Court Opinion

ID: 9517874
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 00:35:43.863967+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:16:12.543303
License: Public Domain

WALSH, Justice,
with whom HARTNETT, Justice, joins, concurring.
I fully concur in the decision of this Court upholding both the jury determination of guilt and the imposition of the death penalty. I write separately, however, to voice a concern over the Court’s treatment of Ferguson’s claim that the jury was improperly permitted to double count statutory aggravating circumstances. In my view, the use of statutory aggravating circumstances which cannot be other than redundant, as applied in this case, 'is improper. However, given the formidable array of aggravating circumstances proved, including a prior murder conviction, I am satisfied that such error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.
Under Delaware’s capital punishment scheme, 11 Del.C. § 4209, the establishment of statutory aggravating circumstances is a sine qua non to the imposition of the death sentence. Both to establish the initial threshold of jury consideration and to permit the balancing against mitigating circumstances, the 18 separately stated circumstances set forth in 11 Del. C. § 4209(e) play a significant role in the penalty phase of a capital punishment trial. Today, the Court rejects the claim that two of these aggravating circumstances, that the murder was committed during a robbery and that the murder was committed for pecuniary gain, are impermissibly duplicative. While this holding adheres to previous rulings of this Court in Flamer v. State, Del.Supr., 490 A.2d 104, 125-26, cert. denied, 464 U.S. 865, 104 S.Ct. 198, 78 L.Ed.2d 173 (1983) and Deputy v. State, Del.Supr., 500 A.2d 581, 600-01 (1985), cert. denied, 480 U.S. 940, 107 S.Ct. 1589, 94 L.Ed.2d 778 (1987), there have been intervening decisions in other jurisdictions which cast serious doubt upon the propriety of this double counting of aggravating circumstances.
Since its decision in Provence v. State, Fla.Supr., 337 So.2d 783 (1976), cert. denied, 431 U.S. 969, 97 S.Ct. 2929, 53 L.Ed.2d 1065 (1977), the Florida Supreme Court has reaffirmed its rejection of the practice of permitting the doubling of aggravating circumstances of robbery and pecuniary gain “when both aggravating circumstances referred to the same aspect of the defendant’s crime.” Robertson v. State, Fla.Supr., 611 So.2d 1228, 1233 (1993), quoting Provence, 337 So.2d at 786. Other jurisdictions, following the lead of Provence, have also found redundancy, to the level of prejudicial error, in the submission of aggravating circumstances of murder for pecuniary gain and murder committed during the crime of robbery. Willie v. State, Miss.Supr., 585 So.2d 660 (1991); State v. Quesinberry, 319 N.C. 228, 354 S.E.2d 446 (1987), judgment vacated on other grounds, 494 U.S. 1022, 110 S.Ct. 1465, 108 L.Ed.2d 603 (1990); Engberg v. Meyer, Wyo.Supr., 820 P.2d 70 (1991).
The Court views the redundancy question as one of legislative intent and correctly notes that the General Assembly in its 1991 amendments to the Delaware death penalty statute did not act to correct the court’s construction of § 4209 as expressed in Flamer and Deputy. The Court further comments that, conceptually, there is a distinction between theft and robbery under the Delaware Criminal Code. I have no quarrel with the Court’s conceptual analysis and agree that under certain circumstances, pecuniary gain may continue to find separate existence as an aggravating circumstance as intended Delaware law. The difficulty lies in the application of the circumstances in a given evidentiary setting where there is no factual basis for viewing them separately *791from the standpoint of the defendant’s conduct.
The motivational factor underlying robbery may, in certain extreme situations, e.g., the robbery is committed for reputational purposes, eliminate the redundancy factor, but it clearly does not do so in this case where the sentencing judge recognized the redundancy and neutralized its effect in the final sentencing process. It is not sufficient for jury instructional purposes to be able to conceptualize between aggravating circumstances; the jury must be advised of the application of the law to the facts of the case before it. As the North Carolina Supreme Court observed in Quesinberry:
Although the pecuniary gain factor addresses motive specifically, the other cannot be perceived as conduct alone, for under the facts of this case the motive of pecuniary gain provided the impetus for the robbery itself. Admittedly, situations are conceivable in which an armed robber murders motivated by some impulse other than pecuniary gain, e.g., where the robbery is committed to obtain something of purely reputational or sentimental, rather than pecuniary, value. The facts of this case, though, reveal that defendant murdered the shopkeeper for the single purpose of pecuniary gain by means of committing an armed robbery.
