Court Opinion

ID: 9427919
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:22:14.963347+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:10.545055
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice White,
with whom Mr. Justice Rehnquist joins,
dissenting.
The sole question presented by this petition is whether, in affirming petitioner’s death sentence, the Georgia Supreme Court adopted such a broad construction of Ga. Code § 27-2534.1 (b) (7) (1978) as to violate the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution.
I
In early September 1977, Mrs. Godfrey, petitioner’s wife, left him, moved in with her mother, and refused his entreaty to move back home. She also filed for divorce and charged petitioner with aggravated assault based on an incident in which he had cut some clothes off her body with a knife. On September 20, 1977, Mrs. Godfrey refused petitioner’s request to halt divorce proceedings so that they could attempt a reconciliation. That same day petitioner carried his single-action shotgun to his mother-in-law’s trailer home, where his wife, her mother, and the couple’s 11-year-old daughter were playing a game around a table. Firing through a window, petitioner killed his wife with a shotgun blast to the head. As his daughter, running for help, attempted to rush past him, he struck her on the head with the barrel of the gun; she nonetheless was able to run on for help. Petitioner then reloaded his shotgun and, after entering the home, fired a fatal blast at his mother-in-law’s head. After calling the police himself, petitioner was arrested, advised of his rights, and taken to the police station, where he told an officer that he had committed a “hideous crime” about which he had thought for eight years and that he would do it again.
Petitioner, over his defense of insanity, was convicted of the murders of his wife and his mother-in-law and of the *445aggravated assault of his daughter. He was sentenced to death for each of the murders and to 10 years’ imprisonment for the aggravated assault. Under the Georgia death penalty scheme, a person can be sentenced to death only if “the jury verdict includes a finding of at least one statutory aggravating circumstance and a recommendation that such sentence be imposed.” Ga. Code § 26-3102 (1978). The statutory aggravating circumstance upon which petitioner’s sentence was premised reads: “The offense of murder . . . was outrageously or wantonly vile, horrible or inhuman in that it involved torture, depravity of mind, or an aggravated assault to the victim.” § 27-2534.1 (b) (7) (“§ (b)(7)”). In petitioner’s case, however, the jury, upon returning its recommendation of death, described the aggravating circumstance as follows: “[T]hat the offense of murder was outrageously or wantonly vile, horrible and inhuman.” This attenuated statement of § (b) (7) in part forms the basis of petitioner’s challenge to the Georgia Supreme Court’s decision, for that court held that “[t]he evidence supports the jury’s finding of statutory aggravating circumstances, and the jury’s phraseology was not objectionable.” 243 Ga. 302, 310, 253 S. E. 2d 710, 718.
II
In Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U. S. 153 (1976), we upheld the constitutionality of the capital-sentencing procedures in accordance with which the State of Georgia has sentenced petitioner to death. Two aspects of that scheme impressed us in particular as curing the constitutional defects in the system that was invalidated several years earlier in Furman v. Georgia, 408 U. S. 238 (1972). First, the sentencing system specifies statutory aggravating circumstances, one of which has to be found by the jury to exist beyond a reasonable doubt before a death sentence can ever be imposed. Ga. Code §§26-3102, 27-2534.1 (1978). Second, the scheme provides for automatic appeal of all death sentences to the *446Georgia Supreme Court, which is required by statute to undertake a specific inquiry with respect to the soundness of the decision to impose the death penalty. § 27-2537.1 “In short, Georgia’s new sentencing procedures require as a prerequisite to the imposition of the death penalty, specific jury findings as to the circumstances of the crime or the character of the defendant. Moreover, . . . the Supreme Court of Georgia compares each death sentence with the sentences imposed on similarly situated defendants to ensure that the sentence of death in a particular case is not disproportionate.” 428 U. S., at 198 (opinion of Stewart, Powell, and Stevens, JJ.); see id., at 204-206; id., at 223-224 (opinion of White, J.). Petitioner maintains that, at least in his case, the Georgia Supreme Court has failed in its review function because, by construing § (b) (7) to authorize the imposition of the death penalty on him, the court has interpreted that provision in an unconstitutionally broad fashion.
