Opinion ID: 1244833
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: lead opinion part XVII.A)

Text: Young claims that mercy or sympathy based on the mitigating evidence presented at the penalty phase may play a legitimate role in the deliberations of a capital sentencing jury. From this premise, he articulates two constitutional violations: First, he claims that by instructing the jurors to disregard their sympathetic or merciful responses to the mitigation, the trial court violated his rights under the federal and state constitutions. Second, Young claims that the trial court's refusal to give his requested sympathy instruction also violated his constitutional rights. These claims go to the heart of contemporary capital punishment jurisprudence and require a careful analysis of the precedents of this court and of the United States Supreme Court. Historically, the death penalty was mandatory for defendants convicted of a capital offense. Prior to Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, 92 S.Ct. 2726, 33 L.Ed.2d 346 (1972), however, most states gave their capital sentencing juries unguided discretion to decide whether to impose the death penalty. See McGautha v. California, 402 U.S. 183, 199-202, 91 S.Ct. 1454, 1463-64, 28 L.Ed.2d 711 (1971). As McGautha explained, the purpose of providing juries with this discretion was to permit them to be merciful. Id. at 200-01, 91 S.Ct. at 1463-65. The McGautha Court refused to accept the claim that because such a system lacked any principled basis for selecting those defendants who would receive death rather than mercy, it was unconstitutional. The Court said, To identify before the fact those characteristics of criminal homicides and their perpetrators which call for the death penalty ... [is] beyond present human ability. Id. at 204, 91 S.Ct. at 1465-66. I acknowledge that the Court's decision one year later in Furman overruled McGautha. Furman found that state statutes that gave juries unguided discretion to impose the death penalty were unconstitutional. 408 U.S. at 239, 92 S.Ct. at 2727. Significantly, however, Furman did not suggest that state statutes giving juries unguided discretion to refuse to impose the death penalty were unconstitutional, nor did it challenge McGautha 's reaffirmation of earlier Supreme Court cases establishing that mercy could be extended freely. See McGautha, 402 U.S. at 200-01, 91 S.Ct. at 1463-64. Thereafter, states sought to do exactly what McGautha had considered beyond human ability: to establish criteria upon which the jury properly could choose to impose the death penalty. When these revised death penalty schemes reached the United States Supreme Court four years after Furman, it upheld those that in its view established rational standards for selecting defendants who would receive capital punishment. See, e.g., Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153, 96 S.Ct. 2909, 49 L.Ed.2d 859 (1976) (statute permitted death penalty only upon finding at least one of ten statutory aggravating factors); Proffitt v. Florida, 428 U.S. 242, 96 S.Ct. 2960, 49 L.Ed.2d 913 (1976) (statute permitted death penalty only upon finding sufficient aggravation from statutory list of eight aggravating factors); Jurek v. Texas, 428 U.S. 262, 96 S.Ct. 2950, 49 L.Ed.2d 929 (1976) (statute permitted death penalty only for five specified types of intentional killings). In contrast, the Court struck down a mandatory death sentence statute that stripped the jury of its ability to extend mercy, explaining that it did not permit consideration of the compassionate or mitigating factors stemming from the diverse frailties of humankind. Woodson v. North Carolina, 428 U.S. 280, 304, 96 S.Ct. 2978, 2991, 49 L.Ed.2d 944 (1976) (plurality). In Gregg, Justice White recognized the role of mercy in capital sentencing: The Georgia Legislature has plainly made an effort to guide the jury in the exercise of its discretion, while at the same time permitting the jury to dispense mercy on the basis of factors too intangible to write into a statute. 428 U.S. at 222, 96 S.Ct. at 2947-48. (White, J., concurring). Two years later, the Court held that the sentencing jury must not be precluded from considering as a mitigating factor, any aspect of a defendant's character or record. Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U.S. 586, 604, 98 S.Ct. 2954, 2964, 57 L.Ed.2d 973 (1978) (emphasis in original). I am compelled to conclude that as of 1978, the majority of justices on the United States Supreme Court believed that mercy and compassion were central to capital sentencing. The unmistakable meaning of the line of cases beginning with Furman was that while a jury could decide to impose death only by following carefully channelled procedures designed to minimize the arbitrariness of those cases in which death actually was imposed, the jury could decline to impose a death sentence for any reason โ merciful, compassionate, sympathetic, or otherwise. See Gregg, 428 U.S. at 199, 203. The Court reinforced this position in Eddings v. Oklahoma, 455 U.S. 104, 110, 102 S.Ct. 869, 875, 71 L.Ed.2d 1 (1982), and again in Caldwell v. Mississippi, 472 U.S. 320, 330-31, 105 S.Ct. 2633, 2640-41, 86 L.Ed.2d 231 (1985). In California v. Brown, 