Opinion ID: 2606
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: overlap of aggravating factors

Text: During the penalty phase, the district court instructed the jury to consider three statutory aggravating factors and four non-statutory aggravating factors, as well as nineteen mitigating factors. Fell argues that three of the non-statutory aggravating factors substantially overlapped because they rest on the same factual predicate  that Fell intentionally participated in the death of King. He maintains that by finding this fact, the jury could more easily find aggravating factors and then more easily find that those factors outweighed the mitigating factors presented by Fell. Accordingly, Fell contends, the overlap of aggravating factors necessarily skewed the jury's decision-making in favor of the death penalty. We disagree. The factors in question are: (1) Donald Fell participated in the abduction of Teresca King to facilitate his escape from the area in which he and an accomplice had committed a double murder. (2) Donald Fell participated in the murder of King to prevent her from reporting the kidnapping and carjacking. (3) Donald Fell participated in the murder of King after substantial premeditation to commit the crime of carjacking. Fell also contends that during its closing argument, the government compounded this duplication. It emphasized the relationship of Fell's intentional participation in King's murder to the three non-statutory aggravating factors by stating: (1) there is no doubt that [Fell] participated in the abduction of Terry King in order to get out of Rutland to avoid those double murders; (2) [Fell] made the decision she needed to die. This factor clearly proven again; and (3) [a]gain, there's no doubt that they chose Terry King. This was no random event. Before deliberation, the district court instructed the jury: The process of weighing aggravating and mitigating factors against each other, or weighing aggravating factors alone if you find no mitigating factors, is by no means a mechanical process. In other words, you should not simply count the total number of aggravating and mitigating factors and reach a decision based on which number is greater; rather you should consider the weight and value of each factor.... The law contemplates that different factors may be given different weight or values by different jurors. Thus, you may find that one mitigating factor outweighs all aggravating factors combined, or that the aggravating factors proven, do not, standing alone, justify the imposition of death beyond a reasonable doubt. After deliberating, the jury found unanimously that all of the aggravating factors, both statutory and non-statutory, existed beyond a reasonable doubt. In addition, seventeen mitigating factors were found by at least one juror, and eleven of those mitigating factors were found by at least ten of the twelve jurors. Because this Circuit has not addressed the constitutionality of allegedly duplicative aggravating factors, Fell relies on the Tenth Circuit's decision in United States v. McCullah, 76 F.3d 1087 (10th Cir.1996). McCullah held that under the Continuing Criminal Enterprise provision of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, 21 U.S.C. § 848, aggravating sentencing factors that impermissibly duplicate each other raise constitutional questions. Id. at 1111. The Tenth Circuit found that [s]uch double counting of aggravating factors, especially under a weighing scheme, has a tendency to skew the weighing process and creates the risk that the death sentence will be imposed arbitrarily and thus, unconstitutionally. Id. Although the statute at issue in McCullah, like the FDPA, allows the jury to accord as much or as little weight to any particular factor as it views appropriate, the Tenth Circuit stated that when a sentencing body is asked, in essence, to weigh a factor twice, a reviewing court cannot `assume it would have made no difference if the thumb had been removed from death's side of the scale.' Id. at 1112 (citing Stringer v. Black, 503 U.S. 222, 232, 112 S.Ct. 1130, 117 L.Ed.2d 367 (1992)). McCullah thus stands for the proposition that when duplicative aggravating factors are used in the penalty phase, a reviewing court must re-weigh the factors and perform a harmless error analysis. Id. Applying this analysis, the McCullah court found that two sets of aggravating factors were duplicative because in each of them, while the factors are not identical per se, [one] factor necessarily subsumes the [other] factor. Id. at 1111. Three years after the Tenth Circuit's decision in McCullah, the issue of duplicative aggravating factors was considered by the Supreme Court in Jones v. United States, 527 U.S. 373, 119 S.Ct. 2090, 144 L.Ed.2d 370 (1999), a case that reviewed a Fifth Circuit decision applying McCullah. The Fifth Circuit had found that two of the aggravating factors charged by the