Court Opinion

ID: 9745114
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 22:35:45.456815+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:56.326613
License: Public Domain

DeBRULER, Justice,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. The judgment of the court below denying post-conviction relief was affirmed in Damiels v. State (1988), Ind., 528 N.E.2d 775. In the appeal from that judgment, appellant was successful in having this Court reach the merits of his Booth claim. He was then successful in having the United States Supreme Court do the same, and we now know that the Booth claim was rejected for an erroneous reason. Under these circumstances, I am unable to conclude as does the majority, that the jurisdictional or threshold question of whether we should reach the merits of the claim is an issue now before us for decision. The remand order calls for consideration of the merits of the claim in light of the opinion in South Carolina v. Gathers, 490 U.S. 805, 109 S.Ct. 2207, 104 L.Ed.2d 876 (1989), and I would do that.
The prosecutor, in his summation to the Jury at the recommendation stage of this case, in order to persuade the jury to recommend to the judge that the death sentence be imposed, informed or reminded the jury that the victim was a clergyman, an army officer, a brave man, a defender of this country, and a good father and husband. Daniels had no knowledge of these matters when he chose to rob and kill, and therefore the matters were not relevant to the process of determining the weight of any aggravator or mitigator. They were irrelevant to determining Daniel's nature or the nature of his crime. They had no legal relevance to the determination of his blameworthiness. Yet there is no doubt in my mind that the jury, unrestricted by any admonition by the court, upon the call of the prosecutor, considered these irrelevant characteristics of the victim in arriving at its decision. It is, after all, an aspect of daily life that crime reports are made in the media and that characteristics of the vice-tims are given in great detail and received with interest, and that they stimulate feelings of sympathy for victims and outrage against offenders.
Furthermore, the statements of the prosecutor were not only irrelevant, but like the statements made by the prosecutor in Gathers, had that stimulating quality which in this society can create an unac ceptable risk of an arbitrary and capricious decision by the jury to recommend death and by the judge to give death. I am unable to say, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the prosecutor's improper remarks did not influence the jury and the judge to decide in favor of the death penalty in this case. Consequently, I would reverse the judgment denying post-conviction relief and order that post-conviction relief be granted to include new jury and judge sentencing hearings or the imposition of a term of years.