Court Opinion

ID: 9773716
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 17:56:13.165075+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:55.765917
License: Public Domain

ROBERTSON, Judge,
dissenting.
I concur in the majority’s decision to affirm the conviction in this case. I respectfully dissent, however, from the majority’s decision to reverse the death sentence because the prosecutor said in closing argument during the penalty phase:
Now is the time you can put your emotions into it. Now is the time that you can show your outrage. Now is the time to get mad. You can get mad at this man.
And,
Think about everything in this case, take your time and make your decision based upon the evidence, the law, the facts and your emotions.
The majority relies on two eases to support its conclusion. In State v. Storey, 901 S.W.2d 886, 901-2 (Mo. banc 1995), this Court reversed the death sentence of William Storey because the prosecutor made four arguments that: invited the jury to consider facts outside the record and contained the prosecutor’s personal opinion about the crime; invited the jury “to put themselves” in the victim’s place; equated the jury’s function with self-defense; and suggested that the jury weigh the value of the victim’s life against the defendant’s in reaching its sentencing recommendation. The Court condemned the first three of these arguments for, among other things, inciting the jury to decide with their emotions rather than with reason.
I had hoped that the four arguments condemned by the majority in Storey required reversal because of their cumulative impact, not individually. Taken together, those arguments were both qualitatively and quantitatively more egregious than the prosecutor’s isolated remarks in this case. The Storey comments were graphic; these are not. The Storey comments painted gruesome pictures of the manner in which the defendant hacked and mutilated the victim’s body; the comments in this case do not.
But the decision in this case makes clear that for the majority, any argument offered by the state that suggests directly or indirectly that a non-rational basis can play any role in the jury’s penalty decision is per se grounds for reversal of a death sentence. I disagree.
I dissented in Storey, 901 S.W.2d at 903-06 (Robertson, J., dissenting). I was not able to persuade my colleagues with quotations from Aristotle or with references to the findings of modem science that emotion and reason walk hand-in-hand in every human decision. To those words I offer two additional authorities: Daniel Goleman’s observed that “[t]he predominant models among cognitive scientists have lacked an acknowledgment that rationality is guided by ... feeling.” D. Goleman, Emotional Intelligence 41 *941(1995). And Richard Weaver reminds that “[w]hen we affirm that philosophy begins with wonder, we are affirming in effect that sentiment is anterior to reason. We do not undertake to reason about anything until we been drawn to it by an affective interest.” R. WeaveR, Ideas Have Consequences 19 (1948). There is little purpose in repeating in full what I said in Storey. I remain of the view that people are more than cold carriers of binary code who can employ pure logic in deciding whether a man who gunned down an eight-year-old’s stepfather in her presence and, then, tried but failed to kill her deserves the death penalty.
To determine whether the penalty phase meets the demands of the constitution, two separate legal standards apply: the Eighth Amendment and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The majority does not employ an Eighth Amendment analysis in this case. Instead, the majority relies on the plurality opinion1 in Gardner v. Florida, 430 U.S. 349, 358, 97 S.Ct. 1197, 1204-05, 51 L.Ed.2d 393 (1977), for authority. Gardner is a due process ease. A Florida trial judge imposed the death sentence over a jury recommendation of life in prison. In imposing that sentence, the trial court relied on a pre-sentence investigation that the jury did not see and that contained information that the defendant had no opportunity to explain or deny. The Supreme Court’s plurality holding says:
We conclude that petitioner was denied due process of law when the death sentence was imposed, at least in part, on the basis of information which he had no opportunity to deny or explain.
Id. at 362, 97 S.Ct. at 1207.
The sentence from Gardner the majority quotes as authority for its holding here — “It is of vital importance to the defendant and to the community that any decision to impose the death sentence be, and appear to be, based on reason rather than caprice or emotion” — is little more than a general statement of legal principle. It is dicta dressed up with no place to go. This is because Justice Stevens’s plurality opinion makes no apparent effort to connect that “rule” with the facts of the case. Of particular import for this Court’s purposes here, there is no claim that emotion infected the Gardner trial at all. Therefore, I do not see how Gardner applies to this case.
Nor is it plain to me how the majority’s reference to section 565.035.3(1), RSMo 1994, applies. That statute requires the Court to determine whether a sentence was imposed under the influence of “passion.”- The majority apparently assumes that “emotion” and “passion” are the same for all' purposes. They are not. In the sense in which the statute uses “passion,” it means “the influence of what is external and opposes thought and reason_” Webster’s Third New International Dictionary 1651 (1976). “Emotion” as the prosecutor meant it here means “the affective aspect of consciousness: feeling.” Id. at 742. Our criminal law notes the difference, recognizing crimes of passion as crimes committed in the absence of all reason and deliberation. Section 565.023.1(1), RSMo 1994. One can surely deliberate, however, in the presence of emotion.
