Court Opinion

ID: 9463295
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 23:02:31.893558+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:38:01.173415
License: Public Domain

AINSWORTH, Circuit Judge
dissenting:
I concur in the judgment of the court affirming defendant Kaiser’s conviction; however, I dissent from that part of the court’s opinion which reverses the sentence of death by electrocution and substitutes a sentence of life imprisonment.
Peter Gaston Kaiser was indicted along with Larry Fate Fortune for having “with malice aforethought, wilfully, deliberately and maliciously and with premeditation” killed Charles James White, Jr. by means of a firearm, at Fort Benning, Georgia, in violation of the federal statute, 18 U.S.C. § 1111, pertaining to murder within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States.1 Kaiser was convicted by a jury of first degree murder and sentenced to death.2
The full text of 18 U.S.C. § 1111 reads as follows:
§ 1111. Murder
(a) Murder is the unlawful killing of a human being with malice aforethought. Every murder perpetrated by poison, lying in wait, or any other kind of willful, deliberate, malicious, and premeditated killing; or committed in the perpetration of, or attempt to perpetrate, any arson, rape, burglary, or robbery; or perpetrated from a premeditated design unlawfully and maliciously to effect the death of any human being other than him who is killed, is murder in the first degree.
Any other murder is murder in the second degree.
(b) Within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States,
*478Whoever is guilty of murder in the first degree, shall suffer death unless the jury qualifies its verdict by adding thereto “without capital punishment”, in which event he shall be sentenced to imprisonment for life;
Whoever is guilty of murder in the second degree, shall be imprisoned for any term of years or for life. June 25, 1948, c. 645, 62 Stat. 756.
The Reviser’s Note in U.S.C.A. to the above article states:
Based on Title 18, U.S.C., 1940 ed., §§ 452, 454, 567 (Mar. 4, 1909, c. 321, §§ 273, 275, 330, 35 Stat. 1143, 1152 [Derived from R.S. § 5339; Jan. 15, 1897, c. 29, § 1, 29 Stat. 487].)
Further research discloses that section 1111 has its origin in the First Congress of the United States by virtue of the Act of April 30, 1790, 1st Cong. Sess. II, ch. IX, sec. 3 (1 Stat. 112, 113 (1790)) which reads as follows:
And be it [further] enacted, That if any person or persons shall, within any fort, arsenal, dock-yard, magazine, or in any other place or district of country, under the sole and exclusive jurisdiction of the United States, commit the crime of wilful murder, such person or persons on being thereof convicted shall suffer death.
(Emphasis in original.)
Thus, from the dawn of this Nation’s history, there has been a federal statute enacted by Congress, condemning the crime of murder within the sole and exclusive jurisdiction of the United States (such as Fort Benning, Georgia, in the present case) and prescribing the death penalty on conviction. For 186 years the death penalty provision of the statute (as now amended) has survived constitutionality until the majority decision here striking it down.
The circumstances of the murder involved in this case are especially aggravated. Two men, defendants Kaiser and Fortune, abducted their victim, White, at Columbus, Georgia, and took him in his car to an isolated, wooded area of the undeveloped portion of the military reservation of Fort Benning, Georgia. White was ordered out of the car and made to lie on the ground and then defendants Kaiser and Fortune took turns shooting at him, finally killing him with bullets in the head. The defendants admitted the killing to friends immediately afterwards, one prosecution witness testifying that Pete (Kaiser) told him that “They had shot a nigger,” and that “They had taken turns shooting him and then they joked about it. He (Kaiser) told Larry (Fortune) something about Larry kept on missing him and Larry said at least he tried.” They robbed White of his watch, wallet, driver’s license and his automobile. The next morning they went out to the place of the murder to be sure the victim was dead. Soon thereafter they kidnapped a Mr. Hoover, at Columbus, Georgia, and fled with him into Texas where they were apprehended in the possession of the two pistols used in killing the victim, White, and also of White’s driver’s license. The murder was committed in the most wilful and deliberate fashion and in the perpetration of a robbery. It is difficult to conceive of a more premeditated and heinous killing.
