Court Opinion

ID: 9768383
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 06:00:29.503973+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:40.337116
License: Public Domain

REID, Chief Justice,
concurring and dissenting.
I concur with the majority’s holding that the conviction of first degree murder be affirmed. I also concur that the sentence of death be reversed, because the instruction to the jury regarding the standard of proof for imposition of the sentence of death was deficient and the sentence, therefore, was void.
In dissent, I would hold that the defendant is not death eligible because the use of the aggravating circumstance (i)(4-) cannot be applied to this case.
Imposition of the sentence of death requires the finding of one or more aggravating circumstances. T.C.A. § 39-13-204(g)(1) (Supp.1993). Consequently, if the only aggravating circumstance relied upon by the State is found to be invalid or inapplicable to this case, the defendant cannot be sentenced to death.
The aggravating circumstance relied upon by the prosecution is invalid because it fails to accomplish the constitutional mandate to narrow the class of death-eligible murderers. The Court stated in State v. Middlebrooks, 840 S.W.2d 317, 343 (Tenn.1992):
As a constitutionally necessary first step under the Eighth Amendment, the Supreme Court has required the states to narrow the sentencers’ consideration of the death penalty to a smaller, more culpable class of homicide defendants than the pre-Furman class of death-eligible murderers. See Pulley v. Harris, 465 U.S. 37, 104 S.Ct. 871, 79 L.Ed.2d 29 (1984). A state, however, must not only genuinely narrow the class of death eligible defendants, but must do so in a way that reasonably justifies the imposition of a more severe sentence on the defendant compared to others found guilty of murder. Zant v. Stephens, [462 U.S. 862, 877, 103 S.Ct. 2733, 2742, 77 L.Ed.2d 235 (1983) ].
And further:
Tennessee has not chosen to narrow the class of death-eligible defendants by redefining its murder statute, but rather has chosen to do so by listing a number of specific aggravating factors and expressly requiring the finding of at least one aggravating circumstance beyond a reasonable doubt before the death penalty can be imposed. It joins 24 other states in that requirement.
Id. at 344. It would appear from this statement of the law that an aggravating circumstance, in order to be valid, must “genuinely narrow” the class of death-eligible defendants.
*559Examination of the statutes upon which the conviction and sentence in this ease are based, shows that the same acts constitute the offense and the aggravating circumstance. Defendant was convicted of first degree murder as defined by T.C.A. § 39-13-202(a)(1) (Supp.1993), which provides:
(a) First degree murder is:
(1) An intentional, premeditated and deliberate killing of another.
Even though the defendant did not kill the victim, guilt has been imposed upon him by T.C.A. § 39-11-402 (1991), the pertinent portions of which are:
A person is criminally responsible for an offense committed by the conduct of another if:
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(2) Acting with intent to promote or assist the commission of the offense, or to benefit in the proceeds or results of the offense, the person solicits, directs, aids, or attempts to aid another person to commit the offense....
The jury found only one aggravating circumstance, which T.C.A. § 39-13-204(i)(4) defines as follows:
The defendant ... employed another to commit the murder for remuneration or the promise of remuneration.
By employing Thompson to kill the defendant’s wife, the defendant became guilty upon the act being committed. By employing Thompson to kill his wife, the defendant also committed the aggravating circumstance. Obviously, the same facts establish the crime and the aggravating circumstance; and, the aggravating circumstance adds no culpability beyond that necessary to establish first degree murder.
In Middlebrooks, in which the aggravating circumstance was found to be invalid, the same facts established the crime and the aggravating circumstance, but the “essential elements” of the crime and the aggravating circumstance were the same also. The opinion in Middlebrooks relied upon the duplication of the essential elements to declare the aggravating circumstance invalid. State v. Middlebrooks, 840 S.W.2d at 346.
The majority opinion in this case follows Middlebrooks and finds that the aggravating circumstance in this case is valid, not because it, in fact, narrows the class of death-eligible murderers, but because the “aggravating circumstance found by the jury in this case clearly does not duplicate the statutory elements of the offense.” Opinion p. 557. Consequently, as stated in dissent in Middle-brooks, the decision in that case was only a partial solution to the constitutional problem addressed.
It should be noted that the constitutional deficiency is that the aggravating circumstance does not narrow the class, not that it duplicates the elements of the offense.... The result then is illogical: an aggravating circumstance that fails to narrow the class because it duplicates the elements of the offense is unconstitutional, but aggravating circumstances that fail to narrow the class for other reasons are not unconstitutional. The logical conclusion from the majority Opinion’s analysis would be that any provision of the statute that fails to accomplish the constitutional imperative to narrow the class is invalid.
State v. Middlebrooks, 840 S.W.2d at 352 (Reid, C.J., concurring and dissenting). The result of the majority opinion is to abandon the central principle announced in Middle-brooks:
A proper narrowing device, therefore, provides a principled way to distinguish the case in which the death penalty was imposed from the many cases in which it was not, Godfrey v. Georgia, [446 U.S. 420, 433, 100 S.Ct. 1759, 1767, 64 L.Ed.2d 398 (1980)], and must differentiate a death penalty case in an objective, even-handed, and substantially rational way from the many murder cases in which the death penalty may not be imposed.
Id, at 343. To validate an aggravating circumstance because the “essential elements” are not identical to those of the offense, even though the aggravating circumstance does not in fact narrow the class, hardly seems to be a principled and substantially rational compliance with the constitutional imperative.
*560For these reasons, I would find that the defendant is not death-eligible and impose a sentence of life imprisonment.