Court Opinion

ID: 9573193
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:49:24.92514+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:37:53.057236
License: Public Domain

Springer, J.,
dissenting:
There are two things wrong with the penalty hearing in this case. The first is that of allowing testimony about the sentences which were given to the other defendants involved in these homicides. I agree with Justice Rose’s analysis of this error as expressed in his concurring opinion; but I do not think that the error is harmless and would order a new penalty hearing on this ground. The second error in the penalty proceedings is the prosecution’s persistent depiction of Moore and Flanagan as devil worshippers and “antichrist” and condemning them for their supposed “beliefs.” Devil worship does not sit well with our juries; and I agree with the trial judge that there is no question that Flanagan and Moore suffered from the “prejudicial effect” inherent in the prosecution’s reliance upon the supposed devil worship and demonic beliefs and practices of the defendants. I am convinced that once the prosecution successfully portrayed Flanagan and Moore as antichrist and as believers in Satanism, the “prejudicial effect” mentioned by the trial judge came into operation; and the death penalty was inescapable, whatever else might have been brought out at the penalty hearing.
*255In arguing for the death penalty the prosecution condemned Flanagan and Moore for, in the words of the prosecutor, “what they believed in,” saying that this was “as antichrist as it can get” and “flies in the face of most people’s deepest most dearest held beliefs.” Since the prosecution conceded in its appellate briefing that there was no evidence of Moore’s being a Satan worshipper, there should be no question but that Moore was unfairly condemned by the prosecution for unproven diabolical beliefs and practices. Moore is a murderer, true, but he is not, according to this record, antichrist, or a believer in devil worship. Further, Moore did not kill his own grandparents, as Flanagan did. Moore is a very young man with no criminal record. The jury may very well not have returned the death penalty for Moore had it not been for Moore’s being presented to the jury by the prosecution as being aligned with the devil and his evil designs.
Flanagan’s case is different. He killed his own grandparents for money. For centuries and in a number of societies the murder of one’s own parents or grandparents — parricide—has been condemned and punished with more severity than other homicides.1 It is harder in Flanagan’s case than in Moore’s to say that the “prejudicial effect” inherent in the devil-worship/antichrist portion of the prosecution’s penalty case was so objectionable as to require a new penalty hearing; but I have two reasons for concluding that a new hearing should also be ordered for Flanagan on the basis of this error. The first reason is that condemning a person to death for what he or she professes or believes in clearly violates the first amendment of our federal constitution. In Baldwin v. Alabama, 472 U.S. 372, 382 (1985), the United States Supreme Court stated that, a death sentence based upon “consideration of 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, would violate the Constitution.” Plainly, Flanagan’s death sentence was based upon the jury’s consideration of his supposed *256religious and group affiliations; thus, under Baldwin, the penalty hearing contained prejudicial constitutional error.2
Even if there were no constitutional error, I still see the matter as being governed by our case of Young v. State, 103 Nev. 233, 237-38, 737 P.2d 512, 515 (1987). In the Young case a “police expert” was brought into the penalty hearing to show that Young was the member of a certain gang, which gang, according to the expert, would “do anything, including torture and killing.” The prosecutorial syllogism was, then: The gang members torture and kill. Young is a gang member. Therefore, Young tortures and kills. We concluded in Young that such an argument was of a “highly dubious and inflammatory nature,” and reduced the penalty assessed by what we considered to be an improperly influenced jury.
This case is similar to Young because the prosecutor brought in evidence that Moore and Flanagan had formerly been members, not of a gang but, rather, of some kind of teen-aged witches’ “coven.” Unlike the Young case, however, no witness was called here to tell the jury what a “coven” was, or to prove that coven members torture and kill people, or even that coven members are dedicated to carrying out the nefarious ends of the Devil. The absence of evidential support did not prevent the prosecutor from telling the jury that these particular former coven members, Flanagan and Moore, were antichrist, devil worshippers and opposed to the “dearest held beliefs” of most people. It seems to me that the evidence and argument presented by the prosecutor in this case are far more “dubious” and far more “inflammatory” than they were in Young. If we were to follow the precedent set by this court in Young, we would have to do something about the prejudice inherent in this penalty hearing.
In this country and state certain labels tend to create virtually uneraseable prejudices. To label someone as, say, a communist, a sexual abuser of children, or even a loyal supporter of Saddam Hussein conjures such a “prejudicial effect” in the minds of most of us as to render a fair judgment by a jury in a penalty hearing very difficult if not impossible. I believe that the antichrist, devil-worship label used here probably had this kind of prejudicial effect on the jury.
I do not believe that these young men got a fair penalty hearing, and I would order a new one.

The crime of “parricide,” murdering one’s own parents or grandparents, has in all societies been considered to be more despicable than other homicides. According to Blackstone, under Roman law “parricide was punishable in a much severer manner than any other kind of homicide. After being scourged, the delinquents were sewed up in a leathern sack, with a live dog, a cock, a viper, and an ape, and so cast into the sea.” Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, Book IV, ch. 14 at 202-03, Clarendon Press, Oxford (1769). Under the Napoleonic Code of France parricide was punished by the murderer’s being taken to the place of execution, without any clothes other than his shirt, barefooted, and with his head covered with a black veil. He was then exposed on the scaffold, while an officer of the court read his sentence to the spectators. His right hand was cut off, and he was then put to death.

Even if I were not convinced that Flanagan’s constitutional rights were violated in this case, I would still postpone filing this opinion until the question could be resolved by the United States Supreme Court. On April 1, 1991, the Court granted certiorari in a case that presents virtually the same issue as this one. See Dawson v. Delaware, 581 A.2d 1078 (1990), cert. granted, 59 U.S.L.W. 3672 (1991).