Court Opinion

ID: 9647883
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 13:53:53.24131+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:05:48.722866
License: Public Domain

CORNELIUS, Judge,
concurring.
I concur with much hesitation in the following statement in the majority opinion:
“Under all of the evidence as summarized herein, it was the jury’s duty to determine whether the defendants were guilty of murder in the first degree or of one of the lesser included offenses. However, the record shows that the trial court only charged the law of the offense of murder in the first degree. We agree with the defendants that the trial court’s failure to charge on the lesser included offenses has created reversible error.”
Bifurcated trial procedure in capital cases are relatively new in State criminal prosecutions.1 It came into conception in Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, 92 S.Ct. 2726, 33 L.Ed.2d 346. It became a legitimate entity in Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153, 96 S.Ct. 2909, 49 L.Ed.2d 859.
In Furman, the court was concerned with statutes which left the jury with untrammeled discretion to impose or withhold the death penalty. The individual opinions of Furman, in summary, were concerned with the disproportionate number of death sentences imposed between classes of people. Furman also took cognizance of the irrational application of the death penalty to the heinous nature of the crime.
In Gregg, supra, 92 S.Ct. at page 2922, and Jurek v. Texas, 428 U.S. 262, 96 S.Ct. 2950, 2957, 49 L.Ed.2d 929; and Proffitt v. Florida, 428 U.S. 242, 96 S.Ct. 2960, 2967, 49 L.Ed.2d 913, the (six) Justices rejected the petitioners’ assertions that arbitrariness still pervaded in the entire criminal justice system of Georgia, Texas and Florida. This *320assertion included the prosecutor’s decision whether to charge a capital offense in the first place and then whether to engage in plea bargaining, the jury’s consideration of lesser included offenses, and the Governor’s ultimate power to commute death sentences.
In our present case we have only the issue of when should the jury consider the lesser included offenses. In a bifurcated trial with the first stage being concerned with guilt or innocence, is it not logical that question be addressed directly to the capital offense? Bifurcated means to divide into two parts. If the jury finds the defendant guilty in the first stage, they fix the punishment in the second. On the other hand, assume they find the defendant not guilty of the capital offense, there is still the second stage in which to consider the lesser included offenses. I take issue with those who would say that if the jury found the defendant not guilty in the first stage, further proceedings would be prevented on the question of guilt or innocence of lesser included offenses. Every juror that found guilt in a lesser included offense had by the nature of the proceedings acquitted the defendant of the greater offense.
It may well be that we are circling back to the unusual punishment which Furman found violated the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution. The State has raised a strong argument in the fact that the twenty-two marks left by the hatchet upon the body of the deceased show conclusively that his assailant committed the crime of murder in the first degree. Would not a conviction of a lesser included offense be irrational relative to the heinous nature of the crime?
Since I am required to follow the law, I concur in this opinion with reservations.

. Habitual criminal procedure slowly conceived the bifurcated trial.