Court Opinion

ID: 9774057
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 18:07:44.527577+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:32:01.436622
License: Public Domain

HIGGINS, Judge,
concurring.
I concur fully in the opinion of Morgan, J., which affirms the judgment of conviction of capital murder and sentence to death.
I file this separate opinion to speak to the reservation of Seiler, J., in dissent, concerning whether “a substantial history of serious assaultive criminal convictions,” § 565.-012.2(1), RSMo, as an aggravating circumstance, is “unconstitutionally vague.”
The dissenting opinion cites Arnold v. State, 236 Ga. 534, 224 S.E.2d 386 (1976), in which the Supreme Court of Georgia held that the aggravating circumstance “ ‘The offense of murder ... was committed by a person . .. who has a substantial history of serious assaultive criminal convictions,’ ” was “too vague and nonspecific to be applied evenhandedly by a jury.” Id. at 391-2. The defendant specifically challenged the phrases “substantial history” and “serious assaultive criminal convictions”; however, the court examined only the substantial history standard. It found that sub-stantiality is a “highly subjective” criterion. Implicit in its cursory discussion seems to be a concern that one jury might find two convictions of Crime A to be substantial while another might find four similar convictions insubstantial.
The court’s reasoning is not persuasive because subjective analyses are inherent in every jury deliberation. It is difficult to perceive how the substantiality of a defendant’s history is any more subjective than a jury’s collective understanding of the reasonableness of doubt. In both cases, individual jurors will likely have their own personal qualitative and quantitative yardsticks against which these standards are measured. In both cases, the jury is compelled to arrive at a group decision on whether the evidence presented exceeds all the individual standards. The court’s reservation about this standard is rendered even less persuasive when one considers that it had no difficulty in defining, limiting and upholding other standards such as “outrageously or wantonly vile,” “horrible” and “inhuman,” particularly when these terms are at least as subjective and emotionally provocative.
Reading the entire discussion on this aggravating circumstance leaves one with the firm impression that the Georgia Court was not convinced that this defendant’s particular history was substantial, and therefore, this defendant should not be put to death. The court could have reached the same result by exercising its statutory duty in review of the sentence. While the phrase “substantial history” is not measurable with mathematical precision, there does not appear to be much within the realm of jury perceptions that can be so measured. This inability alone would not provide a sound reason for finding this statutory aggravating circumstance unconstitutionally vague, the Georgia Court’s reasoning notwithstanding.