In applying a due process standard, one must not forget individual words and sentences are part of a process that must be considered in its totality to determine not only the presence of error, but also its prejudice, if any. That process includes the trial court reading painstakingly crafted instructions designed to assure that the jury’s deliberations are channeled in accordance with the processes demanded by the law. The jury is told that the lawyers’ arguments are not evidence. And the jury is told both sides of the case — the defendant’s often emotional plea for mercy and understanding as well as the state’s argument that death is appropriate under the law and facts of the case.
*942“What is the proper standard? It is sufficient for these purposes to say that error occurs where the state’s argument or the court’s instructions ask the jury to ignore reason and base its decision either solely or too heavily on emotion. Where the jury is invited to use emotion together with reason, the state’s argument merely acknowledges the way homo sapiens makes decisions. “As Aristotle saw, the problem is not with emotionality, but with the appropriateness of emotion_” (Emphasis in original.) Gole-man, xiv.
Turning first to the second of the prosecutor’s statements, it is apparent that the state invites the jury to apply all of the law, the facts and their emotion to their penalty decision. This seems entirely consistent with due process when considered in the context of human decisional modes and when cabined by instructions that direct the jury’s deliberation.
What about the invitation to express “outrage,” “to get mad?”
In Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153, 183, 96 S.Ct. 2909 [2929-30], 49 L.Ed.2d 859 (1976) (plurality), we find these words:
In part, the death penalty is an expression of society’s moral outrage at particularly offensive conduct. This function may be ■unappealing to many, but it is essential in an ordered society that asks its citizens to rely on legal processes rather than self-help to vindicate their wrongs.... “When people begin to believe that organized society is unwilling or unable to impose upon criminal offenders the punishment they ‘deserve,’ then there are sown seeds of anarchy....”
(Emphasis added.) Id., quoting Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, 308, 92 S.Ct. 2726, 2761, 33 L.Ed.2d 346 (1972)
(Stewart, J. concurring). We also find these words:
[I]n order to maintain a respect for law, it is essential that the punishment inflicted for grave crimes should adequately reflect the revulsion felt by the great majority of citizens for them.... The truth is that some crimes are so outrageous that society insists on adequate punishment, because the wrongdoer deserves it....
Gregg, 428 U.S. at 183, n. 30, 96 S.Ct. at 2930, n. 30, quoting Royal Commission on Capital Punishment, Minutes of Evidence, Dec. 1,1949, p. 207 (1950) (testimony of Lord Justice Denning).
The jury in a criminal case represents society. The jury expresses society’s judgment as to guilt and, in a first degree murder case, society’s judgment as to whether a murderer should live or die.
In this case the prosecutor asked the jury to express “outrage.” If Gregg v. Georgia can be believed, that is one of the purposes of the death penalty. As I read the majority opinion, a prosecutor violates the due process clause when he or she merely quotes from Gregg or uses “anger” and “mad” as synonyms for the outrage and revulsion to which Gregg speaks.
To hold as does the majority, one must conclude (which I do not) that the state’s comments misstate the law and from that (faulty) premise conclude that jurors hear only those words upon which the majority fixes and ignore all of the rest of the due process and Eighth Amendment' protections built into the penalty-phase hearing. Even assuming, arguendo, that the premise is proper, the danger of the majority’s view is that it permits the minutiae to become the whole. In this case, a verdant forest of due process and Eighth Amendment protection surrounds the majority’s acorn. The majority sees only the acorn and misses the forest. Unless the Court is convinced — as it must be to reach its holding — that the prosecutor’s words carried such force that they overrode the ability of the members of the jury to reason, consider the evidence, apply the court’s instructions, and reflect on the defendant’s arguments, this sentence should stand. As I am convinced to the contrary, I would affirm this sentence.
As must be apparent by now, I would affirm the death sentence along with the judgment of guilt.

. Only two other justices agreed with Justice Stevens’s due process analysis there. Chief Justice Burger concurred in the judgment without comment. Justice Blackmun concurred in the judgment on stare decisis grounds. Justice White concurred in the judgment on Eighth Amendment grounds. Justices Brennan and Marshall concurred on the basis of their conviction that the Eighth Amendment prohibits capital punishment in every instance. Then-Justice Rehnquist dissented.