Opinion ID: 1619317
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 45

Heading: With regard to the sentence, the supreme court shall determine:

Text: (1) Whether the sentence of death was imposed under the influence of passion, prejudice or any other arbitrary factor; and (2) Whether the evidence supports the jury's or judge's finding of a statutory aggravating circumstance . . . (3) Whether the sentence of death is excessive or disproportionate to the penalty imposed in similar cases, considering both the crime and the defendant. § 565.014.3, RSMo Supp.1977 (emphasis added). Missouri's legislature also required that, in conducting this proportionality analysis, the supreme court shall include in its decision a reference to those similar cases which it took into consideration.  § 565.014.5, RSMo 1977 (emphasis added). It provided this Court with an attorney assistant to accumulate the records of all capital cases in which sentence was imposed after May 26, 1977, or such earlier date as the court may deem appropriate. § 565.014.6 (emphasis added). This assistant was directed to provide the court with whatever extracted information the court desires with respect thereto. Id. The first capital murder case in which this Court applied the proportionality analysis required by the Missouri legislature was State v. Mercer, 618 S.W.2d 1 (Mo. banc 1981). The Court was clear at that time that the duty imposed on it by these provisions to review similar cases in deciding proportionality meant it was required to review all cases in which the death penalty was submitted, whether the sentence actually imposed was life imprisonment or death, stating: The records of all capital cases in which sentence was imposed after the effective date, accumulated pursuant to § 565.014.6, have been reviewed. Those cases in which both death and life imprisonment were submitted to the jury, and which have been affirmed on appeal are considered as similar cases, [section] 565.014.5. Mercer, 618 S.W.2d at 11 (emphasis added). Indeed, the only controversy at that time was whether the Court also should consider cases in which the death penalty was not sought but in which it might have been sought, with Judge Seiler arguing in dissent that: I do not agree that we discharge our duty under section 565.014.2(3) to determine (w)hether the sentence of death is excessive or disproportionate to the penalty imposed in similar cases by restricting our consideration to cases in which both death and life imprisonment were submitted to the jury and which have been affirmed on appeal. This is too limited in scope. It eliminates from consideration all cases in which the state waived the death penalty, all cases in which life imprisonment was given and no appeal taken, all capital cases pending before us [but not as of that time affirmed] in which life imprisonment was given, and all cases in which capital murder was charged but the jury found defendant guilty of a lesser crime than capital murder. . . . The purpose of appellate review of the death penalty is to serve as a check against the random or arbitrary imposition of the death penalty. Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153, 96 S.Ct. 2909, 49 L.Ed.2d 859 (1976). It is our solemn duty, in my opinion, to guarantee that similar aggravating and mitigating circumstances do not bring about a death sentence in one case and life imprisonment in another. Mercer, 618 S.W.2d at 20-21 (Seiler, J., dissenting). The next year, this Court reaffirmed in State v. Bolder, 635 S.W.2d 673 (Mo. banc 1982), that similar cases included all cases in which the fact-finder was required to choose between death or life imprisonment, stating: Relevant cases for a review of the appropriateness of the sentence are those in which the judge or jury first found the defendant guilty of capital murder and thereafter chose between death or life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for at least fifty years. Id. at 685 (emphasis added). In 1983, the legislature modified the proportionality review statute to add the requirement that this Court consider the strength of the evidence in addition to the crime and the defendant as a part of its proportionality review. § 565.035.3, RSMo Supp.1983. And, importantly here, it revised section 565.035.6 so that instead of stating that the Court's assistant should accumulate the records of all capital cases, the statute expressly required that records of both death and life imprisonment cases be accumulated for comparison purposes in determining what are similar cases, stating: The court shall accumulate the records of all cases in which the sentence of death or life imprisonment without probation or parole was imposed after [the reinstitution of the death penalty on] May 26, 1977, or such earlier date as the court may deem appropriate. § 565.035.6, RSMo Supp.1983 (emphasis added). The proportionality review statute has remained essentially unchanged in relevant respects since that time. [1] So too did this Court's approach to the proportionality analysis for the next decade. In case after case, this Court considered other cases with similar facts, regardless of whether the penalty imposed was death or life imprisonment. For instance, State v. Lashley, 667 S.W.2d 712 (Mo. banc 1984), found that the imposition of the death penalty was not arbitrary in light of the entire record, after comparing the case to other lying in wait cases in which the choice of life imprisonment or the death penalty was submitted. Id. at 716. Lashley cited to State v. McDonald, 661 S.W.2d 497 (Mo. banc 1983), overruled on other grounds by, State v. Barton, 936 S.W.2d 781 (Mo. banc 1996), which had approved the death penalty in a lying in wait case after taking into account both the crime and the defendant, stating, In arriving at this conclusion we have reviewed the cases decided since the enactment of our current capital murder statute . . . where the death sentences were affirmed, one case which reversed the death sentence because of its disproportionality, and capital cases in which the choice of death or life imprisonment without possibility of parole for fifty years was submitted to the jury. McDonald, 661 S.W.2d at 507. Similarly, in State v. Wilkins, 736 S.W.2d 409, 417 (Mo. banc 1987), this Court compared the defendant, his crime and the strength of the evidence to that in other cases in which life imprisonment had been imposed, as well as those in which death had been imposed, in finding that the death sentence was not disproportionate. [2] Again, in State v. Six, 805 S.W.2d 159, 169 (Mo. banc 1991), this Court held that for purposes of § 565.035.3(3), this Court has examined those capital murder and first degree murder cases in which death and the alternative sentence of life imprisonment have been submitted to the jury and the sentence has been affirmed on appeal.