government were unconstitutionally duplicative. The Supreme Court declined to decide whether the Tenth Circuit's double-counting theory was either valid or appropriately applied by the Fifth Circuit. Id. at 398-99, 119 S.Ct. 2090. Instead, the Court stated that [w]e have never before held that aggravating factors could be duplicative so as to render them constitutionally invalid.... What we have said is that the weighing process may be impermissibly skewed if the sentencing jury considers an invalid factor. Id. at 398 (citing Stringer, 503 U.S. at 232, 112 S.Ct. 1130). Assuming for the sake of argument that the Tenth Circuit's theory in McCullah applied in Jones, the Court found that the two non-statutory aggravating factors at issue  (I) the victim's young age, her slight stature, her background, and her unfamiliarity with San Angelo, Texas and (ii) the victim's personal characteristics and the effect of the instant offense on [her] family  were not duplicative. Jones, 527 U.S. at 378 n. 3, 119 S.Ct. 2090. Instead, at best, certain evidence was relevant to two different aggravating factors. Id. at 399-400, 119 S.Ct. 2090. The Court also noted that any risk that the weighing process would be skewed was eliminated by the District Court's instruction to the jury that it should weigh the value of each factor rather than counting the number of factors on each side. Id. [26] The government urges us to follow the lead of the Eighth Circuit in Purkey, 428 F.3d at 762, and the Fifth Circuit in United States v. Robinson, 367 F.3d 278, 292-93 (5th Cir.2004), and find that a capital jury may permissibly be presented with duplicative aggravating factors. However, we are not required to decide this question because the statutory aggravating factors in question do not impermissibly duplicate each other. Under McCullah and its Tenth Circuit progeny, aggravating factors are duplicative when one necessarily subsumes the other, see Cooks v. Ward, 165 F.3d 1283, 1289 (10th Cir.1998), or, in other words, when a jury would necessarily have to find one in order to find the other, Johnson v. Gibson, 169 F.3d 1239, 1252 (10th Cir.1999). Two factors are not duplicative merely because they are supported by the same evidence. See Jones, 527 U.S. at 399, 119 S.Ct. 2090. While the three non-statutory aggravating factors in the present case arguably overlap to a certain degree, no one factor necessarily subsumes another. Factors one and two both address the motive for Fell's acts of violence against King  that he had committed a double murder and wanted to avoid capture. But these two factors differ because the first refers to the abduction of King, and the second specifically to her murder. These acts were separated by several hours in time. Accordingly, separate consideration of different facts was required for the jury to find each factor. Nor does factor two subsume factor three, which provides that Fell participated in the murder of King after substantial premeditation to commit the crime of carjacking. While addressing the same carjacking conduct as the other two factors, factor three focuses on premeditation rather than motive. These are similar but nonetheless distinct concepts, justifying separate consideration and separate findings. As in Jones, at best, certain evidence was relevant to [the] different aggravating factors, 527 U.S. at 399, 119 S.Ct. 2090, and the district court did not err in submitting these factors to the jury. Additionally, we conclude that the prosecutor's statements did not encourage the jury to confuse the factors. The government never suggested that the jury apply the factors as if one incorporated another. It did not imply that factors one and two involved the same conduct, or that a finding of motive in factor two was equivalent to a finding of premeditation in factor three. Moreover, although we find no constitutional error in the submission of the aggravating factors, assuming we were to conclude otherwise, any such error would not have affected the fairness of the proceedings in light of the district court's instructions to the jury. See Jones, 527 U.S. at 399-400, 119 S.Ct. 2090. The court instructed the jurors not to simply count the number of aggravating factors in reference to the mitigators, but to consider the weight and value of each. Thus, the jury would have known going into deliberations that, in reaching the verdict, it should make a qualitative assessment of the aggravating and mitigating evidence as a whole, rather than focusing on the number of factors on each side of the scale. Furthermore, the jury could not have possibly reached its verdict by simply comparing the total numbers of aggravating and mitigating factors given that it imposed death despite finding the existence of more mitigating than aggravating factors. Accordingly, we find unpersuasive Fell's challenge to the non-statutory aggravating factors presented by the government.