Court Opinion

ID: 9573136
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:48:19.825205+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:37:33.715003
License: Public Domain

BISTLINE, Justice,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I concur in the majority’s opinion, except as hereinafter discussed.
Standard on review (BISTLINE, J. dissenting).
I dissent from the majority’s statement that the defendant must make an affirmative showing of error on a death penalty appeal. This Court, by statute, must review all death penalty cases, even if the defendant does not wish to appeal. That review requires that we examine the record independently of the presentation by the parties. I.C. § 19-2827.
I. Evidence of other crimes (BISTLINE, J. dissenting).
Evidence of the other crimes and acts allegedly committed by Pizzuto at some unspecified time before the crimes charged were committed is admissible to prove motive, opportunity, intent, preparation, plan, knowledge, identity, or absence of mistake or accident, according to I.R.E. 404(b). However, motive or opportunity or one of the other issues listed in 404(b) must also be an issue at the trial, and is a prerequisite to the admission of evidence of other crimes or acts as substantive evidence. Here, there is no sound argument to be made to support the notion that the probative value of evidence concerning Pizzuto’s alleged prior acts was not substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice, and confusion of the jury. It cannot with any certainty be said that this error was harmless.
II. Late disclosure of the jury panel (BISTLINE, J. dissenting).
No amount of voir dire questioning can make up for the lack of time to investigate *780outside of the courtroom persons who may become jurors. The federal model of providing a list of prospective jurors prior to trial for investigation of the jury panel should be adopted by this Court.
III. Prosecution’s closing argument (BISTLINE, J. dissenting).
While I agree with the result of this part of the majority opinion, I must also question the Court’s failure to highlight many of the personal beliefs and opinions uttered by the prosecutor in closing. All of these personal opinions were improper.
IV. Photographs (BISTLINE, J. dissenting).
The majority upholds the district court’s admission of photographs depicting these brutal murders on the basis that such provided the jury with the understanding of an essential element of the prosecution’s case against the defendant. That essential element is atrociousness. However, atrociousness is nowhere part of the definition of murder, or robbery, or grand theft. In fact, atrocity is properly a consideration only for the sentencing phase of the trial, when the judge determines the sentence. I.C. § 19-2515(g)(5). See State v. Enno, 119 Idaho 392, 807 P.2d 610 (1991).
XIV. Aggravating circumstances (BISTLINE, J. concurring in part, dissenting in part).
I concur in part and dissent in part to this section, because in my view only the I.C. § 19-2515(g)(8) aggravating circumstance is not vague and overbroad. The other two circumstances challenged by Pizzuto, (g)(5) and (g)(6), are vague and over-broad.
Circumstance (g)(5) is upheld by the majority because in State v. Lankford, 116 Idaho 860, 781 P.2d 197 (1989), the Court stated that the judge and not the jury is the interpreter of the language of (g)(5). That circumstance provides for the death penalty whenever “[t]he murder was especially heinous, atrocious or cruel, manifesting exceptional depravity.” According to the majority, the fact that an expert in terms of art — a judge — would so interpret (g)(5) allows Idaho to sidestep the Supreme Court’s holding in Maynard v. Cartwright, 486 U.S. 356, 108 S.Ct. 1853, 100 L.Ed.2d 372 (1988) (the aggravating circumstance in an Oklahoma death penalty statute providing for the imposition of the death penalty if the murder was especially heinous, atrocious or cruel was held unconstitutionally vague and in violation of the eighth amendment).
However, this Court’s earlier expressions concerning the language of (g)(5) as revealed in State v. Osborn, 102 Idaho 405, 631 P.2d 187 (1981), which was released a few years before Lankford or Maynard, are highly indicative of underlying philosophy. In Osborn, which is cited and quoted from with approval by the majority in today’s opinion, this Court adopted the Florida Supreme Court’s understanding of “especially heinous, atrocious or cruel:”
‘[W]e feel that the meaning of such terms is a matter of common knowledge, so that an ordinary man would not have to guess at what was intended.’
Osborn, 102 Idaho at 418, 631 P.2d at 200.
I have previously commented upon our unthinking adoption of what the Florida Supreme Court has done to (g)(5), and as well what this Court has done with (g)(6). It bears repeating here:
The cruel and unusual punishment prohibitions of the state and federal constitutions require that the sentencer’s discretion in imposing the death penalty [be] limited to “minimiz[e] the risk of wholly arbitrary and capricious action.” Maynard v. Cartwright, 486 U.S. 356, 108 S.Ct. 1853, 100 L.Ed.2d 372 (1988). The Supreme Court has held that the statutory aggravating circumstances, such as those in I.C. § 19-2515, must be given a limiting construction if the state is to meet its constitutional obligation “to tailor and apply its law in a manner that avoids the arbitrary and capricious infliction of the death penalty.” Godfrey v. Georgia, 446 U.S. 420, 428, 100 S.Ct. 1759, 1764, 64 L.Ed.2d 398, 406 (1980). Idaho Code § 19-2515(g) provides:
*781The following are statutory aggravating circumstances, at least one (1) of which must be found to exist beyond a reasonable doubt before a sentence of death can be imposed.