The majority opinion bases its holding of the unconstitutionality of the death penalty in section 1111 first on the Supreme Court’s decision in Furman v. Georgia, supra, wherein the death penalty under Georgia criminal statutes was set aside as unconstitutional. The opinion asserts that the federal murder statute involved here is “cut from the same die as that condemned as cruel and unusual” in the Georgia cases. The majority then states that the federal courts and federal prosecutors since Fur-man have generally concluded that the capital punishment provision of section 1111 is unconstitutional. Of course, all federal prosecutors have not so concluded since in the instant case the United States Attorney for the Middle District of Georgia (Mr. Knight) contends in his brief to this court that the death penalty provision of section 1111 is constitutional. The majority concludes that the 1976 death penalty cases, Gregg v. Georgia, supra, and companion cases, together with those decided in 1972, provide the basis for its holding that the *479death penalty provision of the federal statute, section 1111, is unconstitutional because the statute vests in the jury “standardless sentencing power.” The plurality opinion in Gregg, supra, and companion cases, of Justices Stewart, Powell and Stevens upheld the constitutionality of the new Georgia, Florida and Texas capital punishment statutes on that basis, with its holding that these state statutes provide adequate standards and guidelines for a jury in reaching a verdict requiring capital punishment. The North Carolina and Louisiana statutes, however, were struck down in the 1976 decisions (in Woodson v. North Carolina and Roberts v. Louisiana, supra) because they provided mandatory death sentences for a broad range of homicides.
It is important to note that the plurality opinion of Justice White, Chief Justice Burger and Justice Rehnquist, in the Georgia, Florida and Texas cases, did not concur in the plurality opinion of Justices Stewart, Powell and Stevens, but only in the judgments of the Court. Justice Blackmun declined to join in either of the two plurality opinions, but concurred in the judgments.
By process of reasoning, the majority opinion uses an arithmetic calculation by adding the votes of the three Justices (Stewart, Powell and Stevens) who assert in the 1976 cases the standardless jury discretion rule as a violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments, with the two Justices (Brennan and Marshall) who are opposed to capital punishment under any circumstances, thereby arriving at a majority of five Justices which the majority opinion concludes forms the basis for its holding that the death penalty provision of section 1111 is unconstitutional.
I cannot subscribe to this method of predicting what the individual members of the Supreme Court will do under the circumstances of this case. It is clear, of course, that seven of the nine present members of the Court have concluded that capital punishment is not cruel and unusual punishment and is not unconstitutional per se. Whether a majority will ultimately hold that the death penalty in the present federal statute is unconstitutional for standard-less jury discretion remains to be seen.
Section 1111 contains a detailed statement of the components which constitute murder in the first degree. The facts and circumstances here fully warrant the jury’s finding of guilty of murder in the first degree within the statutory definition, as to defendant Kaiser. There were no extenuating circumstances in this case that could have taken it out of the category of first degree murder as defined in the statute. It was a cold-blooded, deliberate, malicious, premeditated killing of the victim, White, while he was prostrate on the ground during the perpetration of a robbery.
Perhaps a majority of the court may ultimately adopt the views of Justice Rehnquist well expressed in his dissent in Woodson v. North Carolina, 428 U.S. 280, at 319, 96 S.Ct. 2978, at 2998-3000, 49 L.Ed.2d 944 (1976), as follows:
The Court’s insistence on “standards” to “guide the jury in its inevitable exercise of the power to decide which murderer shall live and which shall die” is squarely contrary to the Court’s opinion in McGautha, supra, authored by Mr. Justice Harlan and subscribed to by five other Members of the Court only five years ago. So is the Court’s latter-day recognition, some four years after the decision of the case, that Furman requires “objective standards to guide, regularize, and make rationally reviewable the process for imposing a sentence of death.” Its abandonment of stare decisis in this repudiation of McGautha is a far lesser mistake than its substitution of a superficial and contrived constitutional doctrine for the genuine wisdom contained in McGautha. There the Court addressed the “standardless discretion” contention in this language:
“In our view, such force as this argument has derives largely from its generality. Those who have come to grips with the hard task of actually attempting to draft means for channeling capital sentencing discretion have confirmed the lesson taught by the history *480recounted above. To identify before the fact those characteristics of criminal homicides and their perpetrators which call for the death penalty, and to express these characteristics in language which can be fairly understood and applied by the sentencing authority, appear to be tasks which are beyond present human ability.
“Thus the British Home Office, which before the recent abolition of capital punishment in that country had the responsibility for selecting the cases from England and Wales which should receive the benefit of the Royal Prerogative of Mercy, observed:
“ ‘The difficulty of defining by any statutory provision the types of murder which ought or ought not to be punished by death may be illustrated by reference to the many diverse considerations to which the Home Secretary has regard in deciding whether to recommend clemency. No simple formula can take account of the innumerable degrees of culpability, and no formula which fails to do so can claim to be just or satisfy public opinion.’ 1-2 Royal Commission on Capital Punishment, Minutes of Evidence 13 (1949).” 402 U.S., at 204-205, 91 S.Ct., at 1466.
“In light of history, experience, and the present limitations of human knowledge, we find it quite impossible to say that committing to the untrammeled discretion of the jury the power to pronounce life or death in capital cases is offensive to anything in the Constitution. The States are entitled to assume that jurors confronted with the truly awesome responsibility of decreeing death for a fellow human will act with due regard for the consequences of their decision and will consider a variety of factors, many of which will have been suggested by the evidence or by the arguments of defense counsel. For a court to attempt to catalog the appropriate factors in this elusive area could inhibit rather than expand the scope of consideration, for no list of circumstances would ever be really complete. The infinite variety of cases and facets to each case would make general standards either meaningless ‘boiler-plate’ or a statement of the obvious that no jury would need.” 402 U.S., at 207-208, 91 S.Ct., at 1467 (citation omitted).
It is also worth noting that the plurality opinion repudiates not only the view expressed by the Court in McGautha, but also, as noted in McGautha, the view which had been adhered to by every other American jurisdiction which had considered the question. See 402 U.S., at 196 n. 8, 91 S.Ct., at 1461.
I am unable to hold that the death penalty provision of the federal murder statute is unconstitutional on the basis of existing precedent of the Supreme Court since it is far from clear that our highest court would nullify the death penalty provision in section 1111. The plurality of three Justices (Stewart, Powell and Stevens) have required sentencing standards and guidelines for the jury to use in assessing the death penalty. Whether this view will continue to prevail and is applicable here is something that will have to be left for another day to the wisdom of the Supreme Court. Given the long history of the death penalty in the federal murder statute involved in this case, the serious and aggravated circumstances under which the killing was committed which fully justified the unanimous verdict of the jury of first degree murder carrying with it the death penalty, I would defer to the will of Congress as reflected in the present statute and uphold the constitutionality of the death penalty.

. The indictment was returned in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Georgia, Columbus Division, and reads in pertinent part as follows:
THE GRAND JURY CHARGES:

COUNT ONE

That on or about the 28th day of August, 1973, in the Columbus Division of the Middle District of Georgia, and within the jurisdiction of this court, at Fort Benning, Georgia, within and upon lands acquired for the use of the United States and under the exclusive jurisdiction thereof,
PETER GASTON KAISER LARRY FATE FORTUNE
with malice aforethought, wilfully, deliberately and maliciously and with premeditation did kill Charles James White, Jr., by means of a firearm; all in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1111, i/c/w/ Title 18, United States Code, Section 2.

. Fortune pled guilty after the trial started and , received a life sentence.