479 U.S. 538, 107 S.Ct. 837, 93 L.Ed.2d 934 (1987), although the Court upheld an instruction prohibiting the jury from being influenced by  mere sympathy, it plainly preserved a place for sympathetic responses to evidence presented at the sentencing phase, stating that a reasonable juror would interpret the challenged instruction as a directive to ignore only the sort of sympathy that would be totally divorced from the evidence adduced during the penalty phase. Id. at 542, 107 S.Ct. at 840. Particularly after Brown, it is disingenuous to suggest that the watershed cases in this country's modern capital punishment jurisprudence did not intend at least to preserve a sacred place for sympathetic and merciful responses to a defendant's mitigating evidence. [4] Nevertheless, in rejecting Young's claim that a jury instruction that interferes with a juror's ability to respond sympathetically or mercifully to the mitigating evidence violated his rights, today's lead opinion ignores this history and instead focuses solely on the opinion in the habeas corpus case of Saffle v. Parks, 494 U.S. 484, 110 S.Ct. 1257, 108 L.Ed.2d 415 (1990). Those joining the lead opinion appear erroneously to believe that Parks has disposed of the federal constitutional issue. Admittedly, dicta in Parks suggest that the Court is contemplating a retreat from its prior cases, including Brown. But contrary to the lead opinion's assertion, the Parks opinion did not reject on its merits the constitutional claim now before us. Like Young, Parks had sought a rule that an antisympathy instruction that precluded the jury from fully considering his mitigating evidence violated the Constitution. The Court held that because the principle urged by Parks was not dictated by our prior cases and therefore would require the creation of a new rule of constitutional law, then following the mandate of Penry v. Lynaugh, 492 U.S. 302, 109 S.Ct. 2934, 106 L.Ed.2d 256 (1989), Parks could not benefit from such a rule in a collateral attack. Parks, 494 U.S. at 486, 110 S.Ct. at 1258-59. The Court therefore did not decide whether, as a question of first impression, the Constitution required such a rule. The holding in Parks is only that no such rule clearly existed under the Court's previous interpretations of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. Id. at 489, 110 S.Ct. at 1260-61. The United States Supreme Court's refusal to interpret its prior cases as compelling the rule urged by Parks, and its view of contrary state court rulings as well-considered precedents, see id. at 486, 110 S.Ct. at 1258-59, undoubtedly casts doubt on the strength of Young's federal constitutional argument. Yet until the Supreme Court actually considers the merits of the claim, I deem it this court's obligation to determine for itself what the federal constitution requires regarding this issue of first impression. The philosophy underlying this country's approach to capital punishment in the past two decades includes a recognition that sympathetic responses by the sentencer to sentencing evidence are entirely appropriate. As the Supreme Court has stated, The right to have the sentencer consider and weigh relevant mitigating evidence would be meaningless unless the sentencer was also permitted to give effects to its consideration. Penry, 492 U.S. at 321, 109 S.Ct. at 2948 (emphasis added). The Court has also said, The sentencer... may determine the weight to be given relevant mitigating evidence. Eddings, 455 U.S. at 114-15, 102 S.Ct. at 877. I am at a loss to understand how these principles can be squared with an instruction that tells sentencing juries to accord no weight to any sympathetic or compassionate feelings that evidence may produce. The Tenth Circuit arrived at precisely this conclusion when it reached the merits of the claim in the Parks case, Parks v. Brown, 860 F.2d 1545, 1554-56 (10th Cir. 1988), rev'd sub nom. Saffle v. Parks, 494 U.S. 484, 110 S.Ct. 1257, 108 L.Ed.2d 415 (1990), as has the California Supreme Court, see, e.g., People v. Wade, 43 Cal.3d 366, 233 Cal.Rptr. 48, 59, 729 P.2d 239, 250 (1987), vacated by 44 Cal.3d 975, 244 Cal. Rptr. 905, 750 P.2d 794 (1988); People v. Lanphear, 36 Cal.3d 163, 203 Cal.Rptr. 122, 124, 680 P.2d 1081, 1083 (1984). In an apparent attempt to reconcile these principles, the lead opinion quotes dictum from Parks for the proposition that individualized, nonarbitrary capital sentencing requires a moral inquiry, not an emotional response. [5] It is specious, however, to suggest that sympathy, mercy, pity, or compassion does not constitute part of a moral response to evidence in aggravation and mitigation. A moral weighing is not an objective weighing; while it should not be based on raw emotion, it does require each juror to respond in human terms to the sentencing evidence in assessing the unique humanity of the defendant. It is not possible for jurors properly to conduct this exercise without reference to their feelings. Yet this is precisely what an antisympathy instruction asks jurors to attempt. Ironically, the lead opinion today affirms the antisympathy instruction while relying on the United States Supreme Court's recent decision in Payne v. Tennessee, holding that justice due to the accuser supports the use of victim impact evidence at the penalty phase. 