say that defense counsel bears the burden of proving the facts constituting a mitigating circumstance beyond a reasonable doubt—nor would that make much sense, since one of the mitigating circumstances is (curiously) 'mercy,' which simply is not a factual determination. Carr, 577 U.S. at 121. 55 For these reasons, no juror would reasonably have speculated that mitigating circumstances must be proved by any particular standard, let alone beyond a reasonable doubt. 577 U.S. at 122. Under the same logic, the challenged instruction did not impede jurors from considering appropriate mitigation under K.S.A. 21-4624(e). Although R. Carr's proposed instruction might also be legally correct, it is not an indispensable part of communicating to the jury the process by which it should carry out its deliberations under state law. The instructions viewed together as a whole correctly and clearly informed the jurors of the law governing their consideration of mitigating circumstances. Accordingly, we find no error in the instructions as given. See State v. McDaniel, 306 Kan. 595, 616, 395 P.3d 429 (2017) (The trial court did not err by failing to instruct the jury with the additional language [defendant] request[ed] because the instruction given fairly and accurately stated the law and accordingly was legally appropriate.). IV. The Remaining Penalty Phase Issues Having resolved R. Carr's state constitutional challenge and his motion to consider the instructional challenge under state law, our analysis turns to the remaining penalty phase issues raised by the defendants. A. P1/21—Severance In the court's previous decision, it considered whether the district court should have severed the trial's guilt phase under Kansas law. R. Carr, 300 Kan. at 93-94 (citing K.S.A. 22-3202[3]; K.S.A. 22-3204; State v. Davis, 277 Kan. 231, 239, 83 P.3d 182 [2004] [listing five factors employed to determine whether prejudice sufficient to mandate severance]). It concluded the district court erred in denying defendants' repeated 56 requests to sever. R. Carr, 300 Kan. at 95-97 (defendants had antagonistic defenses; evidence in favor of one defendant admissible in separate trial not allowed in joint trial). But a majority held the error was harmless in the guilt phase due to the overwhelming strength of the evidence against the defendants. 300 Kan. at 100-01; J. Carr, 300 Kan. at 356. The court separately analyzed whether the failure to sever penalty-phase proceedings violated R. Carr's right to an individualized capital sentencing determination under the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution. R. Carr, 300 Kan. at 27582. Utilizing factors similar to those relied on for the guilt-phase severance analysis (antagonistic nature of mitigation cases, admission of evidence by one defendant not likely to have been admitted in severed trial), it concluded that the failure to sever the penalty-phase proceedings violated the Eighth Amendment. The court vacated the death sentences and remanded the case to the district court because it was unable to find beyond a reasonable doubt that the error had little, if any, likelihood of changing the jury's ultimate conclusion regarding the weight of the aggravating and mitigating circumstances, in light of the record as a whole. 300 Kan. at 281-82; J. Carr, 300 Kan. at 371. The United States Supreme Court rejected our court's Eighth Amendment analysis in favor of a due process framework: As we held in Romano v. Oklahoma, 512 U.S. 1 (1994), it is not the role of the Eighth Amendment to establish a special 'federal code of evidence' governing 'the admissibility of evidence at capital sentencing proceedings.' Id., at 11-12. Rather, it is the Due Process Clause that wards off the introduction of 'unduly prejudicial' evidence that would 'rende[r] the trial fundamentally unfair.' Payne v. Tennessee, 501 U.S. 808, 825 (1991); see also Brown v. Sanders, 546 U.S. 212 (2006). Carr, 577 U.S. at 123. 57 And it concluded without reservation that the district court's failure to sever did not violate the defendants' constitutional protections under the Due Process Clause: In light of all the evidence presented at the guilt and penalty phases relevant to the jury's sentencing determination, the contention that the admission of mitigating evidence by one brother could have 'so infected' the jury's consideration of the other's sentence as to amount to a denial of due process is beyond the pale. 577 U.S. at 124. With the federal question answered, on remand we invited the parties to address whether state law required the district court to sever the penalty-phase proceedings. We directed them to designate the severance issue as P21, even though it was designated P1 in our previous decision. R. Carr contends this court already decided the penalty-phase severance issue under state law by applying the state-law severance standard to reach its Eighth Amendment conclusion. The State urges us to reevaluate that conclusion in light of the United States Supreme Court's unequivocal assessment that [o]nly the most extravagant speculation would lead to the conclusion that the supposedly prejudicial evidence rendered the Carr brothers' joint sentencing proceeding fundamentally unfair. 577 U.S. at 126. The State submits the same logic applies under state law. Like R. Carr, the State treats the state-law penalty phase severance question as an issue distinct from the guiltphase severance issue. J. Carr takes a different tack and suggests the question on remand is whether the state law-based failure to sever during the guilt phase resulted in prejudice in the sentencing phase. Or, as J. Carr puts it, there is no basis in state law for this Court to hold that the district court's failure to sever the trials ceased to be an error once the sentencing phase of trial began. 58 We agree with J. Carr's framing of the issue. This court previously held that the trial court's refusal to sever the defendants' trials during the guilt phase constituted error under Kansas law. R. Carr, 300 Kan. at 97. This holding was not disturbed by the United States Supreme Court's subsequent opinion in Kansas v. Carr. As such, this holding is now the law of the case for purposes of this appeal. State v. Cheeks, 313 Kan. 60, 66, 482 P.3d 1129 (2021) (Under the law of the case doctrine, when a second appeal is brought to this court in the same case, the first decision is the settled law of the case on all questions involved in the first appeal, and reconsideration will not normally be given to such questions.). The improper joinder of the defendants did not cease to be error at the commencement of the penalty phase. Accordingly, we hold today that this error continued into the penalty phase. That said, the error does not require reversal of R. Carr's death sentence. We conclude there is no reasonable probability this error affected the death sentence verdict. State v. Ward, 292 Kan. 541, 565, 256 P.3d 801 (2011). As an error carried over from the trial's guilt phase, our penalty-phase harmless error analysis necessarily begins with reviewing what circumstances caused us to conclude there was error. In R. Carr, we held a state-law error occurred when the district judge abused his discretion by refusing to sever the guilt phase trials. Reviewing the factors supporting severance, we noted only two cut in defendants' favors. The first was the defendants' antagonistic defenses that emphasized the strength of the evidence against the other. We described this as [e]ach . . . [doing] his best to deflect attention from himself on the Birchwood crimes by assisting in the prosecution of the other. R. Carr, 300 Kan. at 95. The second was the conclusion that the joint trial resulted in the exclusion of evidence each defendant could have used to bolster his antagonistic identity defense. See 300 Kan. at 97. 