Court Opinion

ID: 9856714
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 06:56:01.849595+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:40:26.515850
License: Public Domain

BISTLINE, Justice,
concurring in the result and specially concurring as to Part XII.
Concurring generally in most of the Court’s opinion, I do question the propriety of citing to companion cases which were facially not at all proportional, referring to State v. Fetterly and State v. Windsor; State v. Beam and State v. Scroggins; State v. Bainbridge and State v. Sivak. Also, upon revisiting my dissent in State v. Major, it is seen as another case which the majority should refrain from citing. As to the companion cases, Fetterly, Beam, and Sivak are awaiting execution; Windsor, Scroggins, and Bainbridge will not suffer that fate. Further enlightenment is readily available in Fetterly, 115 Idaho at 236, 766 P.2d at 706. Even more enlightening are the trial court’s remarks at sentencing Karla Windsor to be executed, 110 Idaho at 425-27, 716 P.2d at 1197-99, under the heading of “Findings of Facts and Argument Found in Possible Mitigation,” and concluding with the imposition of the death sentence, plus the remainder of the sentencing remarks set out in Appendix B “Sentencing,” 110 Idaho at 444, 716 P.2d at 1216. For the views of the sentencing judge following this Supreme Court’s opinion which vacated the sentence of death and remanded for resentencing, see Part I of State v. Fetterly, 115 Idaho at 232-33, 766 P.2d at 702-03.
In sum, it is submitted that Justice McDevitt’s opinion for the Court is a first step in a better direction. Ad hoc assess*814ments of a capital murderer’s right to live in perpetual confinement, or be executed should eschew all prior notions (literally, not figuratively) of proportionality, in which this Court has, by rote citation, allowed itself to indulge. Justice McDevitt, at the close of his opinion, correctly observes that Justice Shepard in authoring the 1983 Creech opinion,4 reviewed several death penalty cases which in time were subsequent to the 1977 legislative amendment of Idaho’s death sentencing provisions. Justice Shepard found and cited to Creech, Lindquist, Needs, and Osborn.5 The 1979 Creech case was distinct from the 1983 Creech case, and Justice Shepard detailed the salient facts which led to imposition of death sentences, and concluded that Creech’s murder of Dale Jensen was on a par with the murders committed by Osborn, Needs, and Lindquist. The recitation of the cases which he stated as having been reviewed was unnecessary.6
It is also high time to comply with our Idaho Constitution and put the awesome decision of life or death back in the hands of twelve tried and true jurors. It was ever thus prior to the adoption of the Idaho Constitution. Just three years ago, Justice Johnson, in Steed v. Young, 115 Idaho 247, 252, 766 P.2d 717, 720 (1988), cited to Christensen v. Hollingsworth, 6 Idaho 87, 93, 53 P. 211, 212 (1898), for the proposition that, “art. 1, § 7 of our Constitution simply secures the right to jury trial ‘as it existed at the date of the adoption of the Constitution.’ ” Justice Huntley has stated the same, and added that in the context of a capital case the jury at the time of statehood had the power to decide between the penalty of life imprisonment, or death, by the degree of murder declared in the verdict. His views are perpetuated, along with my own, in State v. Creech, 105 Idaho at 375-412, 670 P.2d at 476-513.

. State v. Creech, 105 Idaho 362, 374, 670 P.2d 463, 475 (1983).

. State v. Creech, 99 Idaho 779, 589 P.2d 114 (1979); State v. Lindquist, 99 Idaho 766, 589 P.2d 101 (1979); State v. Needs, 99 Idaho 883, 591 P.2d 130 (1979); and State v. Osborn, 102 Idaho 405, 631 P.2d 187 (1981).

.The lengthy recitation of the cases in Justice Shepard’s opinion will be found in footnote 2, 105 Idaho at 375, 670 P.2d at 476.