501 U.S. ___, 111 S.Ct. 2597, 115 L.Ed.2d 720 (1991). The inevitable (and, I am sure, intended) effect of victim impact evidence is to arouse a sentencer's natural human feelings, and the Payne standard now permits juries to consider the emotional impact of the crime on the victim's family. See id. 501 U.S. at ___, ___, 111 S.Ct. at 2604, 2609, 115 L.Ed.2d 720. Payne observed that prohibiting the use of victim impact evidence deprives the State of the full moral force of its evidence. Id. 501 U.S. at ___, 111 S.Ct. at 2608, 115 L.Ed.2d 720. Of course, this full moral force arises in part precisely because of the emotional response the victim evidence produces, both in terms of sympathy for the victims and disgust, outrage, and a desire for vengeance directed toward the defendant. The lead opinion today would permit the state to benefit from the full moral force of its evidence while denying the same benefit to defendant. This result is doubly ironic given the heightened obligation our criminal justice system has to protect the rights of defendants. Accordingly, I conclude that federal constitutional safeguards should prohibit antisympathy instructions that deny the propriety of a sentencer's compassionate responses to a defendant's mitigating evidence. I also believe that Utah law compels us to prohibit antisympathy instructions that mislead the jury. I reach this conclusion in part because of the high regard that this state places on the value of all human life and the humanity of every human being. State v. Holland, 777 P.2d 1019, 1028 (Utah 1989). I also base this conclusion on prior cases in which we have implicitly approved the persuasive federal constitutional analysis in the line of cases from Gregg through Eddings. See, e.g., Holland, 777 P.2d at 1028; State v. Lafferty, 749 P.2d 1239, 1259 (Utah 1988). Because the principles contained in this line of cases reflect the protections this court ought also to afford to capital defendants, I would explicitly incorporate those principles today, regardless of the apparent retrenchment from them by the current United States Supreme Court, as guidance for interpreting the cruel and unusual punishment clause of the Utah Constitution. Furthermore, I reach this conclusion because of our familiar pronouncements in State v. Wood, 648 P.2d 71 (Utah), cert. denied, 459 U.S. 988, 103 S.Ct. 341, 74 L.Ed.2d 383 (1982), regarding the requirements of the Utah death penalty statute. We wrote: [T]he sentencing authority must decide... how compelling or persuasive the totality of the mitigating factors are when compared against the totality of the aggravating factors.... [To impose death,] upon consideration of all the circumstances relating to this defendant and this crime the sentencing authority must be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that the death penalty should be imposed. Id. at 83-84. We expounded upon the Wood standard in Holland, explaining that in Utah the factors a capital sentencer weighs are not, in truth, weighable.... These factors have largely subjective value and therefore vary in their `weight' or persuasiveness for or against the death penalty with each judge or juror according to his or her own background and prior experiences. 777 P.2d at 1028. Consequently, I conclude that trial courts usurp the sentencing jury's role when they instruct the jury to avoid sympathy in the sentencing phase of a capital trial. This state's profound respect for each person's humanity and the obligation of the sentencer to bring her or his own background and human experience to bear in assessing the persuasiveness of every aspect of the defendant's mitigation render it error to prohibit the influence of sympathy in weighing penalty options. Having concluded that this court should not countenance jury instructions that may preclude the sentencer from considering whatever sympathy the mitigating evidence produces, I examine the propriety of the particular instructions given in this case. This inquiry requires determining what a reasonable juror could have understood the charge as meaning. California v. Brown, 479 U.S. at 541, 107 S.Ct. at 839. When reviewing potential error in capital sentencing instructions, appellate courts must remand for resentencing unless they can rule out the substantial possibility that the jury may have rested its verdict on the `improper' ground. Mills v. Maryland, 486 U.S. 367, 377, 108 S.Ct. 1860, 1866-67, 100 L.Ed.2d 384 (1988). At the guilt stage, the trial court instructed the jurors that they must deliberate uninfluenced by pity for the defendant or by passion or prejudice against him.... The law forbids you to be governed by mere sentiment, conjecture, sympathy, passion, prejudice, public opinion or public feeling. This instruction has been referred to in this case as the antisympathy instruction. Clearly such an instruction was proper at the guilt stage. At the sentencing stage, however, the trial court instructed the jury that instructions from the guilt stage continued to apply in this penalty phase. As at the guilt stage, the jurors had written copies of all the instructions with them in the jury room during their sentencing deliberations. As a result, a reasonable juror easily could and would have concluded that it would be inappropriate to feel pity for, or to empathize or sympathize with, defendant when determining whether the death sentence should be imposed. Jurors disposed toward death, for example, could legitimately use the antisympathy instruction to disparage the judgment of holdout jurors. Thus, the instruction was improper. In California v. Brown , the United States Supreme Court upheld an antisympathy instruction containing language identical to part of the antisympathy instruction in this case. The instruction at issue in Brown told the jury not to be swayed by mere sentiment, conjecture, sympathy, passion, prejudice, public opinion or public feeling. 