The opinion announcing the judgment of the Court in Gregg recognized that § (b)(7), which would authorize imposition of the death penalty here if either of the murders was “outrageously or wantonly vile, horrible or inhuman in that it involved torture, depravity of mind, or an aggravated battery to the victim,” presented some potential interpretative difficulty because “arguabl[y] . . . any murder involves depravity of mind or an aggravated battery.” 428 U. S., at 201 (opinion of Stewart, Powell, and Stevens, JJ.). “But,” the opinion continued, “this language need not be construed in this way, and there is no reason to assume *447that the Supreme Court of Georgia will adopt such an open-ended construction.” Ibid. By concluding that the Supreme Court of Georgia has adopted “such an open-ended construction” in the present case, the Court has now turned a blind eye to the facts surrounding the murders of Mrs. Godfrey and her mother and to the constancy of the State Supreme Court in performance of its statutory review function.
Ill
This case presents a preliminary difficulty because the sentencing jury found merely that “the offense of murder was outrageously or wantonly vile, horrible and inhuman,” and did not repeat in its finding the entire incantation of § (b) (7). The Georgia Supreme Court found the jury’s phraseology unobjectionable; and because this judgment was rendered in the same sentence in which the court expressed its determination that sufficient evidence supported the jury’s finding of statutory aggravating circumstance § (b)(7), the court presumably believed that the jury’s finding met all necessary terms of the provision notwithstanding the jury’s abbreviated statement.
Petitioner argues, however, that the Georgia Supreme Court, by not deeming the jury’s abbreviated statement as reversible error, has endorsed a view of § (b) (7) that allows for the provision’s application upon a finding that a murder was “outrageously or wantonly vile, horrible or inhuman,” even though the murder involved no “torture, depravity of mind, or . . . aggravated battery to the victim.” Such a finding, petitioner contends, would be incomplete and indicative of an unconstitutionally broad construction of the provision, for the language “outrageously or wantonly vile, horrible or inhuman” cannot “objectively guide and channel jury discretion in the imposition of a death sentence in compliance with the command of the 8th and 14th Amendments. . . .” Brief for Petitioner 23. The plurality opinion seems to agree. Ante, at 428.
*448I find petitioner’s argument unpersuasive, for it is apparent that both the jury and the Georgia Supreme Court understood and applied § (b)(7) in its entirety. The trial court instructed the jurors that they were authorized to fix petitioner’s punishment for murder as death or imprisonment for life and that they could consider any evidence in mitigation. App. 79. They were also specifically instructed to determine whether there was a statutory aggravating circumstance present beyond a reasonable doubt and that the aggravating circumstance that they could consider was “[t]hat the offense of murder was outrageously or wantonly vile, horrible or inhuman in that it involved torture, depravity of mind, or an aggravated battery to the victim.” Ibid. That the jury’s ultimate recitation of the aggravating circumstance was abbreviated reveals, in my view, no gap of constitutional magnitude in its understanding of its duty. It is perfectly evident, moreover, that, in exercising its review function, the Georgia Supreme Court understood that the provision applied in its entirety, just as in the past it has insisted that the provision be read as a whole and not be applied disjunctively. Harris v. State, 237 Ga. 718, 230 S. E. 2d 1 (1976), cert. denied, 431 U. S 933 (1977); Holton v. State, 243 Ga. 312, 253 S. E. 2d 736 (a finding of “depravity of mind” is insufficient to support a death sentence), cert. denied, 444 U. S. 925 (1979). The court, after quoting the language of the jury’s finding, cited § (b)(7) and, more tellingly, referred to the discrepancy between the two versions as a mere problem of “phraseology.” As such, the jury’s version, in the court’s view, “was not objectionable.” 243 Ga., at 310, 253 S. E. 2d, at 718.
Thus, while both sides to this litigation felt constrained to engage in elaborate structural arguments regarding § (b) (7)— focusing on grammar and syntax, nuance and implication — I ascribe no constitutional significance at all to the jury’s attenuated statement of the provision, and thus regard the question whether certain language in the section is severable from the rest as immaterial to the decision of this case.
*449IV
The question remains whether the facts of this case bear sufficient relation to § (b)(7) to conclude that the Georgia Supreme Court responsibly and constitutionally discharged its review function. I believe that they do.
