Court Opinion

ID: 9765464
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 04:03:28.734864+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:10.228992
License: Public Domain

BLACKMAR, Chief Justice,
concurring.
I concur. The discussion of the “assaultive” aggravating circumstance shows that the jury was properly instructed on a lawful statutory aggravating circumstance. The “outrageously and wantonly vile” circumstance, therefore, was not essential to the judgment. I write separately only because of the repeated argument about this latter circumstance.
When the Supreme Court of the United States denied certiorari in State v. Mercer, 618 S.W.2d 1 (Mo. banc 1981) and State v. Newlon, 627 S.W.2d 606 (Mo. banc 1982), I thought that it had retreated from its sharply-divided holding in Godfrey v. Georgia, 446 U.S. 420, 100 S.Ct. 1759, 64 L.Ed.2d 398 (1980). That Court has often *802cautioned that the denial of certiorari does not connote the approval of the decision below, but I thought that it would not countenance a decision which conflicted with its own recent precedent. I therefore concurred in State v. Preston, 673 S.W.2d 1 (Mo. banc 1984), on the basis of the unre-versed Missouri case, even though I thought that our holding probably conflicted with Godfrey. Then in Maynard v. Cartwright, 486 U.S. 356, 108 S.Ct. 1853, 100 L.Ed.2d 372 (1988), the Supreme Court reaffirmed Godfrey, by a substantial majority.
The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals may not be entirely consistent with its view of the circumstance in issue. Cf. Mercer v. Armontrout, 864 F.2d 1429 (8th Cir.1988), and Newlon v. Armontrout, 885 F.2d 1328 (8th Cir.1989). See also Smith v. Armontrout, 888 F.2d 530 (8th Cir.1989), in which that court denied postconviction relief because the jury, in a way not sanctioned by our traditions, had seen fit to particularize its finding by saying that it had found “torture.”
In State v. Preston, 673 S.W.2d 1 (Mo. banc 1984), we sought to flesh out the “outrageously and wantonly vile” circumstance, by setting forth some of the factors which would authorize submission of this circumstance to the jury. But we have not required that the Preston specifications be presented to the jury in its instructions. The Preston formulation speaks only to the trial court. The Mercer v. Armontrout court gave attention to the Preston guidelines, but I am not sure that this represents the last word on the subject.
One thing is clear. A circumstance which requires a finding of “torture” is sufficient to withstand Godfrey-Cartwright scrutiny. If Missouri prosecutors and judges will require a conjunctive finding of torture whenever the questioned circumstance is to be submitted, most postconviction wrangling will be avoided. I cannot imagine a situation in which a jury’s finding would be different, depending on whether torture is submitted disjunctively or conjunctively.
With these observations, I concur in the principal opinion.