Despite this long-settled interpretation of what constituted similar cases under section 565.035, in State v. Ramsey, 864 S.W.2d 320 (Mo. banc 1993), this Court began undertaking a different  and much more limited  proportionality review. Ramsey correctly noted that the United States Supreme Court had held, Proportionality review is not constitutionally required. It is designed by the legislature as an additional safeguard against arbitrary and capricious sentencing and to promote the evenhanded, rational and consistent imposition of death sentences. Id. at 328, citing Pulley v. Harris, 465 U.S. 37, 47-48, 104 S.Ct. 871, 79 L.Ed.2d 29 (1984). Pulley held that the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution does not require that a court undertake a proportionality review. Pulley, 465 U.S. at 50-51, 104 S.Ct. 871. It did not address, however, the kind of analysis that is required under Missouri's proportionality review statute. Nonetheless, without distinguishing or overruling any of this Court's many cases (including those noted above) stating that proportionality review requires consideration of all prior capital cases, regardless of whether a death sentence was imposed, Ramsey rejected what it called the argument that it should be parsing through homicide cases by examining and weighing different facts. 864 S.W.2d at 327. Rather, it said, section 565.035 proportionality review merely provides a backstop against the freakish and wanton application of the death penalty.. . . If the case, taken as a whole, is plainly lacking circumstances consistent with those in similar cases in which the death penalty has been imposed, then a resentencing will be ordered. Id. at 328. Although Ramsey briefly mentioned that cases imposing a life sentence had been examined and found to differ in regard to the presence of aggravating circumstances and the lack of mitigating ones, id., it did not cite or discuss such cases. Thereafter, in reliance on Ramsey 's statement that the purpose of proportionality review is to provide a backstop against the freakish and wanton application of the death penalty, id. at 328, with rare exceptions [3] this Court's cases began to compare the facts of the defendant's case against only other cases in which imposition of the death penalty had been approved. See, e.g., State v. Parker, 886 S.W.2d 908, 933-34 (Mo. banc 1994); State v. Richardson, 923 S.W.2d 301, 330 (Mo. banc 1996); Lyons v. State, 39 S.W.3d 32, 44 (Mo. banc 2001); State v. Johnson, 207 S.W.3d 24, 50-51 (Mo. banc 2006); State v. Barton, 240 S.W.3d 693, 709-11 (Mo. banc 2008). Few of these cases actually analyze the language of section 565.035, however, or compare the analysis this Court undertakes to that required by the statute. Instead, they cite to the statement in Ramsey that the purpose of proportionality review is to protect against the freakish or wanton imposition of a death sentence and then note that prior cases have imposed death on similar facts so the death sentence is not disproportionate.