As described earlier, petitioner, in a coldblooded executioner’s style, murdered his wife and his mother-in-law and, in passing, struck his young daughter on the head with the barrel of his gun. The weapon, a shotgun, is hardly known for the surgical precision with which it perforates its target. The murder scene, in consequence, can only be described in the most unpleasant terms. Petitioner’s wife lay prone on the floor. Mrs. Godfrey’s head had a hole described as “[approximately the size of a silver dollar” on the side where the shot entered, and much less decipherable and more extensive damage on the side where the shot exited. Tr. 259. Pellets that had passed through Mrs. Godfrey’s head were found embedded in the kitchen cabinet.
It will be remembered that after petitioner inflicted this much damage, he took out time not only to strike his daughter on the head, but also to reload his single-shot shotgun and to enter the house. Only then did he get around to shooting his mother-in-law, Mrs. Wilkerson, whose last several moments as a sentient being must have been as terrifying as the human mind can imagine. The police eventually found her face-down on the floor with a substantial portion of her head missing and her brain, no longer cabined by her skull, protruding for some distance onto the floor. Blood not only covered the floor and table, but dripped from the ceiling as well.
The Georgia Supreme Court held that these facts supported the jury’s finding of the existence of statutory aggravating circumstance § (b)(7). A majority of this Court disagrees. But this disagreement, founded as it is on the notion that the lower court’s construction of the provision was overly broad, in fact reveals a conception of this Court’s role in back*450stopping the Georgia Supreme Court that is itself overly broad. Our role is to correct genuine errors of constitutional significance resulting from the application of Georgia’s capital sentencing procedures; our role is not to peer majestically over the lower court’s shoulder so that we might second-guess its interpretation of facts that quite reasonably — perhaps even quite plainly — fit within the statutory language.2
Who is to say that the murders of Mrs. Godfrey and Mrs. Wilkerson were not “vile,” or “inhuman,” or “horrible”? In performing his murderous chore, petitioner employed a weapon known for its disfiguring effects on targets, human or other, and he succeeded in creating a scene so macabre and revolting that, if anything, “vile,” “horrible,” and “inhuman” are descriptively inadequate.
And who among us can honestly say that Mrs. Wilkerson did not feel “torture” in her last sentient moments. Her daughter, an instant ago a living being sitting across the table from Mrs. Wilkerson, lay prone on the floor, a bloodied and mutilated corpse. The seconds ticked by; enough time for her son-in-law to reload his gun, to enter the home, and to *451take a gratuitous swipe at his daughter. What terror must have run through her veins as she first witnessed her daughter’s hideous demise and then came to terms with the imminence of her own. Was this not torture? And if this was not torture, can it honestly be said that petitioner did not exhibit a "depravity of mind” in carrying out this cruel drama to its mischievous and murderous conclusion? I should have thought, moreover, that the Georgia court could reasonably have deemed the scene awaiting the investigating policemen as involving “an aggravated battery to the victim [s].” Ga. Code § 27-2534.1 (b)(7) (1978).
The point is not that, in my view, petitioner’s crimes were definitively vile, horrible, or inhuman, or that, as I assay the evidence, they beyond any doubt involved torture, depravity of mind, or an aggravated battery to the victims. Rather, the lesson is a much more elementary one, an instruction that, I should have thought, this Court would have taken to heart long ago. Our mandate does not extend to interfering with factfinders in state criminal proceedings or with state courts that are responsibly and consistently interpreting state law, unless that interference is predicated on a violation of the Constitution. No convincing showing of such a violation is made here, for, as Mr. Justice Stewart has written in another place, the issue here is not what our verdict would have been, but whether “any rational factfinder” could have found the existence of aggravating circumstance § (b)(7). Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U. S. 307, 313 (1979). Faithful adherence to this standard of review compels our affirmance of the judgment below.3
*452V
Under the present statutory regime, adopted in response to Furman, the Georgia Supreme Court has responsibly and consistently performed its review function pursuant to the Georgia capital-sentencing procedures. The State reports that, at the time its brief was written, the Georgia Supreme Court had reviewed some 99 cases in which the death penalty has been imposed. Of these, 66 had been affirmed; 5 had been reversed for errors in the guilt phase; and 22 had been *453reversed for errors in the sentencing phase.4 Brief for Respondent 13-14. This reversal rate of over 27% is not substantially lower than the historic reversal rate of state supreme courts. See Courting Reversal: The Supervisory Role of State Supreme Courts, 87 Yale L. J. 1191, 1198, 1209 (1978), where it is indicated that 16 state supreme courts over a 100-year period, in deciding 5,133 cases, had a reversal rate of 38.5%; for criminal cases, the reversal rate was 35.6%. To the extent that the reversal rate is lower than the historic level, it doubtless can be attributed to the great and admirable extent to which discretion and uncertainty have been removed from Georgia’s capital-sentencing procedures since our decision in Furman and to the fact that review is mandatory. See 87 Yale L. J., at 1200-1201.
