Opinion ID: 554033
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Caldwell v. Mississippi

Text: 101 We turn first to Zettlemoyer's contention that the trial court improperly instructed the jury that it had no responsibility for imposition of the death penalty. The trial court instructed the jury as follows: 102 Ladies and Gentlemen, you must now decide what sentence is to be imposed upon the defendant, whether it be death or life imprisonment. In a very proper sense, you are not really making that decision. You are not deciding whether he should be sentenced to death or life imprisonment. That was the law years ago and the Supreme Court of the United States declared such death penalties to be unconstitutional. I won't go into the reason. One of the theories was that it placed discretion on the jury. They could decide whether a particular individual could suffer death or life imprisonment. They have removed that burden from you. That is not what you are to decide. You are to decide whether there are certain aggravating circumstances or mitigating circumstances and depending upon how you find those circumstances, as I will explain to you, your decision follows. It must follow. If you find a certain way, a certain penalty must follow. That is the law. 103 .... 104 So you see, it is not really your decision in a sense. You decide, of course, the underlying factors but it is the way you decide those factors that the penalty is imposed. That is the way the Supreme Court and our legislature have felt that they would remove that burden or that discretion from the jury. 105 App. at 200-02 (emphasis added). 106 In Caldwell v. Mississippi, 472 U.S. at 328-29, 105 S.Ct. at 2639-40, the Supreme Court held that the Eighth Amendment prohibits the imposition of a death sentence by a sentencer that has been led by the prosecuting attorney to the false belief that the responsibility for determining whether a capital sentence is to be imposed rests elsewhere. Id. In Caldwell, the assistant district attorney responded in his closing arguments to defense counsel's plea for mercy by stating: 107 Now, they would have you believe that you're going to kill this man and they know--they know that your decision is not the final decision.... Your job is reviewable.... They said 'Thou shalt not kill.' If that applies to him it applies to you, insinuating that your decision is the final decision and that they're going to take Bobby Caldwell out in the front of this courthouse in moments and string him up and that is terribly, terribly unfair. For they know, as I know, and as Judge Baker has told you, that the decision you render is automatically reviewable by the [state] Supreme Court. 108 Id. at 325-26, 105 S.Ct. at 2637-38. 109 Notably, the trial court agreed with the prosecutor's statements, stating I think it is proper that the jury realizes that it is reviewable automatically as the death penalty commands. Id. at 325, 105 S.Ct. at 2638. 110 The Supreme Court vacated the death sentence, explaining that under the Eighth Amendment, it had long recognized that the qualitative difference of death from all other punishments requires a correspondingly greater degree of scrutiny of the capital sentencing determination.'  Id. at 329, 105 S.Ct. at 2639. The Court concluded that false information about the awesome responsibility to determine the appropriateness of death and suggestion that the sentencing jury may shift its responsibility to an appellate court might produce substantial unreliability as well as bias in favor of death sentences. Id. at 330, 105 S.Ct. at 2640. 111 If we assume that the holding in Caldwell was violated here, which as we shall later demonstrate it was not, Zettlemoyer nevertheless cannot be given relief because the Supreme Court has held in Sawyer v. Smith, 110 S.Ct. at 2833, that Caldwell is not applicable in cases in which the conviction became final before the Court announced the decision in Caldwell. The Court in Sawyer v. Smith held that Caldwell announced a new rule subject in its application to the limitations on retroactivity of Teague and it rejected the petitioner's argument that the case fell within the second Teague exception for a rule fundamental to the criminal proceeding. Id. 110 S.Ct. at 2827, 2833. 