Court Opinion

ID: 9487454
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:16:56.266242+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:52:16.714587
License: Public Domain

PREGERSON, Circuit Judge,
with whom Circuit Judges FLETCHER, WILLIAM A. NORRIS and NOONAN join, dissenting:
We respectfully dissent.
*420The murder of Penelope Cheney is not the prototypical killing that commonly results in imposition of the death penalty, nor even the kind of killing for which prosecutors commonly seek the death penalty. Mr. Jeffers was not a serial killer; he did not kill randomly; he did not kill strangers. He was extremely unstable emotionally. He suffered from a borderline personality disorder, and the sentencing judge heard testimony that Mr. Jeffers used drugs in an attempt to self-medicate this condition. He was a long-term heroin addict and alcoholic. He was under the influence of these drugs at the time of Ms. Cheney’s murder.
Cheney was Jeffers’s former girlfriend, with whom he experienced a tempestuous relationship. The two were arrested together on charges of possession of drugs and receipt of stolen property. After Jeffers bailed Cheney out of jail, he heard that she was cooperating with the police against him. Soon after he was released from jail on bond he invited her over to his apartment to discuss getting back together. When she came over, they apparently quarreled, and Jeffers killed her.
The cause of Ms. Cheney’s death was an overdose of heroin, induced by Jeffers. After she lost consciousness, Jeffers attempted to strangle her, to beat her, and to inject more heroin into her veins. But because she was already unconscious “the victim experienced no pain or mental suffering” as a result of this abuse. State v. Jeffers, 135 Ariz. 404, 429, 661 P.2d 1105, 1130 cert. denied, 464 U.S. 865, 104 S.Ct. 199, 78 L.Ed.2d 174 (1983).
The evidence warranting the death penalty was not overwhelming. We can roughly gauge the prosecution’s assessment of the offense, and its overall view of the case, by the plea offer it initially made that Jeffers declined. The prosecution does not dispute that it offered to permit Jeffers to plead no contest to second degree murder, for which he was to receive eight years in prison beyond those he was already set to serve on an unrelated offense.
Judge Ben C. Birdsafl, the Arizona judge who initially sentenced Jeffers to death, found two aggravating circumstances in the murder: (1) Jeffers had created a grave risk of death to another person; and (2) the murder was committed in an especially heinous, cruel, and depraved manner.
The Arizona Supreme Court reversed Judge Birdsall’s finding as to the first aggravating factor. The court also reversed Judge Birdsall’s finding that the murder had been committed in a “cruel” maimer, as that term is used in the Arizona Revised Statutes. See Ariz.Rev.Stat. § IR^OSÍFXe).1 The court upheld only Judge Birdsall’s finding that the murder was committed in an especially heinous and depraved manner. It based this determination on Jeffers’s treatment of Cheney’s body after she lost consciousness.
I. DISCUSSION.
Arizona is a “weighing state,” which means that, in a capital case, state law requires the sentencer to weigh all of the aggravating and mitigating factors against one another “to determine the substance of the two kinds of factors.” Richmond v. Lewis, — U.S.—, —, 113 S.Ct. 528, 535, 121 L.Ed.2d 411 (1992). The sentencer may impose a death sentence only if it finds that the aggravating factors are weightier than the mitigating ones. Id.
Having invalidated one aggravating circumstance, and having partially negated the other, the Arizona Supreme Court should have been guided by the requirements set forth in Clemons v. Mississippi, 494 U.S. 738, 752, 110 S.Ct. 1441, 1450, 108 L.Ed.2d 725 (1990). In Clemons, the U.S. Supreme Court held that an appellate court in a weighing state may not, consistent with the Eighth Amendment, merely affirm a death penalty after invalidating any of the aggrava*421ting factors that formed the basis for the sentence. Rather, the appellate court must ensure that the defendant receives a de novo assessment of the propriety of a sentence of death, based solely on the remaining valid aggravating factors. See Richmond v. Lewis, — U.S. at—, 113 S.Ct. at 535 (requiring a “new sentencing calculus, if the sentence is to stand”). “While federal law does not require the state appellate court to remand for resentencing, it must, short of remand, either itself reweigh without the invalid aggravating factor or determine that weighing the invalid factor was harmless error.” Sochor v. Florida, — U.S.—,—, 112 S.Ct. 2114, 2119, 119 L.Ed.2d 326 (1992).
