Opinion ID: 2782459
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: At-The-Time-of-The-Murder Instruction

Text: Next, Ward asserts that this court should recall the mandate of his 1997 sentencing because the jury was erroneously instructed that it should weigh only the mitigating factors that “existed at the time of the murder” in violation of the Eighth Amendment under Penry v. Lynaugh, 492 U.S. 302 (1989), and Skipper v. South Carolina, 476 U.S. 1 (1986). Ward contends that there is a reasonable likelihood that the jury understood the at-the-time-of-themurder instruction to preclude them from considering or giving effect to relevant mitigating evidence, which violates Penry. In Form 2 – Mitigating Circumstances, five mitigators were listed under each part, A, B and C. Parts A and C include the at-the-time-of-the-murder language. Part B did not include this language. The jury did not select any mitigators under Parts A and C. However, on Part B the jury marked “one or more of the jury believe that the following mitigating circumstance probably existed, but the jury did not unanimously agree.” The jury selected 15 Cite as 2015 Ark. 61 “that for years . . . Ward exhibited signs of mental or emotional disturbance or defect that went untreated.” In sum, Ward argues that the jury’s having marked this circumstance on Form B without the at-the-time-of-the-murder language and the prosecutor’s argument that evidence of what had happened years before the offense was not relevant to sentencing resulted in reversible error. Ward contends that this language on the form likely caused some jurors to believe the State’s argument that the evidence did not qualify as mitigating evidence because it was too old. Therefore, Ward asserts that the verdict forms prevented the jury from considering mitigating evidence, that error requires reversal and this court should recall its mandate because we failed to address this error in our review. Finally, Ward asserts without citation to authority that “although this court denied a similar Eighth Amendment challenge in Thessing v. State, 365 Ark. 384, 230 S.W.3d 526 (2006), that case is not controlling here. As the United States Supreme Court has made clear, the existence of a reasonable likelihood that an instruction precluded the jury from considering relevant mitigating evidence depends on the context-specific facts of the case.” The State responds that Ward’s argument that the jury was precluded from considering past events from Ward’s life is without merit. The State asserts that the jury was permitted to consider any factors that affected him at the time of the murder, including past experiences; evidence from his teachers, employers, medical opinions, and other experiences that occurred earlier in his life. We agree that the jury was able to consider all of that evidence and there is nothing to be remedied by recalling the mandate. Although the parties do not address the issue of preservation, we note that Ward did 16 Cite as 2015 Ark. 61 not present this issue in his direct appeal in Ward III. However, in Nooner, Nooner presented the same argument regarding the “at-the-time-of-the-murder-instruction” for the first time in his motion to recall the mandate and asserted that the error was so egregious that this court should have sua sponte raised the issue. We disagreed and explained that United States Supreme Court precedent has long recognized that a sentencing jury must be able to give a “ ‘reasoned moral response’ “to any relevant mitigating evidence when deciding to sentence a defendant to death. .... Nooner asserts that we should grant recall of the mandate in order to correct this court’s failure to discover sua sponte on direct appeal the Eighth Amendment violation that he alleges occurred as a result of the “at-the-time-of-the-murder” restriction in the verdict form and in the prosecutor’s closing arguments. The State responds that Nooner fails to establish any obligation on this court’s part to have raised and considered this issue sua sponte on direct appeal, and, hence, fails to establish a defect in appellate proceedings to warrant recall of the mandate. We agree with the State that Nooner has not identified a reversible error that this court was obligated to raise sua sponte on his direct appeal; therefore, he has not demonstrated a breakdown in the appellate process required for the extraordinary circumstances that warrant recall of the mandate. First, based on Arkansas Supreme Court Rule 4-3(h) (1995), which was applicable to Nooner’s direct appeal in 1995, the scope of our review of death-penalty cases was limited to rulings on objections decided adversely to him. This limited review presupposed a contemporaneous objection at trial. As previously noted, this court’s mandatory review in death cases for prejudicial and egregious errors pursuant to Rule 10 is applicable only to cases in which a sentence of death has been imposed after August 1, 2001. See Newman v. State,