Court Opinion

ID: 9667794
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 01:55:10.81171+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:40.886737
License: Public Domain

Darrell Hickman, Justice, concurring. I agree with the majority decision; we have no alternative but to reverse this case. However, I would go further and address the question raised by Collins v. Lockhart, 754 Fed. 258 (8th Cir.) cert. denied — U.S. —, 106 S.Ct. 546, 88 L.Ed.2d 475 (1985). I would not follow the rationale of that decision which has been rejected by other federal and state courts. Glass v. Blackburn, 791 F.2d 1165 (5th Cir. 1986); Wingo v. Blackburn, 783 F.2d 1046 (5th Cir. 1986); Evans v. Thigpen, 631 F. Supp. 275 (S.D. Miss. 1986); State v. Williams, 317 N.C. 474, 346 S.E.2d 405 (1986). The Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution simply says “excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.” The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals has indeed strayed a long way from that principle by finding that simply because an element of capital felony murder will be an aggravating circumstance, such a circumstance makes the death penalty unconstitutional. If a state decides to limit the death penalty, as Arkansas has done to those who commit murder during the commission of certain felonies, in this case robbery, that is not such an arbitrary, broad category of criminal misconduct that fails or should fail the guidelines laid down by the United States Supreme Court. Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972); Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153 (1976); Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U.S. 586 (1978). A jury may still decide not to impose the death penalty. It is ironical that the few death penalty cases which will slip through the interminable appeal process will mean that those defendants are simply unlucky. The reason for their fate will not be because they deserve the death penalty more than the great majority who are spared that penalty, but because there are no technical reasons left to throw out the death penalty in their case. Is this a fair way to decide who will get the death penalty? It seems a far more freakish way to impose the death penalty than to leave that decision to juries within reasonable guidelines.