The above principles are well-established, and the dissent agrees with the majority that upon invalidating one aggravating factor, and partially invalidating the only remaining factor, Clemons and Sochor required the Arizona Supreme Court in the case before us to do one of three things: (1) remand Jeffers’s ease for resentencing; (2) engage in a de novo reweighing of the aggravating and mitigating factors to determine for itself if death was the appropriate punishment for Mr. Jef-fers’s crime; or (3) determine that Judge BirdsaU’s error in overstating the aggravating factors was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.
The dissent and the majority part company over the majority’s assessment that the record in Jeffers’s case is sufficiently clear to allow us to determine that the Arizona Supreme Court met the requirements of Clemons by actually reweighing the aggravating and mitigating factors before affirming Jef-fers’s death sentence.
Only a superficial reading of the Arizona Supreme Court’s Jeffers opinion supports the majority’s conclusion that the Arizona court opinion followed the Clemons standard. When that opinion is read carefully — in light of the Arizona Supreme Court’s understanding, at the time, of its role in the sentencing process — grave doubts arise about whether Jeffers actually received his constitutionally mandated resentencing.
II. THE ARIZONA SUPREME COURT OPINION IS AMBIGUOUS.
Our review of thé Arizona Supreme Court’s opinion is guided by the U.S. Supreme Court’s opinions in Clemons and its progeny. In these cases, the Supreme Court addressed the Eighth Amendment requirements that a state appellate court in a weighing state must follow if it chooses not to remand to the trial court for resentencing after invalidating an aggravating circumstance. The touchstone requirement is “a thorough analysis of the role an invalid aggravating factor played in the sentencing process.” Stringer v. Black, — U.S.—, —, 112 S.Ct. 1130, 1136, 117 L.Ed.2d 367 (1992).
Our review of the record requires us to be sure that the required de novo sentencing or harmless error analysis was actually undertaken. See Clemons, 494 U.S. at 754, 110 S.Ct. at 1451 (remanding for further proceedings because “we cannot be sure” whether the state supreme court engaged in harmless error analysis). See also Richmond v. Lewis, — U.S. at—, 113 S.Ct. at 535 (“[a]t a minimum, we must determine that the state court actually reweighed”). Where the appeals court decision does not clearly indicate that the required analysis was undertaken, the sentence must be vacated and the case remanded to the state court for resentencing. Clemons, 494 U.S. at 741, 110 S.Ct. at 1444 (vacating and remanding “because it is unclear whether the Mississippi Supreme Court correctly” reweighed or applied harmless error analysis). See also Stringer, — U.S. at —, 112 S.Ct. at 1137 (opinion in Barclay v. Florida, 463 U.S. 939, 103 S.Ct. 3418, 77 L.Ed.2d 1134 (1983) is illustrative of the requirements of appellate review, where the Supreme Court affirmed the sentence “only because it was clear” that the state appellate court had engaged in harmless error analysis); Sochor, — U.S. at-, 112 S.Ct. at 2123 (requiring state appellate court “clarity” about whether it engaged in harmless error analysis). But see Richmond v. Lewis, — U.S. at—, 113 S.Ct. at 535 (the Supreme Court has not yet specified the degree of clarity required).2
*422The Arizona Supreme Court’s opinion is too ambiguous to satisfy this standard. As the majority notes, the opinion twice refers to the court’s obligation to weigh the aggravating and mitigating circumstances. But-this alone is not dispositive. In Clemons; too, the state appellate court opinion vacated by the U.S. Supreme Court recited that the court had “weighed” the aggravating and mitigating circumstances against each other. See Clemons, 494 U.S. at 744, 110 S.Ct. at 1446 (quoting the state supreme court opinion, that noted, after reviewing the record, that “ ‘[i]n our opinion ... the punishment of death is not too great when the aggravating and mitigating circumstances are weighed against each other....’” (Alterations in original.)). The Supreme Court deemed such language insufficient because it was unclear whether the state court intended to convey the message that it was “conducting appellate reweighing as we understand the concept.” Id. at 752,110 S.Ct. at 1450 (emphasis added).
The statements in State v. Jeffers, 661 P.2d 1105, are similarly unenlightening. The first reference to weighing in the opinion serves to introduce the Arizona Supreme Court’s discussion of the aggravating circumstances. The opinion notes:
In death penalty eases this court independently reviews the facts that the trial court found established the presence or absence of mitigating circumstances, and we determine for ourselves if the latter outweigh the former when we find both to be present. State v. Blazak, 114 Ariz. 199, 560 P.2d 54 (1977); State v. Richmond, 114 Ariz. 186, 560 P.2d 41 (1976).
