Opinion ID: 1667377
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Failure to consider

Text: Mr. Bowen cites a number of cases from around the country in which death penalties have been rejected on appeal because of a jury's failure to consider mental illness of the accused. E.g., Magwood v. Smith, 791 F.2d 1438 (11th Cir.1986); Evans v. State, 598 N.E.2d 516 (Ind.1992). His argument that the jury failed even to consider the evidence of his mental illness is based on the fact that the jury left Form 2-C blank. Form 2-C lists the statutory mitigating factors having to do with mental illness, quoted above, and they are to be checked if the jury determines unanimously that they did not exist at the time of the murder. The problem with the argument based on Form 2-C is that, although Mr. Bowen's abstract of the record indicates that the form was submitted to the jury, there is nothing in the abstract to show whether the jury executed it or not. Indeed, we have searched the record in vain for Form 2-C. It is the duty of the appellant to present a record from which we can determine the facts on which he relies for reversal. Lindsey v. State, 319 Ark. 132, 890 S.W.2d 584 (1994). We cannot say the jury failed to consider the record of Mr. Bowen's mental illness. Even if the opinions of the doctors at the State Hospital had remained uncontradicted, which they did not, the jury would have been free to disbelieve them and find that punishment of Mr. Bowen should not be mitigated by his mental condition.