59 In deciding the district judge abused his discretion in denying severance, our court cited two mistakes of law: failing to perform the necessary analysis when ruling on the issue at a pretrial hearing; and ruling based on an incorrect view that defendants' incriminating statements, inadmissible during the joint guilt-phase trial, would also be inadmissible during separate trials. 300 Kan. at 97-98. We also observed an abuse of discretion in the dearth of record support for Judge Clark's virtually indistinguishable, nearly completely unexplained rulings over time, even though the conflict between the defendant's theories became more and more clear and the pile of evidence that would be excluded because of the joint trial grew ever taller. Given Judge Clark's continuing duty to carefully consider severance to avoid prejudice to a defendant, and the overriding status of the defendant's right to fair trial, Judge Clark's decisions were progressively unreasonable. 300 Kan. at 98. But we held the error did not require reversal. Although its path to R. Carr's convictions was made somewhat smoother and straighter by the judge's related guilt phase errors on severance and on third-party evidence and hearsay, the State presented compelling evidence of R. Carr's guilt, all of which would have been admissible in a severed trial. 300 Kan. at 100-01. Like the finding of error itself, this court's holding— that the failure to sever did not contribute to the jury's guilt-phase verdict—is also settled law for purposes of this appeal under the law of the case doctrine. Therefore, today, we must determine whether this error, which was harmless in the guilt phase, so prejudiced defendants in the penalty phase that we must vacate their capital sentences. We place the burden of demonstrating harmlessness on the party benefitting from the error, i.e., the State. 300 Kan. at 95 (evolving caselaw generally places burden demonstrating harmlessness on party benefitting from error). Because the error arises under state law, the State's burden is to show there is no reasonable probability the error affected the jury's ultimate conclusion regarding the death sentence verdict. See K.S.A. 2020 Supp. 60-261; Ward, 292 Kan. at 569. 60 Though we now consider the severance issue under state law, the United States Supreme Court's assessment of this issue under federal law remains instructive and continues to inform our reversibility analysis. The higher Court concluded that the brothers did not even raise an Eighth Amendment problem by arguing they were prejudiced by mitigation evidence that would have been inadmissible in severed proceedings. Instead, their argument is subject to due process analysis because it is the Due Process Clause that wards off the introduction of 'unduly prejudicial' evidence that would 'rende[r] the trial fundamentally unfair.' Carr, 577 U.S. at 123. Thus, the proper question was not whether the right to an individualized sentencing determination was fatally impaired by the failure to sever, but whether the evidence 'so infected the sentencing proceeding with unfairness as to render the jury's imposition of the death penalty a denial of due process.' 577 U.S. at 123-24; see R. Carr, 300 Kan. at 281. Notably, [t]he mere admission of evidence that might not otherwise have been admitted in a severed proceeding does not demand the automatic vacatur of a death sentence. Carr, 577 U.S. at 124. Although the higher Court focused on the question of error rather than harmlessness, its analysis leaves little room to conclude the failure to sever requires reversal now as a state-law error. The higher Court rejected all notion that the failure to sever had any impact on the jury's penalty-phase verdict. See 577 U.S. at 126 (holding [i]t is beyond reason to think that the jury's death verdicts were caused by allegedly prejudicial evidence in light of the evidence of the almost inconceivable cruelty and depravity of the defendants' acts). Indeed, it essentially concluded the defendants' argument was so weak that even assuming witness statements found in police reports had been erroneously admitted without opportunity for confrontation, We are confident that [allowing defendants] cross-examination regarding these police reports would not have had the slightest effect upon the sentences. 577 U.S. at 126. For us to conclude that there is a reasonable probability the antagonistic evidence affected the 61 jury's death sentence verdict, we would have to reject the higher Court's assessment that even such a possibility was beyond reason. Neither the record nor the parties briefing offer any basis for our court to question the conclusion of the United States Supreme Court. The United States Supreme Court's assessment, coupled with the strength of the State's penalty-phase evidence (discussed more fully below in our cumulative error analysis), demonstrates that the state-law severance error was harmless. B. P2—Notice of Aggravating Circumstances R. Carr next alleges the State failed to give him constitutionally sufficient notice of the aggravating factors it intended to rely on to seek the death penalty, despite complying with K.S.A. 21-4624(a)'s notice requirements. In its previous decision, the court rejected the argument under its established precedent. R. Carr, 300 Kan. at 282; see State v. Scott, 286 Kan. 54, 101-02, 183 P.3d 801 (2008) (holding statutorily compliant notice of intent to seek death penalty is sufficient to give defendant meaningful opportunity to respond to statutory aggravating factors). Neither R. Carr nor J. Carr submit any additional authority causing us to reconsider that decision. Under the law of the case, we continue to hold that R. Carr had constitutionally sufficient notice of the aggravating factors the State intended to pursue. See Cheeks, 313 Kan. at 66.