(5) The murder was especially heinous, atrocious or cruel, manifesting exceptional depravity.
(6) By the murder or circumstances surrounding its commission, the defendant exhibited utter disregard for human life.
(Emphasis added.) In regard to the (g)(5) aggravating circumstance, the majority concludes that the following limiting construction passes constitutional muster:
It is our interpretation that heinous means extremely wicked or shockingly evil; that atrocious means outrageously wicked and vile; and, that cruel means designed to inflict a high degree of pain with utter indifference to, or even enjoyment of, the suffering of others. What is intended to be included are those capital crimes where the actual commission of the capital felony was accompanied by such additional acts as to set the crime apart from the norm of capital felonies-the conscienceless or pitiless crime which is unnecessarily torturous to the victim.
116 Idaho at 152, 774 P.2d at 322 (quoting State v. Osborn, 102 Idaho 405, 418, 631 P.2d 187, 200 (1981)) (emphasis in original).
The limiting construction given to the (g)(5) aggravating circumstance by Osborn and reaffirmed today by the majority, is wholly insufficient to guide the sentencer’s discretion in limiting the application of the death penalty consistent with constitutional mandates. Terms beget terms. What is the “norm” of capital felonies? Who sets this “norm”? Indeed, all first degree murders involve the unlawful killing of another with malice aforethought. What sets this particular murder apart — not from other crimes — but from the “norm” of first degree murder? In a domestic dispute husband kills wife with a gun. Do all such murders now warrant execution? If so, it can hardly be said discretion is limited.
Also, the Osborn “limiting definition of the (g)(5)” circumstance provides that the murder must be “unnecessarily torturous to the victim.” Clearly, however, this definition is simply duplicative of the (g)(7) circumstance which subjects defendants to death for murder by torture. In the final analysis, all first degree murders are “especially heinous, atrocious or cruel, manifesting exceptional depravity.” Nothing in the majority’s interpretation restricts the broad brush with which the subsection is drawn.
The (g)(6) aggravating circumstance, which requires that the defendant exhibit “utter disregard for human life,” suffers from similar infirmities. Today the majority reaffirms the “limiting” construction enunciated in Osborn:
We conclude instead that the phrase is meant to be reflective of acts or circumstances surrounding the crime which exhibit the highest, the utmost, callous disregard for human life, i.e., the cold blooded, pitiless slayer.
116 Idaho at 152, 774 P.2d at 322 (emphasis added) (quoting Osborn, 102 Idaho at 419, 631 P.2d at 201). What first degree murderer fails to show “callous disregard for human life”? I suppose this would be the “pitiful” slayer, who, prior to delivering the fatal blow, tells the victim: “Excuse me, pardon me, I know it’s inconvenient, but I must now take your life.”
Furthermore, the (g)(5) and (6) aggravating circumstances are duplicative. Every murderer who exhibits “utter disregard for human life” commits a crime which is “especially heinous, atrocious or cruel manifesting exceptional depravity.” Today, however, the majority in State v. Fain, 116 Idaho 82, 774 P.2d 252 (1989), concludes that the aggravating factors describe two “quite different kinds of culpability.” The majority states:
The particularly cold-blooded killer need not act sadistically or in a particularly outrageous fashion in order to commit a killing with utter disregard for human life. One who commits a crime in an especially heinous way is punished for the heinousness of his crime, not because he acted with utter disregard for *782human life, although it may be expected that most especially heinous, atrocious or cruel murders will have been committed with utter disregard for human life.
Fain, 116 Idaho at 99, 774 P.2d at 269 (emphasis added).
Thus, according to the majority, a “cold blooded killer need not ” act in an “outrageous fashion” to commit a murder “with utter disregard for human life.” I cannot fathom a first degree murder which is not carried out in an “outrageous fashion.” Every premeditated murder is outrageous.
The (g)(5) and (6) subsections are nothing more than kitchen sink aggravating circumstances which enable the state to make every first degree murderer not just a candidate for, but an actual recipient of, the harshest and most final of all criminal penalties. As a result, the mandate to narrow the class of death-eligible murders is abandoned.
State v. Charboneau, 116 Idaho 129, 171-72, 774 P.2d 299, 341-42 (1989) (footnotes omitted). The considerations I discussed in Charboneau apply with equal force to this case.
In conclusion, it has become abundantly clear that nothing has been gained or will be gained by maintaining that death penalty sentencing should be a decision left to the collective conscience of a jury comprised of the defendant’s peers. The time has come to forget and forgo the distinction that aggravating circumstances are properly elements to be considered at sentencing, but not in deciding the issue of guilt or innocence. Hopefully, one day an informed and indignant electorate will require of the legislature that it rethink and rewrite the sentencing scheme so as to put it back where it was before an innovative deputy attorney general brought about the drastic change taking the awesome responsibility out of the hands of the citizenry, and instead placing it on a district judge, making Idaho and two or three other states unique in that regard.