Court Opinion

ID: 9453656
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 18:19:58.948615+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:33:44.855341
License: Public Domain

CRAVEN, Circuit Judge
(concurring) :
I readily concur in the decision of the court. I would go further and reject the court’s premise that the state has a legitimate interest in obtaining the death penalty. There is no such state interest and there has not been since the 1949 statute left choice of punishment to the “unbridled” discretion of the jury. With that statutory change of direction the state relinquished its so-called legitimate interest in the death penalty in favor of obtaining either death or life imprisonment as equally appropriate punishments. Since' either is appropriate, the state has no legitimate interest in the selection of a jury predisposed to either one.
That the jury choice is “unbridled” means only that the jury need not articulate or even consciously have a reason. Certainly it does not mean that jurors are not to reason together on the question of punishment as on all others. I cannot think of a better reason for a recommendation of life imprisonment than questioning the wisdom of capital punishment — whether on religious or other grounds. To rule out such a reason by systematic exclusion of the doubters results in an “unbridled” choice by a death-oriented jury. Any method of jury selection which systematically deprives the accused of cross-sectional community representation violates due process. “The end in view,” as Chief Justice Stacy put it for the North Carolina Supreme Court, “is to get a fair cross-section of community judgment.” State v. Koritz, 227 N.C. 552, 43 S.E.2d 77, 81 (1947).
It is obvious that there is no such cross-section in a system where 30 percent to 45 percent of otherwise qualified jurors are excluded because their viewpoint on a question within their unbridled discretion is not pleasing to the prosecution. To select a particular attitude of mind or heart — whether for or against the death penalty — and upon it to erect *317an exclusionary rule for the selection of jurors in either the guilt or punishment phase of the trial is, in my opinion, fundamentally opposed to the concept of trial by jury and due process.
I would prefer to rest the decision upon denial of due process and infringement of the right to trial by jury rather than denial of equal protection, and I would hold that the defendant is entitled to a jury that has not been screened to avoid thex exercise of a fair cross-section of community judgment and that this right applies to the determination of both guilt and punishment.