Court Opinion

ID: 9547831
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 17:53:01.211484+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:18:08.403502
License: Public Domain

BRETT, Judge,
specially concurring:
This Court has a statutory duty to determine whether the sentence of death is excessive or disproportionate to the penalty imposed in similar cases, considering both the crime and the defendant. 21 O.S.1981, § 701.13(C)(3). The plurality opinion interprets this requirement to mean that the factors pertinent to the comparison of both the crime and the defendant are (1) the crime involved the killing of a family member without provocation and (2) the appellant claimed to be legally insane at the time of the crime. I fail to understand why these were the sole criteria chosen on which to base a comparison with other cases. Based on this reasoning, anytime a person murders a member of his family, he is guaranteed at most a sentence of life imprisonment if he pleads insanity at the time of the crime. This Court has, in effect, judicially legislated out of our statute one particular group of murders involving these circumstances.
While it is true that the U.S. Supreme Court has given the states little information concerning this issue, some guidance can be found in recent cases. The Court has stated 1 that the decision to impose the death penalty in one case, but not in another, may be justified by any factual circumstance which relates to the offense itself or to the character or record of the defendant.
In Godfrey v. Georgia,2 the Supreme Court reversed the appellant’s death sentence because it found the Georgia Supreme Court had adopted such a broad and unique construction of the Georgia death sentence statute as to violate the Eighth and Fourteenth amendments. Although the Court was considering a somewhat different issue in Godfrey v. Georgia, some factors relating to the defendant and the crime that the Court looked at are helpful to our inquiry in the present case. In Godfrey the Supreme Court found that:
The petitioner’s crimes cannot be said to have reflected a consciousness materially more “depraved” than that of any person guilty of murder. His victims were killed *489instantaneously. They were members of his family who were causing him extreme emotional trauma. Shortly after the killings, he acknowledged his responsibility and the heinous nature of his crime. These factors certainly did not remove the criminality from the petitioner’s acts.... There is no principled way to distinguish this case.
I would begin with the factors enunciated in Godfrey, in determining whether the sentence of death is excessive or disproportionate to the penalty imposed in similar cases. Even the majority opinion agrees that this was “a most gruesome and sadistic murder ... remarkable in its atrocity and lack of provocation.” The victim was beaten and stabbed numerous times before his heart was cut out, therefore he was not killed instantaneously as was the victim in Hogue v. State, the case cited for comparison by the majority. Further, unlike Hogue, when the police attempted to apprehend the appellant, he tried to stab one officer and then took off running before he was overtaken and handcuffed. From an analysis of these factors, I cannot say the sentence of death was excessive or disproportionate to the penalty imposed in similar cases.
However, I agree that the sentence of death should be modified to life imprisonment based on the improper cross-examination by the prosecutor inferring that if Munn were found not guilty by reason of insanity he would be shortly released from commitment. This was a factor outside the purview of the jury and may have misled the jury in its assessment of the facts. Also, the pictures introduced by the State depicting the victim lying on the floor with his organs exposed were prejudicial and wholly irrelevant. There was no issue in the case pertaining to the method of death or who killed the deceased, therefore the photographs should not have been admitted. I acknowledge that the photographs were never objected to at trial nor was their improper admission raised as error on appeal. However, in a death case this Court is vested with the duty to examine the entire record to determine whether the jury was improperly influenced in assessing the death penalty. It is, therefore, my opinion that these two factors were sufficient to improperly influence the jury to assess the death penalty.

. Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U.S. 586, 602-05, 98 S.Ct. 2954, 2963-2965, 57 L.Ed.2d 973 (1978) (plurality opinion); Woodson v. North Carolina, 428 U.S. 280, 304, 96 S.Ct. 2978, 2991, 49 L.Ed.2d 944 (1976).

. Godfrey v. Georgia, 446 U.S. 420, 100 S.Ct. 1759, 1767, 64 L.Ed.2d 398 (1980).