Court Opinion

ID: 9751464
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 16:28:48.870891+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:26:47.418363
License: Public Domain

Justice SAYLOR,
concurring and dissenting.
I concur in the affirmance of the award of penalty relief but respectfully dissent as to the treatment of the broader category of guilt-phase claims. As to the latter claims category, I favor evidentiary development, consistent with my position as previously expressed elsewhere. See, e.g., Commonwealth v. Smith, 609 Pa. 605, 677-79, 17 A.3d 873, 915-17 (2011) (Saylor, J., dissenting). I continue to believe that the absence of an *750adequate factual foundation for consideration of capital post-conviction claims encourages unwarranted analytical shortcuts in the appellate review.
For example, on the topic of reputation evidence, the majority suggests that the record was limited to personal opinions concerning Appellant’s character. See Majority Opinion, at 715, 45 A.3d at 1074. However, there is no indication that Appellant had notice of such an asserted defect in his proffer and, hence, the opportunity to cure it. In this regard, the majority does not discuss the role of adequate pre-dismissal notice by the PCRA court, or the opportunity to amend contemplated by our procedural rules. See Pa.R.Crim.P. 905, 909(B)(2). Moreover, in the testimony which the PCRA court did allow, witnesses attested (albeit perfunctorily) to Appellant’s good reputation in the community. See, e.g., N.T., Oct. 2, 2002, at 88 (testimony of Kimberly Anderson).1 To me, resolution of this claim should rest upon the weight of the evidence, as it relates to the prejudice criterion of the ineffectiveness inquiry.
My final comment pertains to the majority’s perspective, derived from a previous dissent, that “[t]he strategy of focusing on a defendant’s redeeming qualities, rather than painting him as the deranged product of a horrific background, is often a reasonable one.” Majority Opinion, at 745, 45 A.3d at 1092 (citation omitted). For my own part, I do not find this sentiment to be useful or apt to our appellate review in the death-penalty arena. While a capital defense attorney certainly would not paint his client as deranged, the difficulty he often will encounter is that, by the time of the penalty stage in a capital case, the prosecution will already have established deplorable conduct on the part of the defendant to the satisfaction of the jurors beyond a reasonable doubt. Thus, the challenge facing counsel is to adduce some evidence to blunt the force of such conclusion, in terms of the degree of the *751defendant’s moral culpability (as it relates to the jurors’ selection between life imprisonment and death as the appropriate penalty). Death-penalty lawyers should certainly be aware of the perspective, held by some at least, that explanatory mitigation is the most effective means of doing this. See, e.g., Simmons v. Luebbers, 299 F.3d 929, 938-39 (8th Cir.2002) (“By the time the state was finished with its case, the jury’s perception of Simmons could not have been more unpleasant. Mitigating evidence was essential to provide some sort of explanation for Simmons’s abhorrent behavior. Despite the availability of such evidence, however, none was presented. Simmons’s attorneys’ representation was ineffective.”). See generally Commonwealth v. Brown, 582 Pa. 461, 521, 872 A.2d 1139, 1174 (2005) (Saylor, J., dissenting) (discussing the differences between humanizing-and explanatory-type mitigation, as well as one court’s observation that “[w]e have rarely granted habeas relief based solely upon humanizing, rather than explanatory, mitigation evidence in the face of extensive aggravating circumstances” (citation and quotation marks omitted)). Although such views may not be universal, they are unquestionably relevant in a scheme in which the vote of a single juror can foreclose a death verdict. See 42 Pa.C.S. § 9711(c).

. The majority’s depiction of the declaration of Alberta Horton as going only to the time before Appellant began using drugs, see Majority Opinion, at 715 n. 16, 45 A.3d at 1074 n. 16, also appears to me to be inaccurate. See Affidavit of Alberta Horton, Dec. 5, 2000, at ¶ 4 ("Although [Appellant] still enjoyed a good reputation for peacefulness and nonviolence, he had begun to use drugs.”).