112 The Court initially determined that the Caldwell rule was not  'dictated by precedent existing at the time defendant's conviction became final,'  because its earlier precedent determining the propriety of a prosecutor's comments relied on a due process clause rather than Eighth Amendment analysis. Id. (discussing Donnelly v. DeChristoforo, 416 U.S. 637, 643, 94 S.Ct. 1868, 1871, 40 L.Ed.2d 431 (1974)). Additionally, finding that the Caldwell decision relied on Eddings v. Oklahoma, 455 U.S. 104, 102 S.Ct. 869, 71 L.Ed.2d 1 (1982), Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U.S. at 586, 98 S.Ct. at 2954 (plurality), Gardner v. Florida, 430 U.S. 349, 97 S.Ct. 1197, 51 L.Ed.2d 393 (1977) (plurality), and Woodson v. North Carolina, 428 U.S. at 280, 96 S.Ct. at 2978, only for the general proposition that capital sentencing must have guarantees of reliability, and must be carried out by jurors who would view all of the relevant characteristics of the crime and the criminal, and take their task as a serious one, the Court concluded that this level of generality did not suffice to show that Caldwell was an old rule rather than a new rule limited by Teague. Sawyer, 110 S.Ct. at 2828. 113 The Sawyer Court also held that the rule did not fall within Teague's second exception for new watershed rules of criminal procedure necessary to the fundamental fairness of the criminal proceeding. Id. 110 S.Ct. at 2833. The Court noted that Teague required that such a rule must not only improve accuracy, but also 'alter our understanding of the bedrock procedural elements' essential to the fairness of a proceeding. Id. 110 S.Ct. at 2831. The Court noted that, because all Eighth Amendment jurisprudence concerning capital sentencing is directed at enhancing the reliability and accuracy of the proceeding, considering only fairness and accuracy would transform the second exception into a limitless rule. Id. 110 S.Ct. at 2832. The Court determined that the Caldwell rule was not an  'absolute prerequisite to fundamental fairness'  because its enhancement of the accuracy of capital sentencing was in addition to the due process protection against fundamental unfairness set forth in Donnelly. Id. The Court, therefore, dismissed the petitioner's habeas corpus claim because he sought the benefit of a new rule that did not fall within either of Teague's exceptions. Id. 110 S.Ct. at 2833. 114 Zettlemoyer's conviction became final at the latest on August 23, 1983, when rehearing was denied by the United States Supreme Court on his direct appeal, 463 U.S. 1236, 104 S.Ct. 31, 77 L.Ed.2d 1452, two years before the Court announced its decision in Caldwell. 18 Thus, he cannot rely on Caldwell to challenge his capital sentence in this federal habeas corpus action. Sawyer, 110 S.Ct. at 2833. Furthermore, he cannot avoid Teague on the basis that here, unlike in Caldwell, it was the trial court, rather than the prosecutor, which made the comments said to diminish the jury's sense of responsibility for, prior to Caldwell, precedent would not have dictated a result in conformity with Caldwell regardless of whether the court or the prosecutor made the remark. See Dugger v. Adams, 489 U.S. 401, 410, 109 S.Ct. 1211, 1217, 103 L.Ed.2d 435 (1989). 115 In any event, even if Teague and Sawyer did not bar the application of Caldwell in this case, we would find that there was no Caldwell violation. Caldwell was concerned with the shifting of the responsibility in the mind of the jury from it to the appellate court. Here there was simply no such shifting. All the trial court did was to explain the law and point out that if the jury made certain findings, then a certain penalty must follow. But that was the exact opposite of reducing the jury's sense of responsibility, because the jury knew that depending upon its conclusion regarding aggravating and mitigating circumstances, Zettlemoyer would or would not receive the death sentence. Thus, it returned its verdict with knowledge of the consequences and had no reason to believe that it had not made the ultimate decision regarding the penalty. 116 There was no suggestion to the jury that the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania or anyone else would have the last word in the case. Furthermore, at the outset of the sentencing phase, the court told the jury that at the end of that phase you will decide whether the defendant is to be sentenced to death or life imprisonment. Whether you sentence the defendant to death or life imprisonment will depend upon what, if any, aggravating or mitigating circumstances you find are present.... Thus, there is no way that the court's instructions could have diminished the jury's sense of responsibility.