State v. Jeffers, 135 Ariz. at 428, 661 P.2d at 1129 (emphasis added). Then, after separately discussing Jeffers’s proffered mitigating circumstances,' and his challenges to the aggravating factors, the court concludes by stating that it has, indeed, weighed the aggravating and mitigating factors. In so doing, the Arizona Supreme Court’s opinion uses almost the same language as did the Mississippi Supreme Court in the Clemons decision that was reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court. The Arizona Supreme Court opinion states:
We have carefully reviewed the record as required to determine whether the factors in mitigation outweigh the aggravating circumstances, State v. Richmond, 114 Ariz. 186, 560 P.2d 41 (1976), cert. denied, 433 U.S. 915 [97 S.Ct. 2988, 53 L.Ed.2d 1101] (1977) and we find they do not.
State v. Jeffers, 135 Ariz. at 431-32, 661 P.2d at 1132-33.
Although these statements refer to some sort of weighing, we must be sure that the court was referring to the de novo reweighing required by Clemons. Clemons requires that “[w]here the death sentence has been infected by a vague or otherwise constitutionally invalid aggravating factor, the state appellate court or some other state senteneer must actually perform a new sentencing calculus, if the sentence is to stand.” Richmond v. Lewis, — U.S. at—, 113 S.Ct. at 535 (emphasis added). Closely read, the passages quoted above do not suggest such a de novo reweighing. Rather, they indicate that *423the Arizona Supreme Court’s “independent review” is limited to the facts “established” by the trial court.
Of even greater import, neither in the above quoted passages, nor elsewhere, does the opinion specify the nature of the Arizona Supreme Court’s independent review. In other words, although the court “independently reviews” the facts, and determines for itself whether the aggravating circumstances outweigh the mitigating ones, the court does not specify what standard of review it employs to decide whether to disturb the trial court’s findings.
The wording of the passages quoted above is consistent with a species of appellate review, for error, rather than the “new sentencing calculus” that the Eighth Amendment requires when a death sentence has been infected by invalid aggravating factors. Richmond v. Lewis, — U.S. at—, 113 S.Ct. at 535. In fact, as discussed in the following section, the Arizona Supreme Court at the time State v. Jeffers was decided in 1983, did not generally conduct a de novo review of the death penalty sentencing calculus when it saw fit to invalidate an aggravating factor. Nothing in the Arizona Supreme Court’s opinion in State v. Jeffers suggests that the court departed from what was then its normal procedure when it reviewed the instant case.
Our confidence that the Arizona Supreme Court actually conducted the requisite “thorough analysis of the role an invalid aggravating factor played in the sentencing process,” Stringer, — U.S. at—, 112 S.Ct. at 1136, is further shaken by the inconsistencies found in its discussion of the valid and invalid factors. For example, in part of the second passage, quoted above, the Arizona Supreme Court says it has weighed the aggravating “circumstances” in plural. But the court earlier held that there was only one such cir-cumstanee. This error raises a suspicion that the court substituted boilerplate language for the careful individualized analysis required by the Eighth Amendment.
In addition, the opinion contradicts itself as to which, if any, mitigating factors the court “weighed,” or indeed whether the court found or did not find that there were any mitigating circumstances at all. For example, on page-, 112 S.Ct. page 1132-33 of the opinion, quoted above, the court asserts that it has weighed mitigating factors. In contrast, on page-, 112 S.Ct. page 1133 of the same opinion we are informed that the Arizona Supreme Court found no mitigating factors.
Moreover, the Arizona Supreme Court appears to contradict itself on whether it understood Judge Birdsall to have found any mitigating circumstances. Compare, e.g., trial court’s statement (“[t]he court finds that there are no mitigating circumstances”) with State v. Jeffers, 135 Ariz. at 431, 661 P.2d at 1132 (finding that the trial court “found no mitigating factors sufficiently substantial to call for leniency” (emphasis added)). The State v. Jeffers opinion is full of such ambiguous and contradictory language on these critical issues, as was fully discussed in the opinion withdrawn by the majority today. Jeffers v. Lewis, 5 F.3d 1199 (9th Cir.1993).