The Georgia Supreme Court has vacated a death sentence where it believed that the statutory sentencing procedures, as passed by the legislature, were defective, Gregg v. State, 233 Ga. 117, 210 S. E. 2d 659 (1974) (holding, inter alia, that the death penalty for armed robbery was impermissible), aff’d on other grounds, 428 U. S. 153 (1976); it has held that jurors must be instructed that they can impose a life sentence even though they find the existence of a statutory aggravating circumstance, Fleming v. State, 240 Ga. 142, 240 S. E. 2d 37 (1977); it has reversed the imposition of the death penalty *454where the prosecutor made an improper comment during his argument to the jury in the sentencing phase, Prevatte v. State, 233 Ga. 929, 214 S. E. 2d 365 (1975); Jordan v. State, 233 Ga. 929, 214 S. E. 2d 365 (1975); it has reversed a trial court’s decision limiting the type of mitigating evidence that could be presented, Brown v. State, 235 Ga. 644, 220 S. E. 2d 922 (1975); it has set aside a death sentence when jurors failed to specify which aggravating circumstances they found to exist, Sprouse v. State, 242 Ga. 831, 252 S. E. 2d 173 (1979); it has reversed a death sentence imposed on a partial finding of an aggravating circumstance, Holton v. State, 243 Ga. 312, 253 S. E. 2d 736, cert. denied, 444 U. S. 925 (1979); it has disapproved a death penalty because of errors in admitting evidence, Stack v. State, 234 Ga. 19, 214 S. E. 2d 514 (1975); it has reversed a capital sentence where a codefendant received only a life sentence, Hall v. State, 241 Ga. 252, 244 S. E. 2d 833 (1978); and it has held a statutory aggravating circumstance to be unconstitutional, Arnold v. State, 236 Ga. 534, 224 S.E. 2d 386 (1976).
The Georgia Supreme Court has also been responsible and consistent in its construction of § (b)(7). The provision has been the exclusive or nonexclusive basis for imposition of the death penalty in over 30 cases. In one excursus on the provision’s language, the court in effect held that the section is to be read as a whole, construing “depravity of mind,” “torture,” and “aggravated battery” to flesh out the meaning of “vile,” “horrible,” and “inhuman.” Harris v. State, 237 Ga. 718, 230 S. E. 2d 1 (1976), cert. denied, 431 U. S. 933 (1977). I see no constitutional error resulting from this understanding of the provision. Indeed, the Georgia Supreme Court has expressly rejected an analysis that would apply the provision disjunctively, Holton v. State, supra, an analysis that, if adopted, would arguably be assailable on constitutional grounds. And the court has noted that it would apply the *455provision only in “core” cases and would not permit § (b) (7) to become a “catchall.” Harris v. State, supra.5
Nor do the facts of this case stand out as an aberration. A jury found § (b) (7) satisfied, for example, when a child was senselessly and ruthlessly executed by a murderer who, like petitioner, accomplished this end with a shotgun. The Georgia Supreme Court affirmed, Ruffin v. State, 243 Ga. 95, 252 S. E. 2d 472, cert. denied, 444 U. S. 995 (1979). See Banks v. State, 237 Ga. 325, 227 S. E. 2d 380 (1976), cert. denied, 430 U. S. 975 (1977). The court has also affirmed a jury’s finding of statutory aggravating circumstance § (b)(7) where, *456as here, there was substantial disfigurement of the victim, McCorquodale v. State, 233 Ga. 369, 211 S. E. 2d 577 (1974), cert. denied, 428 U. S. 910 (1976), and where, as arguably with Mrs. Wilkerson, there was torture of the victim, ibid.; Birt v. State, 236 Ga. 815, 225 S. E. 2d 248, cert. denied, 429 U. S. 1029 (1976).
