Opinion ID: 787515
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Supreme Court Standard: Mills, McKoy & Boyde

Text: 22 We begin with Mills v. Maryland, 486 U.S. 367, 384, 108 S.Ct. 1860, 100 L.Ed.2d 384 (1988), where the Supreme Court vacated a death sentence after concluding there was a substantial probability that reasonable jurors, upon receiving the judge's instructions in this case, and in attempting to complete the verdict form as instructed, well may have thought they were precluded from considering any mitigating evidence unless all 12 jurors agreed on the existence of a particular such circumstance. The potential for such an outcome violated the well-established rule that the sentencer in a capital case must be permitted to consider (and, conversely, must not be precluded from considering) all mitigating evidence offered by a defendant in arguing for a sentence less than death. Id. at 374, 108 S.Ct. 1860 (citing Eddings v. Oklahoma, 455 U.S. 104, 102 S.Ct. 869, 71 L.Ed.2d 1 (1982); Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U.S. 586, 98 S.Ct. 2954, 57 L.Ed.2d 973 (1978); Skipper v. South Carolina, 476 U.S. 1, 106 S.Ct. 1669, 90 L.Ed.2d 1 (1986)). 23 The Maryland sentencing scheme at issue in Mills worked in the following manner, depending on the jury's findings of aggravating and mitigating circumstances. The jury first was instructed to determine whether it unanimously found one or more of the aggravating circumstances listed on the verdict form. If it did not, the defendant was sentenced to life imprisonment. If the jury did unanimously find one or more aggravating circumstance(s), it next was instructed to determine whether it unanimously found one or more of the mitigating circumstances listed on the verdict form. If it did not, the defendant was sentenced to death. If the jury unanimously found one or more mitigating circumstance(s), it next was instructed to determine whether it unanimously found that the mitigating circumstance(s) outweighed the aggravating circumstance(s). If the answer to this question was yes, the defendant was sentenced to life imprisonment. If the answer was no— i.e., the mitigating circumstance(s) did not outweigh the aggravating circumstance(s)—the defendant was sentenced to death. Id. at 384-89, 108 S.Ct. 1860. 24 The petitioner in Mills argued that the sentencing scheme was constitutionally infirm because even if some or all of the jurors were to believe some mitigating circumstance or circumstances were present, unless they could unanimously agree on the existence of the same mitigating factor, the sentence necessarily would be death. Id. at 371, 108 S.Ct. 1860 (emphases in text). For example, if only eleven of twelve jurors agreed that one or more mitigating circumstance(s) existed—or if all twelve jurors agreed that one or more mitigating circumstance(s) existed, but did not agree as to the same circumstance(s)—individual jurors could not give any effect to that mitigating evidence at all, and the jury could not deliberate whether the mitigating circumstance(s) merited a sentence of life imprisonment instead of death. Id. at 373-74, 108 S.Ct. 1860. 25 Thus, the critical question in Mills was whether petitioner's interpretation of the sentencing process is one a reasonable jury could have drawn from the instructions given by the trial judge and from the verdict form employed in this case. Id. at 375-76, 108 S.Ct. 1860 (emphasis added). The verdict form required the jury to mark either yes or no beside each of the listed mitigating circumstances. If the jury understood that every time it marked no beside a mitigating circumstance it was indicating it had unanimously concluded the petitioner had failed to prove that circumstance, then the death sentence was to be upheld, as each juror had considered and rejected all proffered mitigating evidence. But, on the other hand, if the jury believed it was to mark no if it could not unanimously agree whether the same mitigating evidence existed, even one holdout juror could prevent the other jurors from weighing mitigating evidence against aggravating evidence, and the death sentence could not stand. Id. at 376, 108 S.Ct. 1860. Concluded the Court: 26 [T]here is a substantial probability that reasonable jurors, upon receiving the judge's instructions in this case, and in attempting to complete the verdict form as instructed, well may have thought they were precluded from considering any mitigating evidence unless all 12 jurors agreed on the existence of a particular such circumstance. Under our cases, the sentencer must be permitted to consider all mitigating evidence. The possibility that a single juror could block such consideration, and consequently require the jury to impose the death penalty, is one we dare not risk. 27 Id. at 384, 108 S.Ct. 1860 (emphases added).
