Court Opinion

ID: 9845347
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 03:19:40.794819+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:16:02.064964
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Moore,
dissenting.
For the reasons hereinafter briefly stated, I respectfully dissent from the majority opinion.
Our law • very clearly provides that no person shall, “suffer the death penalty who shall have been convicted on circumstantial evidence alone.” ’35 C.S.A., c. 48, §32. It further provides that in cases in which an accused is convicted of first degree murder, the jury “shall fix the penalty at death or imprisonment for life.”
There is ample circumstantial evidence disclosed in this record to sustain a verdict of murder of the first degree. However, no death penalty could lawfully be imposed if the jury relied for conviction upon this circumstantial evidence. There is not to be found the least suggestion in the court’s instructions that there was any limitation of any kind whatever upon the right of the jury to impose a death sentence even though its verdict of guilty was based entirely upon circumstantial evidence.
Admittedly, the only evidence received upon the trial, *405which is direct, as distinguished from circumstantial, evidence, was that given by the seven year old child, Robert Berger, who was permitted to testify. In view of the tender age of this witness, and the natural hesitancy that mature minds must have in placing firm reliance upon the impressions of children but a few steps removed from incapacity to testify, it is entirely conceivable that the jury in this cause disregarded the “direct” evidence of the little boy and placed their reliance upon the wealth of circumstantial evidence pointing with high persuasion toward the guilt of the defendant. The jury was not instructed that if the issue of guilt was thus decided, no death penalty could be inflicted. It erroneously was kept in complete ignorance concerning any distinctions between direct and circumstantial evidence, and thus was without essential, fundamental information, the possession of which was necessarily prerequisite to an intelligent assessment of a penalty consistent with the basic principles of law which authorize the taking of human life as a forfeit for crime.
The members of the jury could not possibly have properly discharged their legal responsibility with reference to fixing the penalty, in the complete absence of any instruction stating the limitations upon their power. Thus the jury could not act with full understanding concerning the law, for the simple reason that it was not given sufficient instruction upon which to act in full light.
It is no answer to the foregoing to assert that, when counsel for the defendant upon the trial (who does not appear in this court) failed to object to the instructions given, and tendered no instructions which would have correctly stated the applicable law, he thereby waived the right of his client that otherwise would have been absolute. Reliance on technical rules should not spell the difference between life and death. There are some fundamental essentials in court procedure which cannot be waived. One of them is that, whoever assumes to *406exercise the right to put a convicted felon to death in the name of the law, shall not elect to order the death penalty unless, and until, there has been a full explanation concerning the limitations which the law places upon the exercise of the power to order death as a forfeit for crime. The law which authorizes the death penalty is of no greater weight than that which fixes limitations upon the power to inflict it.
No person should be put to death by order of a group of citizens serving as jurors who were uninformed concerning the legal limits of their power. This is true without regard to the fact that the accused may be a semi-moron, or a previously convicted felon, or abnormal, or despicable, vicious, or for other reasons an outcast in the eyes of men.
Since, it is here admitted that the jury might well have determined the guilt of defendant wholly upon circumstantial evidence; since it is further admitted that the jury acted in the complete absence of information that the law placed limitations upon its power to impose the death penalty; since it is entirely possible that, had the legal limitations relating to imposition of death been known to the jury, a different result might have obtained; there should be a reconsideration of the quéstion of the penalty to be exacted. Any jury which considers the question anew, should be fully informed concerning all matters affecting its right to order the death of defendant.
I am unable to agree, as contended by Mr. Justice Holland in his dissenting opinion, that this court has the power to reduce the sentence from death to life imprisonment. Our law places that power exclusively in the jury, subject only to the power of the executive to extend clemency.
While another jury, acting with full knowledge of the law, might see fit to fix the penalty at death, nevertheless it might also only adjudge imprisonment for life.
In my opinion the judgment should be reversed and *407the cause remanded for further proceedings consistent with the views herein expressed.