Court Opinion

ID: 9618372
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 05:11:44.688288+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:10:01.885884
License: Public Domain

BOYCE F. MARTIN, JR.,
Circuit Judge, dissenting, joined by Judge MERRITT.
I join Judge Merritt’s cogent dissent. I write separately only to highlight how this case brings into stark relief why the death penalty in this country is “arbitrary, biased, and so fundamentally flawed at its very core that it is beyond repair.” Moore v. Parker, 425 F.3d 250, 268 (6th Cir.2005) (Martin, J., dissenting).
In Moore, the majority and I disagreed as to whether the performance of Moore’s trial counsel was unconstitutionally defective, and whether this performance — or lack thereof — unconstitutionally prejudiced the outcome of his trial. My generalized thoughts about the arbitrary imposition of the death penalty were predicated on the notion that a defendant’s life or death should not hinge on the proficiency of his attorney, especially when most states’ compensation schemes for appointed counsel provide precious little incentive for good lawyering. Id. at 270 (“[O]ne of the most clear examples of the arbitrariness of the death penalty is the common knowledge that those defendants with decent lawyers rarely get sentenced to death.”).
In a subsequent death penalty case, Benge v. Johnson, I parted ways with the majority because “the only legal hook on which Benge’s death sentence hangs is the jury’s finding that he also committed aggravated robbery by stealing Gabbard’s ATM card in the process of killing her.” 474 F.3d 236, 254 (6th Cir.2007) (Martin, J., dissenting). I then considered the hypothetical other acts that Benge could have committed and yet escaped death under state law:
Had Benge impulsively and fatally hit his common law wife in the head with a tire iron in an abhorrent act of extreme domestic violence, instead of killing her to gain access to her ATM card, as the *326prosecution alleged and the jury supposedly found, would his conduct somehow be less heinous and reprehensible? Such a murder would be at least as revolting as the one that occurred here, yet as far as I can tell, would have presented none of the aggravating factors required for a death sentence under Ohio law.

Id.

In Jason Getsy’s case, sadly, we need not consider hypotheticals, such as the better-paid lawyer who would likely have done a better job, or the brutal murder which, for whatever reasons, could not be coupled with any of a state’s statutory aggravating circumstances. For in Get-sy’s case the hypothetical is made real. The nineteen-year-old Getsy was sentenced to death for being one of the trigger men in a murder-for-hire conspiracy. His two compatriots, Richard McNulty and Ben Hudach, did not receive the death penalty because both were offered and accepted plea bargains. Thus there is some logic, perhaps, to why McNulty and Hu-dach received lesser sentences. But there is no logic to why John Santine, the mastermind of the conspiracy, who paid Getsy, McNulty, and Hudach to do his dirty work, and who took great steps to make sure they completed the job, also did not receive a death sentence. As the Supreme Court of Ohio noted despite upholding Get-sy’s death sentence:
It is clear that Getsy would not have committed these crimes if he had never met Santine....
It was clear from the videotape of his statement that Getsy feared Santine and was afraid that Santine would execute him. Getsy apparently was afraid to go to the police because Santine made it appear that he had the police in his pocket. This belief was supported by the fact that McNulty told police what Santine was planning and the police did nothing....
When the group first went to the Serafi-no house, they returned to the apartment without completing the act, using the excuse that they could not find a place to park. Santine became furious, eventually driving Getsy, McNulty, and Hudach back to the place himself.... It is ... troubling that Santine did not receive the death sentence even though he initiated the crime.
State v. Getsy, 84 Ohio St.3d 180, 702 N.E.2d 866, 890-92 (1998).
The majority argues that no Supreme Court, Sixth Circuit, or Ohio state precedents demand that the proportionality principle include in its calculus other defendants who have not been sentenced to death (such as Santine in this case). I side with Judge Merritt in rejecting this proposition. Yet even if the majority were correct, that only bolsters my concerns, for the majority’s rule effectively blesses an arbitrary scheme: that an Ohio state court must weigh the proportionality of an individual’s death sentence against others who have received the death sentence, but that the same state court need not weigh the proportionality of an individual’s death sentence against that of a co-conspirator who did not receive death.
The majority adds that the Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Powell, 469 U.S. 57, 105 S.Ct. 471, 83 L.Ed.2d 461 (1984), and the gloss put on Powell in United States v. Crayton, 357 F.3d 560 (6th Cir.2004), have sounded the death-knell of the common-law “rule of consistency.” Once again, however, even if the majority were correct on this score, it places itself in a serious pickle. For if Powell and Crayton do not require that the rule of consistency be brought to bear on a case such as Getsy’s, then this court’s application of the death penalty is afoHio-*327n inconsistent. This state of affairs I find unconscionable, even as I remain bound to apply the laws of this court and of the Supreme Court. Cf. Benge, 474 F.3d at 258; Moore, 425 F.3d at 270. “[It] is not justice. It is caprice.” Abdul-Kabir v. Quarterman, — U.S. -, 127 S.Ct. 1654, 1686, 167 L.Ed.2d 585 (2007) (Scalia, J., dissenting).
Jason Getsy and John Santine are not hypothetical players in a criminal law final exam. They are real people who committed real crimes, indeed, the same crimes. That Getsy will be put to death while Santine will be spared, and that the law (at least according to the majority) actually sanctions this result, makes it virtually impossible for me to answer in the affirmative what Justice Blackmun viewed as the fundamental question in Callins v. Collins, 510 U.S. 1141, 1145, 114 S.Ct. 1127, 127 L.Ed.2d 435 (1994)—namely, does our system of capital punishment “accurately and consistently determine” which defendants “deserve” to die and which do not?