Court Opinion

ID: 9497626
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:56:04.135191+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:58:18.935321
License: Public Domain

*689CLAY, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I dissent inasmuch as the Ohio Supreme Court identified the correct governing legal principle from the United States Supreme Court’s decisions, but unreasonably applied that principle to the facts of this case. See 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1) (an application for writ of habeas corpus shall not be granted on any claim adjudicated in state court unless the state court decision “was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States”); Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 413, 120 S.Ct. 1495, 146 L.Ed.2d 389 (2000). The Ohio Supreme Court’s decision also “was based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the State court proceeding.” 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(2). I would affirm the district court’s decision granting James Arnett’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus for the limited purpose of resentencing him in conformance with the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
The Ohio Supreme Court correctly acknowledged that “[t]he United States Supreme Court has recognized that even a sentence within the limits of a state’s sentencing laws may violate due process if the sentencing proceedings are fundamentally unfair.” State v. Arnett, 88 Ohio St.3d 208, 724 N.E.2d 793, 801 (2000) (citing Gardner v. Florida, 430 U.S. 349, 97 S.Ct. 1197, 51 L.Ed.2d 393 (1977); Townsend v. Burke, 334 U.S. 736, 68 S.Ct. 1252, 92 L.Ed. 1690 (1948)); see also United States v. Bakker, 925 F.2d 728, 740 (4th Cir.1991) (“Sentencing discretion ... must be exercised within the boundaries of due process.”) (citations omitted). Thus, the Supreme Court has observed that a sentencing court may not base its decision on “factors that are constitutionally impermissible or totally irrelevant to the sentencing process, such as for example the race, religion, or political affiliation of the defendant.” Zant v. Stephens, 462 U.S. 862, 885, 103 S.Ct. 2733, 77 L.Ed.2d 235 (1983).
Before pronouncing Arnett’s sentence, the trial judge explained that, the previous evening, she had been “trying to determine in [her] mind what type of sentence [Arnett] deserve[d] in this particular case.” After detailing several different sources from which to make her decision (the physical and photographic evidence, as well as submissions from the victim, the victim’s family, a psychologist, Arnett’s friends, and employer), the judge explained to Arnett that she was still “looking for a source ... to make that determination, what sentence you should get.” She noted that the victim’s father had requested a sentence of forty years, whereas another individual had requested that Arnett be sentenced only to a long term of probation. The trial judge professed that she could not answer the question “what sentence?” based solely on this information; that is, until she “answered [her] question late at night when [she] turned to one additional source to help [her].” According to the judge, the source that answered her question was a provision of the New Testament (Matthew 18:5, 6), which reads: “ ‘And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name, receiveth me. But, whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.’ ”
The judge’s statements at sentencing undeniably show that this biblical tract played a significant, determinative role in Arnett’s sentence. She explained that the biblical passage from Matthew, which purports to be the word of God, enabled her *690to resolve “the final part of her struggle” to determine Arnett’s sentence. Accordingly, the district court below correctly determined that the trial judge used the Bible as her “final source of authority.”
In Bakker, supra, the Fourth Circuit held that a sentencing judge had violated due process when sentencing a television evangelist for fraud because, at sentencing, the judge had commented that the defendant “had no thought whatever about his victims and those of us who do have a religion are ridiculed as being saps from money-grabbing preachers or priests.” Bakker, 925 F.2d at 740 (emphasis in original). The court held that the statement by the sentencing judge “reflected the fact that the court’s own sense of religious propriety had somehow been betrayed.” Bakker, 925 F.2d at 741. Arnett’s trial judge conveyed the identical message when she linked her sentencing decision so directly with the Bible, suggesting that she was imposing the particular sentence because Arnett had betrayed the word of God.
Attempting to distinguish Bakker, where the sentencing judge explicitly referenced his religious nature, the majority gives a crabbed reading of Arnett’s sentencing transcript and concludes that “the judge made no reference whatsoever to her own religious beliefs in sentencing Arnett.” As a matter of common sense, the judge would not have elaborated about her internal struggle to determine Arnett’s sentence and explained that she found her answer in the Bible unless she believed that the Bible carries special significance as a source of moral authority. Indeed, a prior statement by the judge strongly suggests that her biblical quotation sprang from her personal sense of religiosity. Shortly before quoting the Bible, the judge referred to a 20-year sentence that she had imposed in a murder case. The judge stated that she believed the 20-year sentence was appropriate because the victim had “gone to their reward” and, therefore, was not hurting any more. No great inferential leap is required to conclude that the judge felt comfortable with a 20-year sentence because of her belief that the murder victim has an eternal soul that now resides in an afterlife. These are patently religious beliefs. Thus, the judge’s subsequent biblical reference was a natural extension of the religiosity she had betrayed earlier in the sentencing hearing. Moreover, the judge’s above-quoted words utterly disprove the majority’s assertion that the dissent is “speculating] about the judge’s motives.” The record speaks for itself.
The majority minimizes the judge’s biblical quotation as merely an attempt to underscore the contention that “our society has a long history of sternly punishing those people who hurt young children.” Similarly, the Ohio Supreme Court attempted to explain away the trial judge’s blatantly religion-based decision by opining that “the text of the biblical verse that the judge cited ... reflects the general proposition that offenses against young victims are especially serious — a principle that the General Assembly explicitly recognized in [Oh. Rev. Code § ] 2929.12(B)(1) [ (requiring sentencing court to consider whether the injury was exacerbated due to the victim’s age) ].” Arnett, 724 N.E.2d at 803. Both conclusions are wrong.