So, how can we be sure that the Arizona Supreme Court actually reweighed the aggravating and mitigating circumstances in the case at bar, when even the Arizona Attorney General had trouble figuring out whether that court did so? In January of 1991, the Arizona Attorney General implicitly admitted that the Arizona Supreme Court in Jeffers did not independently reweigh the aggravating and mitigating factors. Respondents Answering Brief, filed January 30, 1991, pp. 9-11.3 Today the Arizona Attorney *424General reads his court’s Jeffers opinion differently, and argues that the court did reweigh the aggravating and mitigating circumstances. We, who are in the dissent, also find it difficult to determine whether the Arizona Supreme Court did, or did not, engage in the proper weighing calculus.
III. THE PRACTICE OF THE ARIZONA SUPREME COURT CONFIRMS THE AMBIGUITY.
The ambiguities discussed above might be less significant if it were otherwise clear that the Arizona Supreme Court understood the requirements of the Eighth Amendment and consistently conducted the required inquiry at the time it delivered the opinion in State v. Jeffers. But that is not the case. Rather, a fair reading of Arizona Supreme Court cases on the books in 1983, when State v. Jeffers was decided, suggests that that court did not understand the requirements that Clemons later explained; moreover, the court was not even clear about whether Arizona was a weighing state.
In fact, the Arizona eases cited in the passages quoted above refer to a kind of review different from that required by Clemons. In State v. Richmond, decided in 1976, the Arizona Supreme Court described its appellate review process. The court explained that in non-capital cases “[i]t has been our policy not to disturb the sentence imposed by the trial court, absent a clear abuse of discretion.” 114 Ariz. at 196, 560 P.2d at 51. In capital cases, however, “we painstakingly examine the record to determine whether it has been erroneously imposed.” Id. In this context, it is clear that the “independent review” and “reweighing,” referred to by the court in State v. Richmond and in State v. Jeffers, involve appellate review for error, rather than the de novo resentencing required by Clemons and its progeny. As the Arizona Supreme Court explained in State v. Rum-sey, “[w]hile we have an independent duty of review, we perform it as an appellate court, not as a trial court.” 136 Ariz. 166, 173, 665 P.2d 48, 55 (1983), aff'd, 467 U.S. 203, 104 S.Ct. 2305, 81 L.Ed.2d 164 (1984).
The Arizona death penalty statute, and its interpretive caselaw, provoked a great deal of confusion that was not resolved until 1992, when the U.S. Supreme Court decided Richmond v. Lewis. In Richmond v. Lewis, the Court for the first time squarely determined that Arizona is a weighing state, and therefore invalidated an Arizona Supreme Court decision in which a majority of the Arizona Supreme Court had failed to reweigh the aggravating and mitigating factors as required by Clemons. Richmond v. Lewis, — U.S. at—, 113 S.Ct. at 537. Before the U.S. Supreme Court decided Richmond v. Lewis, however, the Arizona Attorney General argued to the three judge panel which first heard the instant case in 1986 that Arizona was not a weighing state. Another panel of our court accepted this argument when it decided the case that was reversed by the Supreme Court in Richmond v. Lewis. Richmond v. Lewis, 948 F.2d 1473, 1489 (9th Cir.1990), rev’d, — U.S.—, 113 S.Ct. 528, 121 L.Ed.2d 411 (1992). As we then read the statute,
a conclusion by the Arizona • Courts that there are no substantial mitigating circumstances is separate from and independent of any conclusion regarding the existence of aggravating circumstances. Invalidation of an aggravating circumstance does not mandate reweighing or require resentencing where the court has found that the prosecution has met its burden of establishing aggravation sufficient to warrant the state’s harshest penalty ... and that the defense has failed to establish mitigating circumstances sufficiently substantial to call for leniency.... Nothing in the Arizona statute suggests the need for plenary reweighing where the record still reveals that there are one or more of the enumerated aggravating circumstances and that there are no mitigating circumstances sufficiently substantial to call for leniency.
Id. at 1488-89 (emphasis added, citations and internal quotations omitted, and alterations modified).
In other words, the Arizona Attorney General, at least some Arizona Supreme Court *425Justices, and the Ninth Circuit were all of the view that Arizona was not a weighing state. It was in this context that the Arizona Supreme Court decided State v. Jeffers, which was issued nine years before the Supreme Court held to the contrary in Richmond v. Lewis, — U.S. at—, 113 S.Ct. at 527, and seven years before Clemons was decided.