The majority’s attempt to drive a wedge between this case and others in which § (b) (7) has been applied is thus unconvincing, as is any suggestion that the Georgia Supreme Court has somehow failed overall in performance of its review function.6
VI
In the circumstances of this case, the majority today endorses the argument that I thought we had rejected in Gregg: namely, “that no matter how effective the death penalty may be as a punishment, government, created and run as it must be by humans, is inevitably incompetent to administer it.” 428 U. S., at 226 (opinion of White, J.). The Georgia Supreme Court, faced with a seemingly endless train of macabre scenes, has endeavored in a responsible, rational, and consistent fashion to effectuate its statutory mandate as illuminated by our judgment in Gregg. Today, a majority of this Court, its arguments shredded by its own illogic, informs the Georgia Supreme Court that, to some extent, its efforts have been outside the Constitution. I reject this as an unwarranted invasion into the realm of state law, for, as in *457Gregg, “I decline to interfere with the manner in which Georgia has chosen to enforce [its] laws” until a genuine error of constitutional magnitude surfaces. Ibid, (opinion of White, J.).
I would affirm the judgment of the Supreme Court of Georgia.

 According to the statute, the Georgia Supreme Court must determine:
“(1) Whether the sentence of death was imposed under the influence of passion, prejudice, or any other arbitrary factor, and
“(2) Whether, in cases other than treason or aircraft hijacking, the evidence supports the jury's or judge’s finding of a statutory aggravating circumstance as enumerated in section 27-2534.1 (b), and “(3) Whether the sentence of death is excessive or disproportionate to the penalty imposed in similar cases, considering both the crime and the defendant.” Ga. Code §27-2537 (c) (1978).

 The plurality opinion, ante, at 433, and n. 16, states that “[a]n interpretation of § (b) (7) so as to include all murders resulting in gruesome scenes would be totally irrational” and that the fact that both “victims were killed instantaneously” makes the gruesomeness of the scene irrelevant. This view ignores the indisputable truth that Mrs. Wilkerson did not die “instantaneously”; she had many moments to contemplate her impending death, assuming that the stark terror she must have felt permitted any contemplation. More importantly, it also ignores the obvious correlation between gruesomeness and “depravity of mind,” between gruesomeness and “aggravated battery,” between gruesomeness and “horrible,” between gruesomeness and “vile,” and between gruesomeness and “inhuman.” Mere gruesomeness, to be sure, would not itself serve to establish the existence of statutory aggravating circumstance § (b) (7). But it certainly fares sufficiently well as an indicator of this particular aggravating circumstance to signal to a reviewing court the distinct possibility that the terms of the provision, upon further investigation, might well be met in the circumstances of the case.

 The plurality opinion notes that the prosecutor informed the jury that the case involved no torture or aggravated battery and suggests that this fact somehow undermines the belief that a properly complete understanding of § (b) (7) was applied in this case. Ante, at 426, 432. But as I observe in text, the trial court judge instructed the jurors to consider § (b) (7) in its entirety and thus did not impose a similarly circumscribed *452view of the case on the jurors. At any event, the prosecutor did argue to the jury that there was depravity of mind. App. 76.
The plurality also notes that in the sentencing report filled out by the trial judge, he wrote that the victims here had not been physically harmed or tortured beyond the fact of their murders. But any argument supportive of the plurality’s position based on the judge’s sentencing report is undermined by the plurality opinion itself. For that opinion makes clear that the Georgia Supreme Court, in the course of exercising its review function, has developed “criteria” to guide its application of § (b)(7), criteria of which this Court’s plurality apparently approves. Ante, at 431-432. Surely a court capable of developing such criteria is also capable of keeping them in mind when deciding the latest case to involve the statutory provision that gave birth to the criteria in the first place. Yet the plurality does not recognize the seemingly inescapable conclusion that the Georgia Supreme Court, when affirming petitioner’s convictions and sentences, matched the facts of this case to its understanding of the statute and, irrespective of the trial judge’s comments, concluded that § (b) (7) properly formed the basis for the imposition of the death penalty. The plurality instead seems to adopt the curious notion that a trial judge is capable of binding an appellate court in the performance of its "statutory duty to review trial court determinations.