354 S.E.2d at 453. Similarly, in this case, the sentencing judge characterized the criminal transaction as a classic “drug rip-off’ in which the “obvious and only motive for the shooting was pecuniary gain.”
Pecuniary gain has independent significance as a statutory aggravating circumstance in other situations. For example, if a murder was committed to collect on a life insurance policy or to gain an inheritance, the murder would have been committed for pecuniary gain, but not in the course of a robbery. In my view, these are proper situations in which pecuniary gain may be considered as a statutory aggravating circumstance.
As the Court has also noted, the sentencing judge in this case, and judges in other capital punishment cases in the Superior Court, have consistently declined to accord independent weight to pecuniary gain as an aggravating circumstance when coupled with related robbery or burglary offenses. If this be the practice, we are thus confronted with the unusual situation where some judges permit juries to apply redundant circumstances in their advisory capacity while declining to do so themselves in their ultimate role as sentencers.15 In my view, we should not ignore a practice which permits the jury to engage in a highly questionable exercise of double counting in cases where no factual basis exists for separate weighing.
I find it anomalous that the Court credits the Superior Court judges for their discernment in according no independent weight to duplicative aggravating circumstances while at the same time permitting juries to be instructed that they may consider such factors in their deliberation. Although, under Delaware law, the trial judge is the ultimate sentencer, the jury continues to play an indispensable role “as the conscience of the community.” Wright v. State, Del.Supr., 633 A.2d 329, 335 (1993), quoting State v. Cohen, Del.Supr., 604 A.2d 846, 856 (1992). Where the State has decided “to place capital-sentencing authority in two actors rather than one, neither actor must be permitted to weigh invalid aggravating circumstances.” Espinosa v. Florida, — U.S. —, —, 112 S.Ct. 2926, 2929, 120 L.Ed.2d 854 (1992).
To the extent our holdings in Flamer and Deputy permit the jury to consider the dupli-cative aggravating circumstances of robbery and pecuniary gain where the evidence pro*792vides no basis for independent weighing in the sentencing process, I would overrule those decisions.
Notwithstanding my reservations concerning the double counting of two aggravating circumstances, I am satisfied that such error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. Gattis v. State, Del.Supr., 637 A.2d 808, 817 (1994); Clemons v. Mississippi, 494 U.S. 738, 110 S.Ct. 1441, 108 L.Ed.2d 725 (1990). The sentencing judge carefully documented an array of other aggravating circumstances, including a prior murder conviction. In view of the overwhelming weight of these circumstances, the imposition of the death penalty in this case was neither arbitrary nor capricious.
APPENDIX I
FIRST DEGREE MURDER CASES THAT WENT TO PENALTY HEARINGS
1985 to date
Appendix I to Dawson v. State, Del.Supr., 637 A.2d 57, 69 (1994) is incorporated herein by reference, subject to the following changes and additions.
Case Name: David F. Dawson
Case No.: IK86-0024; IK87-01-0841; 0843, 0845
County: New Castle (venue changed)
Sentence: Death
Case Name: Cornelius E. Ferguson*
Case No.: IN91-10-0576, 0578 thru 0581
County: New Castle
Sentence: Death — present proceeding
Case Name: Robert A. Gattis
Case No.: IN90-05-1017 thru 1019, 1106, 1107
County: New Castle
Sentence: Death
The “universe” of cases is comprised of those First Degree Murder cases which have gone to a penalty hearing and in which the sentence has become final, either without or following a review by this Court. An asterisk marks those capital murder cases which are not included in the defined “universe” of cases.

. Apparently the practice is not uniform. In a case presently pending review in this Court, Jackson v. State, cited by the Court, ante at 782-783 n. 8, Judge Bifferato refused to permit pecuniary gain to be submitted to the jury as a statutory aggravating circumstance when the murder was committed during the course of a robbery and burglary. Since Delaware's death penalty statute is modeled after Florida’s, he reasoned that Florida law, presumably Provence and its progeny, was persuasive and elected to follow it. Furthermore, in Wright v. State, Del.Supr., 633 A.2d 329 (1993), tried before Judge Del Pesco, the jury was not permitted to consider pecuniary gain as a statutory aggravating circumstance where the murder was committed during the robbery of a liquor store clerk.