Opinion ID: 1694374
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: the trial court erred in failing to allow christopher stewart to introduce evidence at sentencing concerning the sentence of his codefendant.

Text: Ricky Selders plea bargained and received a twenty year sentence for the crime of manslaughter. The trial court sustained the prosecution's motion in limine to prohibit the defense from introducing this fact to the jury at the sentencing phase of Stewart's trial. The trial court reasoned that the sentence imposed on Selders was not a relevant mitigating circumstance of Stewart's offense because their causes had been severed and should stand on their own merits. Any evidence which does not bear on the defendant's character, prior record, or circumstances of his offense may be excluded. Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U.S. 586, 604 n. 12, 98 S.Ct. 2954, 2965 n. 12, 57 L.Ed.2d 973, 990 n. 12 (1978); Cole v. State, 525 So.2d 365, 371 (Miss. 1987). This Court has previously held that evidence of a co-defendant's sentence was not relevant evidence in the sentencing decision. Stringer v. State, 500 So.2d 928, 941-42 (Miss. 1986); Johnson v. State, 477 So.2d 196, 218 (Miss. 1985). The Florida Supreme Court has consistently held to the contrary  that the trial court's refusal to admit the separate sentence of a codefendant as a mitigating circumstance in the sentencing phase of the accused's trial was reversible error. O'Callaghan v. State, 542 So.2d 1324, 1326 (Fla. 1989); Herring v. State, 446 So.2d 1049, 1056 (Fla. 1984); Messer v. State, 330 So.2d 137, 141-42 (Fla. 1976); Slater v. State, 316 So.2d 539, 542-43 (Fla. 1975). Stewart argues that his case is more analogous to the Florida cases because they involved the admission of codefendants' plea bargained sentences, not codefendant sentences which were the result of jury verdicts as in the Mississippi cases, Stringer and Johnson. Stewart specifically directs our attention to the reasoning employed in Johnson in holding codefendant sentences inadmissible. The rationale was as follows: Suppose, for example, the juries which tried [the co-defendants] had returned death penalty verdicts? Would the state, under any theory, have been permitted to show this over Johnson's objection? Each case tried by a separate jury must stand on its own. Otherwise, the jury trial is pointless. Moreover, for the separate sentences of [the co-defendants] to have had any meaning in Johnson's, it would have been necessary to develop all the facts of each of their trials for this jury. Johnson, 477 So.2d at 218. Stewart's position is made more persuasive by the fact that the Johnson case distinguished Messer and Slater on the grounds that the codefendant in those two Florida cases plea bargained instead of receiving sentences pursuant to a jury verdict. If Selders had testified at trial, his plea bargain would certainly have been admissible as impeachment evidence because any agreement with the State might very well have affected his credibility in the eyes of the jury. We find no error, however, in the refusal to admit evidence of Selders' plea bargain when he did not testify at trial, especially after Stewart was offered the same plea bargain. He is essentially complaining about a deal which he turned down. With no evidence of disparate treatment by the prosecution, each case should be left to stand on its own merits before the jury. See Buckley v. State, 223 So.2d 524 (Miss. 1969) (permitting criminal defendant to object to admission of codefendant's plea bargain in rare situation where it is used against defendant since each case should stand on its own merits). This Court's statutory authority of proportionality review not only requires this Court to compare capital cases in which the death penalty has been imposed or rejected, but also requires the Court to consider the sentences of other accomplices to the crime when the accomplices have received a penalty less than death. Culberson v. State, 379 So.2d 499, 510 (Miss. 1979). For example, in both Reddix v. State, 547 So.2d 792, 794 (Miss. 1989) and Bullock v. State, 525 So.2d 764, 770 (Miss. 1987), this Court held that a sentence of death was disproportionate for reasons including the fact that the codefendant ultimately received a life sentence. If this Court may consider the sentence received by a codefendant, then why should the jury be deprived of such information? Because of the specific circumstances of an offense and the complicated task of assessing the culpability of a codefendant based upon his role in the crime, we find that the consideration of the codefendant's sentence in the case at hand is better suited for proportionality review. Stewart's codefendant, Selders, received a sentence of 20 years in a plea bargain for manslaughter. Was Selders' sentence disproportional in light of the fact that Selders was the alleged instigator and chief beneficiary of the murder of Roderick Ball? It becomes an issue of whether the individual who instigated the crime is more culpable than the one who physically did the killing for money. Stewart's alleged participation in the crime was arguably greater because of this difference. On the other hand, based on the prosecution's theory, his culpability is arguably less because there would not have been a murder had Selders not desired and paid someone to kill Ball. The only conclusion that need be made in the present case that even though the jury was unaware of the plea bargain and sentence of Stewart's codefendant, its bearing on the sentence received by Stewart would have been carefully considered by this Court in its required proportionality review.