The plurality opinion also is troubled by the fact that the trial judge gave no guidance to the jurors by way, presumably, of defining the terms in § (b)(7). Ante, at 429. Yet the opinion does not demonstrate that such definitions were provided in cases in which the plurality would agree that § (b) (7) was properly applied. Nor does the opinion demonstrate that such definitions obtain a constitutional significance apart from an independent showing — absent here — that juries and courts cannot rationally apply an unequivocal legislative mandate.

 This Court has reversed six of the eases owing to errors of law rising to constitutional significance. Green v. Georgia, 442 U. S. 95 (1979) (relevant evidence was improperly excluded from the sentencing hearing); Presnell v. Georgia, 439 U. S. 14 (1978) (Georgia Supreme Court erred by affirming a death sentence for murder based on an underlying rape charge of which the defendant was not properly tried and convicted); Coker v. Georgia, 433 U. S. 584 (1977) (under the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments, death is an excessive penalty for a rapist who does not also commit murder); Eberheart v. Georgia, 433 U. S. 917 (1977) (same as Coker); Hooks v. Georgia, 433 U. S. 917 (1977) (same as Coker)] Davis v. Georgia, 429 U. S. 122 (1976) (a prospective juror was excluded from jury service in violation of Witherspoon v. Illinois, 391 U. S. 510 (1968)).

 The cases in which a jury has found the existence of § (b) (7) as the sole basis for imposition of the death penalty include Spraggins v. State, 243 Ga. 73, 252 S. E. 2d 620 (1979) (affirming death sentence for a murder involving multiple stab wounds and partial disembowelment), cert. pending, No. 79-5032; Holton v. State, 243 Ga. 312, 253 S. E. 2d 736 (reversing death sentence because the jury’s finding stated only “depravity of mind”), cert. denied, 444 U. S. 925 (1979); Godfrey v. State, 243 Ga. 302, 253 S. E. 2d 710 (1979) (case below) (affirming death penalty for shotgun shooting resulting in mutilation); Johnson v. State, 242 Ga. 649, 250 S. E. 2d 394 (1978) (affirming death sentence for rape and shooting of two women); Morgan v. State, 241 Ga. 485, 246 S. E. 2d 198 (1978) (affirming death sentence for shotgun shooting of blindfolded victim begging for his life), cert. denied, 441 U. S. 967 (1979); Ward v. State, 239 Ga. 205, 236 S. E. 2d 365 (1977) (reversing death sentence for stabbing murders because a previous trial had ended in a life sentence; thus death penalty here would be disproportionate); Blake v. State, 239 Ga. 292, 236 S. E. 2d 637 (affirming death sentence for murder of a child effected by her being thrown off a bridge), cert. denied, 434 U. S. 960 (1977); Dix v. State, 238 Ga. 209, 232 S. E. 2d 47 (1977) (affirming death sentence for murder accomplished by beating, strangling, and stabbing the victim); Harris v. State, 237 Ga. 718, 230 S. E. 2d 1 (1976) (affirming death sentence for shooting murder of victim who was forced to beg for her life), cert. denied, 431 U. S. 933 (1977); Banks v. State, 237 Ga. 325, 227 S. E. 2d 380 (1976) (affirming death sentence for shotgun murder of two victims), cert. denied, 430 U. S. 975 (1977); Hooks v. State, 233 Ga. 149, 210 S. E. 2d 668 (1974) (affirming death sentence solely for rape), sentence vacated, 433 U. S. 917 (1977).

 The plurality opinion states that there is no indication that petitioner’s mind was any more depraved than that of any other murderer. Ante, at 433. The Court thus assumes the role of a finely tuned calibrator of depravity, demarcating for a watching world the various gradations of dementia that lead men and women to kill their neighbors. I should have thought that, in light of our other duties, such a function would better be performed by the state court statutorily charged with the mission. And unless this Court is willing to supplant the Georgia Supreme Court in the statutory scheme, it would be well advised to reconsider its position.