Court Opinion

ID: 9797755
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 04:28:42.593197+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:58:14.926037
License: Public Domain

LUMPKIN, Judge,
Concur in result.
¶ 11 agree that Appellant’s convictions and sentences should be affirmed. I write separately to address Propositions I and III.
¶2 In Proposition I, giving the jury any additional information as to the meaning of life without parole is at best a half truth because it does not fully inform the jury of the ability of the Governor to commute the sentence pursuant to Art. 6, § 10 of the Oklahoma Constitution. This is the problem with trying to do more than this Court has done in the past. If the jury is told the truth about all of the means by which a defendant might not spend the rest of his or her life actually behind bars, the option of a life without the possibility of parole sentence is diluted. As set forth in the uniform jury instructions, the terms “life with the possibility of parole” and “life without the possibility of parole” are clear, concise, and speak for themselves. Any attempt at this time to define these terms further would be to start down the slippery slope of half truths and undermine the system of justice. Judges and courts do not want to be placed in the *304position of loosing credibility 'with jurors and citizens by being the dispensers of false information.
¶ 3 In Proposition III, the resentencing in this case was a continuation of the first trial. The reliability of the prior testimony was adequately tested at the guilt phase of trial. Otherwise, it would not have been admitted into evidence. Appellant’s right of confrontation was not violated by admission of the prior testimony presented during the guilt phase of trial. Therefore, it is hard to see how admission of the prior testimony in the second portion of the same trial is a constitutional violation. It is difficult to imagine that reliability could ever be an issue for testimony presented under oath in a prior judicial proceeding when the witness was subject to cross-examination, especially by the same defendant on the same factual issues.