Certainly, society is especially concerned about crimes against children, but the means whereby the trial judge purportedly made this point was by utilizing a source which has decision-making significance only for that segment of “our society” who believe that the Bible’s words are divinely inspired. The judge’s explicit reliance on the Bible conveyed the message that Ar-nett’s punishment was, at least in part, a *691decisional by-product of religious beliefs that Arnett may not share. Further, section 2929.12(B)(1) of the Ohio Revised Code is in no way a secular codification of Matthew 18:5, 6, as the Ohio Supreme Court suggested. The biblical passage literally expresses concern over “little ones tuhich believe in me ” — i.e., children who believe in a particular God as set forth by a particular biblical source — and prescribes the penalty for offending those children as death by drowning. By contrast, the Ohio Revised Code does not, and could not, permit a sentencing court to consider the victim’s religious beliefs, nor does it or could it prescribe a drowning death for Arnett’s crimes. Even if the biblical passage is interpreted less literally, as simply prescribing harsh punishments for those who injure children, the fact remains that the judge’s heavy reliance on the passage creates the appearance that the she imposed the particular sentence on Arnett because the judge believed that God commanded it.
Ultimately, the judge’s reliance, or lack thereof, on her personal religious beliefs is not critical to the due process question in this case. In principle, there is nothing wrong with a judge indirectly drawing upon her firmly-held religious beliefs for .moral guidance in resolving a case for which the legal precedents provide no clear answer (such as a criminal sentence in an indeterminate sentencing scheme), just as an a-religious judge similarly might draw upon his or her firmly-held secular beliefs. Cf. Bakker, 925 F.2d at 740 (“Our Constitution, of course, does not require a person to surrender his or her religious beliefs upon the assumption of judicial office.”). When, however, a judge directly and publicly relies on a religious source to reach a specific legal result, she flouts a defendant’s fundamental expectation that he will not be adjudged according to any religious tenets, regardless of whether the sentencing judge herself adheres to those tenets.
If the Constitution sanctions such direct reliance on religious sources when imposing criminal sentences, then there is nothing to stop prosecutors and criminal defense lawyers from regularly citing religious sources like the Bible, the Talmud, or the Koran to justify their respective positions on punishment. The judge would be placed in the position of not only considering statutory sentencing factors, but also deciding which religious texts best justify a particular sentence. Under this approach, the judgments of trial courts could begin to resemble the fatwas of religious clerics, and the opinions of appellate courts echo the proclamations of the Sanhedrin. The result would be “sentencing procedures that create the perception of the bench as a pulpit for which judges announce their personal sense of religiosity.” Id.
Inevitably, judges would apply the same religious texts to reach different sentences, or rely on different religious' texts to justify different sentences, in cases with materially indistinguishable facts. The Constitution, however, does not vest the judicial branch with the authority to resolve such conflicts. See Serbian E. Orthodox Diocese for United States of Am. & Canada v. Milivojevich, 426 U.S. 696, 713, 96 S.Ct. 2372, 49 L.Ed.2d 151 (1976) (noting “the general rule that religious controversies are not the proper subject of civil court inquiry”); Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 5 U.S. 137, 177, 2 L.Ed. 60 (1803) (“It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.”) (emphasis added). A judge’s assumption of such authority is not only fundamentally unfair to defendants, who expect to be sentenced without regard to religious considerations, but also erodes the “wall of separation between church and *692State.” Reynolds v. United States, 98 U.S. 145, 164, 25 L.Ed. 244 (1878).
Finally, the fact that the trial judge sentenced Arnett to less than the statutory maximum for his crimes in no way demonstrates that the judge’s reliance on the Bible did not prejudice him. It is possible that the judge would have sentenced Arnett to a lesser term of years had she not been so heavily influenced by a provision of the Bible that advocates death by drowning for those who “offend ... little ones.” More fundamentally, the Constitution entitled Arnett to a sentencing procedure free of religious influences. The appropriate procedure when an unconstitutional factor contributed to a sentence that is within the statutory sentencing range is not to conclude that the defendant is fortunate that he did not receive a harsher sentence, but to vacate the sentence and order that the defendant be re-sentenced. Cf. United States v. Onwuemene, 933 F.2d 650, 652 (8th Cir.1991) (vacating sentence that was within sentencing guidelines range and remanding for new sentence after holding that the sentencing court had relied on an unconstitutional consideration, the defendant’s national origin); see also United States v. Guidry, 199 F.3d 1150, 1161 (10th Cir.1999) (observing that a sentencing court’s refusal to grant a downward departure based on an unlawful consideration, such as the defendant’s race, would require a remand for resentencing).
For the foregoing reasons, I would hold that the Ohio Supreme Court unreasonably determined that Arnett’s trial judge did not accord constitutionally significant weight to the biblical passage that she cited as support for his sentence. I further would hold that the court unreasonably failed to hold that the trial judge violated Arnett’s right to due process by explicitly and directly relying on a religious source to determine his specific sentence. I would grant the habeas petition and direct the Ohio courts to impose a sentence on Arnett (preferably by a different judge) that does not depend upon religious sources or considerations.