Court Opinion

ID: 9430499
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:29:51.850044+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:24.639615
License: Public Domain

Justice Marshall,
with whom Justice Brennan and Justice Blackmun join,
dissenting.
There is one difference between these cases and Arizona v. Rumsey, 467 U. S. 203 (1984), in which seven Members of this Court interpreted the Double Jeopardy Clause to bar imposition of a death sentence after a life sentence has been reversed on appeal: the sentencing judge in petitioners’ cases made two errors of state law, while Rumsey’s judge made only one. According to the majority, that makes the difference between fife and death.
In Rumsey, the defendant was convicted of murder and robbery; the trial judge sentenced him to life imprisonment *158upon finding that none of the statutory aggravating circumstances provided by Arizona law applied to the defendant’s case. One of those aggravating circumstances — murder committed as consideration for pecuniary gain — the court rejected in the belief that it applied only to murders for hire. On appeal, the Supreme Court of Arizona held that murder for pecuniary gain could also include murder in the course of a robbery. Accordingly, it set aside Rumsey’s life sentence and remanded for resentencing. This time, Rumsey was given a death sentence, supported by the aggravating circumstance of murder for pecuniary gain. On writ of certiorari, this Court concluded that the Arizona death-sentencing procedure is equivalent to a trial for purposes of the Double Jeopardy Clause, under the doctrine of Bullington v. Missouri, 451 U. S. 430 (1981). We then concluded that Rumsey’s initial life sentence had constituted an “acquittal” on the merits of the central issue of the proceeding: whether death was the appropriate punishment for the offense. Under traditional double jeopardy principles, retrial of that issue was thereafter precluded, even though the “acquittal” was predicated upon a mistaken interpretation of state law. Rumsey, supra, at 211.
Petitioners, Patrick and Michael Poland, were convicted of the murders of two guards in the course of a robbery. Like the trial court in Rumsey, the sentencing court rejected the aggravating circumstance of murder for pecuniary gain, believing that it applied only to murders for hire. Unlike the Rumsey court, however, the trial judge did not then impose a fife sentence. Instead, he concluded that another of the statutory aggravating circumstances was present: that the murders were “especially heinous, cruel, or depraved.” Based on this sole aggravating circumstance, therefore, the court sentenced petitioners to death. On joint appeal, the Arizona Supreme Court reviewed the death sentences and concluded that the evidence was insufficient as a matter of state law to establish that the murders had been “especially heinous, *159cruel, or depraved,” because the State had not proved that the victims had suffered, as state law requires. App. 61. Before remanding, however, the court took the opportunity, sua sponte, to note that murder for pecuniary gain was not limited to murders for hire, and therefore was available as a possible alternative basis for a death sentence. On remand, the trial court once more sentenced petitioners to death, again concluding that the murders were “especially heinous, cruel, or depraved,” and also that they were committed for pecuniary gain.* The Arizona Supreme Court again reversed the aggravating circumstance of “especially heinous, cruel, or depraved,” but this time upheld the death sentences on the ground of pecuniary gain.
The Court makes much of the fact that, unlike Rumsey, petitioners never received sentences of life imprisonment. Yet the majority fails to recognize the teaching of Burks v. United States, 437 U. S. 1 (1978). In Burks, we held that an appellate reversal of a conviction, based on the legal conclusion that the evidence was insufficient to support the verdict, has the same effect under the Double Jeopardy Clause as an acquittal at trial. Id., at 16. “To hold otherwise,” the Court concluded, “would create a purely arbitrary distinction between those in petitioner’s position and others who would enjoy the benefit of a correct decision by the District Court.” Id., at 11. That arbitrary distinction is precisely the one that the Court creates today. The initial death sentences that petitioners received were “convictions,” see Rumsey, supra, and their reversal for insufficiency of the evidence to support the sole aggravating circumstance found by the sentencing judge must, under Burks, be accorded the same effect as an “acquittal” at trial — the same effect as Rumsey’s life sentence. As much as Rumsey’s life sentence constituted the all-important “acquittal on the merits,” even *160though predicated on an error of law, so, too, did the reversal of petitioners’ death sentences.
The analogy, first drawn in Bullington v. Missouri, supra, between an acquittal at trial and an “acquittal” of death at sentencing, is not perfect, and the imperfections perhaps can explain the majority’s miseharaeterization of the issue in these cases. At trial, a defendant is charged with an offense containing certain specified elements; he is either convicted or acquitted of that offense, the trier of fact having concluded that the prosecution has or has not proved all the elements of the offense. The sentencing proceeding, however, is quite different. In Arizona, for example, a death sentence may be imposed if any one of seven statutory aggravating factors is proved. While it might be possible to treat each aggravating circumstance as a separate “offense,” of which a defendant is either convicted or acquitted, this Court has taken a different approach. We have said that “on the merits” of a capital proceeding, the “central issue [is] whether death was the appropriate punishment for [the] offense.” Rumsey, 467 U. S., at 211. Thus, the “offense” for which the defendant receives his “conviction” or “acquittal” is that of the appropriateness of the death penalty, not the elements of any particular aggravating factor. Ante, at 153, n. 3.
In these cases, the trial judge found death to be the appropriate punishment because petitioners’ offenses were “especially heinous, cruel, or depraved.” On appeal, the Arizona Supreme Court held that the sole basis offered by the trial court to support its “conviction” of petitioners was insufficient as a matter of law.
The majority believes that, since other aggravating circumstances might have been found to support the “convictions,” it was permissible to remand the cases for further factfinding on those alternative factors. But this overlooks what our cases have said a conviction is in the sentencing context — a determination that death is the appropriate penalty, not separate trials on the existence of all statutory aggravat*161ing circumstances, conducted seriatim. In these cases, that determination was reversed because there was insufficient evidence to support the ground relied on by the trial judge in reaching it. Any remand for further factfinding on the question whether the death sentence should be imposed was thereafter prohibited. See Rumsey, supra, at 211-212. In no other circumstance would the Double Jeopardy Clause countenance the offer of a second chance to the State and the trial judge to find a better theory upon which to base a conviction. Nor should it do so here. I dissent.

With respect to petitioner Patrick Poland, an additional aggravating factor was invoked to support the second death sentence, based on events subsequent to the first penalty proceeding.