Under such circumstances, it is not reasonable to assume that the Arizona Supreme Court engaged in the requisite reweighing in Jeffers’s case. Nor should boilerplate, ambiguous references to “reweighing” be held to demonstrate clearly that the Arizona Supreme Court actually reweighed “as we understand the concept.” Clemons, 494 U.S. at 752, 110 S.Ct. at 1450. Something more is required. For example, where the requisite de novo analysis is performed we would generally expect to see some discussion of the relative weight assigned to the aggravating and mitigating factors and of the reasons for assigning such weight, or at a minimum, some discussion of the two types of factors in relation to each other. Such analysis is completely absent here.
It is instructive to compare the conclusory treatment of “reweighing” in Jeffers v. State with that in State v. Bible, 175 Ariz. 549, 858 P.2d 1152 (1993), cert. denied, — U.S.—, 114 S.Ct. 1578, 128 L.Ed.2d 221 (1994), a case that was decided after Clemons and Richmond v. Lewis. In Bible, the court noted that “in many cases it is simply impossible to determine how the trial judge — who heard the evidence and saw the witnesses — evaluated and weighed that evidence and testimony. Without these imperative determinations, the aggravating and mitigating factors cannot be balanced.” Id. 175 Ariz. at 608, 858 P.2d at 1211. The Arizona Supreme Court in Bible went on to conclude that henceforth it would remand, rather than engage in a de novo resentencing, in all but the rarest of cases. The dissent agrees with the Arizona Supreme Court’s views in this regard.
In sum, we dissent because we believe that Mr. Jeffers may not have received his constitutionally mandated de novo resentencing. We also believe that the better practice, now followed by the Arizona Supreme Court, is to require reweighing by the tribunal best equipped to handle that process — the trial court.

. Arizona Rev.Stat. § 13-703(F)(6) requires a sentencer to consider, as an aggravating circumstance, whether “[t]he defendant committed the offense in an especially heinous, cruel, or depraved manner.”
Following the dictionary definition, the Arizona Supreme Court defines "cruel” as "disposed to inflict pain esp. in a wanton, insensate or vindictive manner; sadistic." 135 Ariz. at 429, 661 P.2d at 1130 (internal quotation marks omitted).

. The majority seriously mischaracterizes Parker v. Dugger, 498 U.S. 308, 314-15, 111 S.Ct. 731, *422736-37, 112 L.Ed.2d 812 (1991) as standing for the proposition that "a statement by the sentencing court that it considered all mitigating evidence is adequate.” See majority opinion at 414-15. If the majority means that such a statement satisfies the Clemons requirements, Parker says nothing of the sort. In fact, Parlcer supports the dissent's conclusion that Clemons requires the record to be sufficiently clear to assure us that the required reweighing or harmless error analysis are in fact conducted.
The discussion cited by the majority refers to the trial judge's statement that he had considered all of the evidence before passing sentence, and not to the duty of the state appellate court to reweigh under Clemons. And in point of fact the United States Supreme Court did not accept the trial court’s statement, standing alone, as adequate. Rather, the Court cited several other reasons for its conclusion that the trial judge had, in fact, considered all of the evidence, as he said he did. If the trial judge's statement, standing alone, had been sufficient, the Court would not have found it necessary to cite any other reasons for its finding.
Even more to the point, the state supreme court's statement in Parker that "the facts suggesting the sentence of death are so clear and convincing that virtually no reasonable person could differ” was not adequate to convince the U.S. Supreme Court that the state supreme court had satisfied Clemons. See id. at 319, 111 S.Ct. at 738 ("[i]t is unclear what the Florida Supreme Court did here”).

. In attempting to distinguish the instant case from Clemons, the Arizona Attorney General’s 1991 brief correctly stated Clemons’s holding that a state appellate court may not affirm a death sentence based on invalid aggravating circumstances without either reweighing the aggravating and mitigating circumstances or else performing a harmless error review. The Attorney General next argued that in Jeffers the Arizona Supreme Court met this requirement because "it knew that the trial court would ... have imposed the death penalty” even if that court had not overcounted the aggravating factors. Id. at 10. In other words, the Arizona Attorney General in effect argued that the Arizona Supreme Court satisfied Clemons by harmless error review. The fact that the Arizona Attorney General did not additionally or alternatively argue that the Arizona Supreme Court engaged in a de novo reweighing of aggravating and mitigating circum*424stances is an implicit admission that it did not do so.