Court Opinion

ID: 9667164
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 01:37:06.574463+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:35.484900
License: Public Domain

CLINTON, Judge,
dissenting.
A majority of the Court has ruled, in Black v. Slate, 816 S.W.2d 350 (Tex.Cr.App., delivered this day), that a claim premised upon Penry v. Lynaugh, 492 U.S. 302, 109 S.Ct. 2934, 106 L.Ed.2d 256 (1989), may be raised for the first time on appeal or on collateral attack, at least so long as the trial occurred prior to the date of decision in Penry. This is because before that date a Penry claim was a “right not recognized” in this Court. Ex parte Chambers, 688 S.W.2d 483 (Tex.Cr.App.1984) (Campbell, J., concurring). Applicant Earvin’s trial was in August of 1977, twelve years before the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Penry. Nevertheless, the Court holds that applicant’s application for post-conviction writ of habeas corpus, brought pursuant to Article 11.07, Y.A.C.C.P., was improvidently filed and set. We know from Black that it cannot have been improvident because of a procedural bar. See also Selvage v. Collins, 816 S.W.2d 390 (Tex.Cr.App., delivered this day) (Opinion on Certified Question from the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit). I presume, then, that the majority rejects applicant’s Penry claim on the merits.
Applicant was only eighteen years old at the time he committed the offense in this cause. Jurors are entitled to believe that age has a bearing on moral culpability that transcends the particular factual questions of deliberateness, provocation and future dangerousness. Even a juror who believes beyond a reasonable doubt that a capital defendant killed deliberately and without provocation, and will likely continue to commit violent crimes, may yet judge his youth to be a valid reason to assess a penalty less than death.
In Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U.S. 586, 98 S.Ct. 2954, 57 L.Ed.2d 973 (1978), a plurality of the Supreme Court invalidated the death sentence of a 21 year old defendant. Under the Ohio statute then governing capital sentencing, the trial judge was to impose a sentence of death unless he found one of three statutorily defined mitigating circumstances, viz: 1) that the deceased “induced or facilitated” the offense; 2) that the accused acted under “duress, coercion or strong provocation[;]” or 3) that the accused’s conduct was a product of his “psychosis or mental deficiency[.]” Id., U.S. at 607, 98 S.Ct. at 2966, 57 L.Ed.2d at 991-92. Although such factors as Lockett’s age and criminal record could be considered in the determination whether any of the statutory mitigating circumstances existed, they could not be regarded as justifications in their own right for a sentence less than death. Nor could factors such as the accused’s relatively minor role in the events leading up to the murder, or absence of an intent to kill on her part. A plurality of the Supreme Court held that this limitation of the range of mitigating circumstances was incompatible with its recent Eighth Amendment jurisprudence, most notably Woodson v. North Carolina, 428 U.S. 280, 96 S.Ct. 2978, 49 L.Ed.2d 944 (1976). In a companion case to Lockett, Bell v. Ohio, 438 U.S. 637, 98 S.Ct. 2977, 57 L.Ed.2d 1010 (1978), the same plurality overturned the death penalty of a defendant who had been sixteen years old at the time of his offense.
In Eddings v. Oklahoma, 455 U.S. 104, 102 S.Ct. 869, 71 L.Ed.2d 1 (1982), a majority of the Supreme Court adopted the holding of Lockett. The Oklahoma capital sentencing statute provided for consideration of “any mitigating circumstances,” and the trial judge did take Eddings’ age, sixteen, into account in assessing the punishment. Thus the Supreme Court observed approvingly: “The trial judge recognized that youth must be considered a relevant mitigating factor.” 455 U.S. at 115, 102 S.Ct. at 877, 71 L.Ed.2d at 11. Because the trial judge declined to consider the troubled circumstances of Eddings’ upbringing, however, his death sentence was also overturned, on authority of Lockett.
As I understand them, Lockett, Bell and Eddings support the proposition that youth *381necessarily has Eighth Amendment relevance as mitigating evidence, quite apart from whatever bearing it may have on Article 37.071, V.A.C.C.P., special issues.
It is true that in Stanford v. Kentucky, 492 U.S. 361, 109 S.Ct. 2969, 106 L.Ed.2d 306 (1989), the Supreme Court held it was not cruel and unusual per se to impose the death penalty upon defendants who were sixteen or seventeen at the time of commission of the offense. That does not mean, however, that youth has lost its constitutionally mitigating significance. In Penry itself the Supreme Court held it is not per se unconstitutional to execute a mentally retarded capital accused. But in the same opinion the Supreme Court then insisted that mental retardation has mitigating significance beyond its relevance to the special issues under Article 37.071, supra. By the same token, that the Eighth Amendment does not categorically prohibit execution of youths and young adults does not reduce the significance of youth as a circumstance that, in the individual case, might justify a sentence less than death. Youth remains as an aspect of the individual character and circumstances of the offender which is a “constitutionally indispensable part of the process of inflicting the penalty of death.” Woodson v. North Carolina, 428 U.S. at 304, 96 S.Ct. at 2978, 49 L.Ed.2d at 944. I do not read Stanford to diminish the impact of Lockett, Bell and Eddings. Youth still has mitigating “relevance” not fully circumscribed by special issues.
In any event, I agree with Judge Baird that the Court would do well to wait on the Fifth Circuit’s resolution of the question now pending before it on rehearing en banc in Graham v. Collins, 896 F.2d 893 (CA5 1990) rehearing granted, 903 F.2d 1014, rather than dismiss applicant’s application without any discussion of the matter. Should the Fifth Circuit reconfirm that youth is a constitutionally relevant mitigating factor which has significance beyond the scope of the special issues contained in Article 37.071, V.A.C.C.P., then applicant has suffered “imposition of the death penalty ... by a sentencer given no means to prescribe, based on such mitigating evidence, a less severe punishment” than death. Gribble v. State, 808 S.W.2d 65 (Tex.Cr.App.1990) 808 S.W.2d at 75. Yet, we will have left the matter for the federal courts to remedy on federal habeas corpus.
I would reach the merits of applicant’s Penry claim and grant relief. The majority does not, and for that reason I respectfully dissent.
MALONEY, J„ joins.