Section 565.035 does not permit this Court to limit its analysis to a determination whether imposition of the death penalty was freakish or wanton, however. That language comes from Ramsey , which notes the minimum standard that is constitutionally required to be met in order to avoid the arbitrary imposition of the death penalty. I agree that this is the ultimate constitutional issue, but the statute sets out a more specific, and I believe more stringent, proportionality analysis: the Court is required to determine whether the sentence of death is excessive or disproportionate after considering similar cases in light of three factors  the crime, the defendant and the strength of the evidence. § 565.035.3. [4] Whether a death sentence is imposed is not a listed factor. To the contrary, after stating that this Court is to list those similar cases which it took into consideration, § 565.035.5, the statute requires that this Court appoint an assistant to accumulate the records of all case in which the sentence of death or life imprisonment without probation or parole was imposed. § 565.035.6 (emphasis added). It would be pointless for section 565.035.6 to require this Court to accumulate records of cases in which life imprisonment is imposed if life imprisonment cases are inherently dissimilar to this Court's proportionality review under the statute. That is why the cases interpreting section 565.035 and its predecessor prior to Ramsey considered both death and life imprisonment cases, for both may constitute similar cases under section 565.035. [5] Although this type of proportionality review is required by statute, rather than by the Eighth Amendment, the duty is no less important. Cases in which a life sentence was imposed should be included in this Court's proportionality analysis. That is not to say that the existence of a large number of cases in which a death sentence was imposed on similar facts may not be more persuasive or that cases that did not compare the case before them to those in which a life sentence was imposed reached the wrong result. Rather, the analysis simply is incomplete unless one also looks at cases in which life imprisonment resulted, and there is a risk that this lack of complete analysis, in the rare case, may have prevented this Court from identifying a case in which the death penalty was disproportionate when considered as against similar cases as a whole. Further, it is worthwhile to note that United States Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, in a statement respecting the denial of a petition for writ of certiorari in Walker v. Georgia, ___ U.S. ___, ___-___, 129 S.Ct. 453, 454-55, 172 L.Ed.2d 344 (2008), recently expressed concern about Georgia's current failure to consider cases in which a life sentence was imposed, stating that consideration of the latter cases seems judicious because, quite obviously, a significant number of similar cases in which death was not imposed might well provide the most relevant evidence of arbitrariness in the sentence before the court. In Walker , the defendant argued that Georgia's capital punishment scheme was unconstitutionally arbitrary because it failed to conduct a meaningful proportionality review. Justice Stevens noted that this issue was not preserved properly; therefore, he concurred in the denial of certiorari but said, I write separately to emphasize that the Court's denial has no precedential effect. Id. at 454. The reason he wanted to emphasize this point, he said, was his concern that Gregg and similar cases had affirmed the lack of arbitrariness of Georgia's death penalty procedures partly in reliance on Georgia's statutory requirement that its supreme court independently review the imposition of the death penalty and its proportionality to similar cases in which death or a life sentence without parole had been imposed. Id. at 454. Justice Stevens noted there is a special risk of arbitrariness in cases in which the victim and defendant are of different races, such as in Walker ; therefore, it greatly troubled him that Georgia had carried out only a perfunctory proportionality review and had not considered cases in which death was not imposed, despite the heightened risk of arbitrariness, stating, had the Georgia Supreme Court looked outside the universe of cases in which the jury imposed a death sentence, it would have found numerous cases involving offenses very similar to petitioner's in which the jury imposed a sentence of life imprisonment. Id. at 455-56. Justice Stevens further found such cases to be eminently relevant to the question whether a death sentence in a given case is proportionate to the offense, id. at 456, and that, failure to acknowledge . . . cases outside the limited universe of cases in which the defendant was sentenced to death creates an unacceptable risk that [the reviewing court] will overlook a sentence infected by impermissible considerations. Id. In other words, if one limits one's consideration only to cases in which a similar penalty was imposed, then it is almost preordained that the cases will be found to be similar, but this says nothing about whether the case also is similar to cases outside the orbit of the court's analysis. While it is unclear whether the other justices share Justice Stevens' viewpoint, the concern he raises is a realistic one that, by categorically refusing to look at cases in which a life sentence was imposed, a court may be excluding from consideration cases that are in fact similar to the one before it. It therefore is not surprising that Missouri's legislature expressed its intent that cases in which a life sentence was imposed are to be a part of this Court's proportionality review. Such a review does not impose a new requirement on this Court to count good and bad facts or to become a super-juror and second-guess the jury's consideration of the evidence. Such a review requires the Court only to continue doing what it now does in regard to cases in which death was imposed  review them to determine whether the sentence of death is disproportionate in light of the crime, the defendant and the strength of the evidence, see, e.g., State v. Chaney, 967 S.W.2d 47, 59-60 (Mo. banc 1998) (finding death sentence disproportionate in light of strength of the evidence after comparing to other death cases)  but to include similar cases in which a life sentence was imposed in that analysis. See, e.g., State v. McIlvoy, 629 S.W.2d 333, 341-42 (Mo. banc 1982) (finding death sentence disproportionate to the penalty imposed in similar cases after considering both death and life sentence cases). The Court now simply must apply its already existing analysis to the broader universe of cases required by statute  those in which either death or a sentence of life without parole were imposed. [6] The principal opinion already considers similar cases in which a death penalty resulted. Therefore, this separate opinion determines whether the death sentence here is disproportionate in light of similar cases by additionally reviewing the cases Mr. Deck cites as similar but in which a life sentence was imposed, and also by reviewing other cases in which a life sentence was imposed that also involved multiple murders during the course of a robbery or burglary.