Opinion ID: 2611126
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: the 1984 statute was unconstitutional

Text: The 1984 measure, and the 1978 measure before it, were deliberately designed so as to specify exclusive criteria confining the scope of the death penalty and to eliminate discretionary imposition of death. However, as Supreme Court decisions subsequently bore out, the drafters went too far. The statute enacted in 1984 fell short of the standards of the Fourteenth Amendment. It was unconstitutional as written. The 1984 measure was unconstitutional because it did not allow the jury or the judge to decide against putting a particular person to death on individualized mitigating grounds unrelated to the three statutory questions. This constitutional requirement was argued at length by the dissenting opinions in this court's first decision in the present case. The Supreme Court had applied the requirement subsequent to Oregon's 1978 initiative measure in decisions that need not be again recited here. These decisions were known when the 1984 measure was drafted. Nonetheless, the sponsors of that measure chose to repeat the rigid formula mandating death upon the three specified findings. The 1984 measure allowed the jury to consider any mitigating circumstances in answering the second question, [w]hether there is a probability that the defendant would commit criminal acts of violence that would constitute a continuing threat to society. ORS 163.150(1)(b)(B). Attaching this provision to the second question made little sense, even to the majority in Wagner I, because personal mitigating conditions of the kind contemplated by the Supreme Court would not make the convicted person less of a future threat; they might just as likely make him more dangerous. See 305 Or. at 206, 752 P.2d 1136 (Linde, J., dissenting). In 1988, the majority believed that it could save the statute by letting the jury consider any mitigating circumstances or factors with respect to any of the three questions. 305 Or. at 167, 752 P.2d 1136. But the court refused to go beyond the three specified questions and to create another, open-ended jury issue, a fourth question, altogether outside the provisions of the statute. In this respect the Wagner I majority was right. The statute mandated death upon affirmative answers to the three specified questions. But, as the current majority acknowledges, Wagner I proved to be wrong and the dissents to be right about the validity of the statute. In mandating death upon affirmative answers to the three statutory questions, the 1984 measure indeed was unconstitutional. Even if mitigating evidence was extended from the second question to all three questions, as Wagner I held, this would not and could not alter the terms of the factual issues that each juror must decide. A conscientious juror, after taking into account mitigating evidence, would still be asked to decide only whether the defendant had acted deliberately, whether his act was an unreasonable response to any provocation, and whether there remained a probability that the defendant would commit criminal acts of violence that would constitute a continuing threat to society. Under the statute, a juror who conscientiously answered yes to each question still could not vote against death on other, unrelated grounds. The majority's efforts in Wagner I did not save the statute. Penry showed that the 1984 measure was unconstitutional as enacted and as interpreted in 1988.