Court Opinion

ID: 9615662
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 04:39:26.625788+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:03:49.953658
License: Public Domain

Fletcher, Chief Justice,
concurring.
This Court’s duty to determine whether a sentence of death is *46disproportionate is imposed by statute, not the federal constitution.48 Over time, the Court’s procedures for ensuring that a sentence of death is reviewed for proportionality under OCGA § 17-10-35 (c) (3) have changed.49 Although I believe that this Court’s proportionality review satisfies the statutory requirements, I write separately to address further Terrell’s contention that the Court’s proportionality review does not satisfy OCGA § 17-10-35 (c) (3).
Our most recent explanation of our proportionality review was in Gissendaner v. State,50 when the Court said, “[t]his Court views a particular crime against the backdrop of all similar cases in Georgia in determining if a given sentence is excessive per se or substantially out of line.”51 The Court, however, did not describe how it uses “the backdrop of all similar cases” to determine whether a sentence is “substantially out of line.”
The Court reviews each sentence of death to determine whether there are other cases that have been appealed with similar facts in which the defendant was sentenced to death. These similar death penalty cases are cited in the Appendix to the Court’s opinion. The Court does not determine whether the death sentence under review represents a large or small percentage of sentences in factually comparable cases. Rather, the Court examines the sentence on appeal to ensure that it is not an anomaly or aberration.
As a plurality of the United States Supreme Court recognized in Gregg v. Georgia,52 at each stage of the criminal justice system, an actor “makes a decision which may remove a defendant from consideration as a candidate for the death penalty.”53 This discretion manifests itself in everything from the district attorneys’ charging decisions to defendants who turn down plea offers to juries who grant the defendant life rather than death. By the time a murder case reaches this Court, many discretionary decisions by numerous actors have affected the outcome.
Perhaps the process for determining whether a sentence is disproportionate can be improved and, if so, then it should be done. However, I am not convinced at present that categorizing each murder case using different factors or sub-categories, as Terrell suggests, improves our overall goal of ensuring that a defendant’s death sentence was not wantonly or freakishly imposed. Accordingly, as *47demonstrated by the vote in Division 9 of this case, I join the rest of the members of the Court in deciding that our current procedure satisfies the statutory mandate of OCGA § 17-10-35 (c) (3).
Decided November 12, 2002
Reconsideration denied December 13,2002.
John T Strauss, for appellant.
W. Kendall Wynne, Jr., District Attorney, Alan A. Cook, Assistant District Attorney, Thurbert E. Baker, Attorney General, Paige R. Whitaker, Assistant Attorney General, for appellee.

 Pulley v. Harris, 465 U. S. 37 (104 SC 871, 79 LE2d 29) (1984).

 Compare Ross v. State, 233 Ga. 361, 366 (211 SE2d 356) (1974) with Stephens v. State, 237 Ga. 259, 262 (227 SE2d 261) (1976) with Horton v. State, 249 Ga. 871, 880 n. 9 (291 SE2d 685) (1982).

 272 Ga. 704 (532 SE2d 677) (2000).

 272 Ga. at 717.

 428 U. S. 153 (96 SC 2909, 49 LE2d 859) (1976).

 428 U. S. at 199 (Stewart, Powell, Stevens, JJ.).