479 U.S. at 542, 107 S.Ct. at 840. I do not understand nor do I find persuasive the analysis by which the Brown majority concluded, contrary to the California Supreme Court, that reasonable California jurors would not have misunderstood this instruction as interfering with their consideration of mitigating evidence. Furthermore, although the antisympathy instruction in Young's sentencing hearing contained the same language, it also included a demand not found in the language reviewed in Brown that the jury be uninfluenced by pity for the defendant. This additional element changes the context in which we must interpret the charge. The Brown majority concluded that, taken as a whole, the instruction only prohibited the jury from being influenced by  mere sympathy. Id. This interpretation is baffling because in addition to its obvious and sensible consequence โ that jurors properly may be influenced by sympathy rooted in the aggravating and mitigating evidence, id. โ it similarly suggests that jurors also may properly be influenced by, for example, conjecture rooted in the evidence, prejudice rooted in the evidence, or public opinion rooted in the evidence, and must only avoid the influence of mere conjecture, mere prejudice, and mere public opinion. This is a construction to which I cannot subscribe. The adjective mere must be read as applying only to sentiment, the first term in the list, in order for the subsequent terms to make sense. See id. at 549, 107 S.Ct. at 843 (Brennan, J., dissenting). The Court also concluded, however, that it was highly unlikely that any reasonable juror would almost perversely single out the word `sympathy' from the other nouns. Id. at 542, 107 S.Ct. at 840. Regardless of whether this conclusion was correct in Brown, the presence in this case of an additional sentence instructing the jurors to avoid pity for defendant presents us with a different question and makes it highly likely that a conscientious juror in fact would notice the word sympathy in the list of otherwise impermissible factors. Accordingly, I refuse to view California v. Brown as dispositive of the federal constitutional issue or persuasive regarding the state statutory and constitutional issues relating to the propriety of the antisympathy instruction before us. There is a substantial possibility that the jury may have reached its verdict on improperly limited grounds; a fortiori, there is a consequent risk that Young's death penalty was imposed in spite of factors that may have called for a less severe penalty. When the choice is between life and death, that risk is unacceptable and incompatible with the commands of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. Lockett, 438 U.S. at 605, 98 S.Ct. at 2965. It is also incompatible with article I, section 9 of the Utah Constitution, and we should so hold. A capital sentencing jury makes a moral determination, not a factual one. Although the determination must be fact based, the evaluation of those facts may and should involve emotional responses of anger, retribution, sympathy, and mercy. In contrast, these responses should not influence the determination of guilt. Jury instructions must not confuse these two roles. The original purpose of requiring a separate penalty phase in capital trials was to avoid arbitrary sentencing decisions based solely on raw emotion, not to strip sentencing of all human feeling. We expect sentencing juries to express the conscience of the community: [O]ne of the most important functions any jury can perform in making such a selection [between life and death] is to maintain a link between contemporary community values and the penal system โ a link without which the determination of punishment could hardly reflect the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society. Witherspoon v. Illinois, 391 U.S. 510, 519 & n. 15, 88 S.Ct. 1770, 1775 & n. 15, 20 L.Ed.2d 776 (1968) (citations omitted); see Woodson v. North Carolina, 428 U.S. at 295, 96 S.Ct. at 2986-87. A conscience without room for sympathy and pity in meting out punishment is an ailing conscience indeed. Accordingly, I agree with Young's challenge to the extent it alleges error in the use at the penalty phase of the otherwise proper antisympathy instruction of the guilt phase. Furthermore, I am persuaded by the reasoning in Justice Stewart's opinion concluding that juries should be affirmatively instructed regarding the proper function of sympathy (or mercy) in the penalty phase. I therefore join in that conclusion.