28 The Supreme Court revisited Mills two years later in McKoy v. North Carolina, 494 U.S. 433, 435, 110 S.Ct. 1227, 108 L.Ed.2d 369 (1990), and held that the unanimity requirement in North Carolina's capital sentencing scheme—which prevent[ed] the jury from considering, in deciding whether to impose the death penalty, any mitigating factor that the jury does not unanimously find—was unconstitutional because it prevented the sentencer from considering all mitigating evidence. McKoy repeated the rule in Mills that a death sentence cannot stand if the jury instructions and verdict form created a substantial probability that reasonable jurors thought they were precluded from considering mitigating evidence unless the jury unanimously agreed on the existence of that particular circumstance. Id. at 438, 110 S.Ct. 1227 (citing Mills, 486 U.S. at 384, 108 S.Ct. 1860). The Court also noted that Mills reasoned that allowing a holdout juror to preclude other jurors from considering mitigating evidence violated the principle that a sentencer may not be prevented from giving effect to all mitigating evidence. Id. (citing Mills, 486 U.S. at 375, 108 S.Ct. 1860). 29 The North Carolina Supreme Court attempted to distinguish Mills by concluding that—whereas Maryland's sentencing scheme required the jury to impose the death penalty if it found i) aggravating circumstances and no mitigating circumstances or ii) aggravating circumstances that outweighed any mitigating circumstances—the North Carolina procedure allowed the jury to recommend a sentence of life imprisonment even without a finding of mitigating circumstances. Id. (discussing the decision of the North Carolina Supreme Court). The United States Supreme Court, however, concluded that the purported distinction did not place the statute outside of the scope of Mills. The fact remained that the jury, even if it recommended a sentence of life imprisonment, was required to make its decision based only on circumstances it unanimously found. Id. at 439, 110 S.Ct. 1227. The unanimity requirement thus allows one holdout juror to prevent the others from giving effect to evidence that they believe calls for a `sentence less than death.' Id. (quoting Eddings, 455 U.S. at 110, 102 S.Ct. 869). In addition, even if all twelve jurors agreed that some mitigating circumstances were present, they could not give effect to that evidence without unanimity as to the same circumstance, precisely the violation found in Mills. Id. The Court noted that [o]ur decision in Mills was not limited to cases in which the jury is required to impose the death penalty if it finds that aggravating circumstances outweigh mitigating circumstances or that no mitigating circumstances exist at all. Id. at 439-40, 110 S.Ct. 1227 (emphasis in text). Rather, we held that it would be the `height of arbitrariness to allow or require the imposition of the death penalty' where 1 juror was able to prevent the other 11 from giving effect to mitigating evidence. Id. at 440, 110 S.Ct. 1227 (quoting Mills, 486 U.S. at 374, 108 S.Ct. 1860) (emphasis in text).
30 The same day it issued McKoy, the Supreme Court decided Boyde v. California, 494 U.S. 370, 110 S.Ct. 1190, 108 L.Ed.2d 316 (1990). Boyde clarified the legal standard for jury instructions in death penalty cases asserted to be ambiguous and therefore subject to an erroneous interpretation. Id. at 380, 110 S.Ct. 1190. The Court first noted that [i]n assessing the effect of a challenged jury instruction, we follow the familiar rule ... `that a single instruction to a jury may not be judged in artificial isolation, but must be viewed in the context of the overall charge.' Id. at 378, 110 S.Ct. 1190 (quoting Cupp v. Naughten, 414 U.S. 141, 146-47, 94 S.Ct. 396, 38 L.Ed.2d 368 (1973)). The Court next recognized that [t]he legal standard for reviewing jury instructions claimed to restrict impermissibly a jury's consideration of relevant evidence is less than clear from our cases. Id. For example, in Mills alone 31 we alluded to at least three different inquiries for evaluating such a challenge: whether reasonable jurors could have drawn an impermissible interpretation from the trial court's instructions; whether there is a substantial possibility that the jury may have rested its verdict on the `improper' ground; and how reasonable jurors would have applied and understood the instructions. 32 Id. at 379, 108 S.Ct. 1860 (internal citations omitted) (emphasis in text). The Court stated that [a]lthough there may not be great differences among these various phrasings, it is important to settle upon a single formulation for this Court and other courts to employ in deciding this kind of federal question. 4 33 Boyde thus held that the proper inquiry for reviewing a jury instruction that is ambiguous and therefore subject to erroneous interpretation is whether there is a reasonable likelihood that the jury has applied the challenged instruction in a way that prevents the consideration of constitutionally relevant evidence. Id. at 380, 110 S.Ct. 1190. However, a defendant need not establish that the jury was more likely than not 5 to have been impermissibly inhibited by the instruction, though a capital sentencing proceeding is not inconsistent with the Eighth Amendment if there is only a possibility of such an inhibition. Id. (emphasis added). The Court further explained its reasons for requiring a reasonable likelihood of jury confusion, rather than the various formulations in Mills: 34 This reasonable likelihood standard, we think, better accommodates the concerns of finality and accuracy than does a standard which makes the inquiry dependent on how a single hypothetical reasonable juror could or might have interpreted the instruction. There is, of course, a strong policy in favor of accurate determination of the appropriate sentence in a capital case, but there is an equally strong policy against retrials years after the first trial where the claimed error amounts to no more than speculation. Jurors do not sit in solitary isolation booths parsing instructions for subtle shades of meaning in the same way that lawyers might. Differences among them in interpretation of instructions may be thrashed out in the deliberative process, with commonsense understanding of the instructions in the light of all that has taken place at the trial likely to prevail over technical hairsplitting. Id. at 380-81, 110 S.Ct. 1190. 6 35