Court Opinion

ID: 9430093
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:28:55.615723+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:22.945922
License: Public Domain

*393Justice Stevens,
with whom Justice Brennan and Justice Marshall join,
dissenting.
Under a unique statutory provision, since repealed, the jury that convicted Brian Keith Baldwin of aggravated murder was required to “fix [his] punishment at death.” Ala. Code § 13-ll-2(a) (1975). The trial judge was permitted either to “refuse to accept” the jury’s death penalty or to sentence Baldwin to death “after weighing the aggravating and mitigating circumstances, and the fixing of the punishment at death by the jury.” § 13-11-4. In this case, the judge decided that “the death penalty as fixed by the jury should be and hereby is accepted.” App. 18.
In my dissenting opinion in Spaziano v. Florida, 468 U. S. 447, 467 (1984), I explained at some length why the jury, as the spokesman for the community, plays a critical role in the process of deciding whether to impose the death penalty on a defendant convicted of a capital offense.1 It is my view that no death sentence is constitutionally valid unless it has the sanction of a jury. Even if I did not hold that view, however, I could not accept the Court’s conclusion that a “mis-described” jury sentence of death does not infect a judge’s subsequent decision to “accept” that sentence. Ante, at 388.
*394As the Court demonstrates, it would be patently unconstitutional to uphold the death sentence in this case if the jury’s mandatory capital verdict were dispositive. Ante, at 379-380. In my view, it is also unconstitutional to present an elected trial judge who might otherwise regard the arguments for and against a death sentence as equally balanced with the burden of rejecting a jury verdict of this kind before he can impose a sentence of life.
One reason that we have condemned mandatory jury death sentences in the past is that they are unintelligible. When a jury that convicts a defendant of the crime charged must impose a sentence of death, there is no assurance that its sentence represents the jury’s belief that death is the “just and appropriate sentence.” Woodson v. North Carolina, 428 U. S. 280, 304 (1976) (opinion of Stewart, Powell, and Stevens, JJ.). For when the jury has followed proper instructions, conviction should mean nothing more than that the jury believed the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt; unless the jury is willing to violate a sworn oath and nullify the evidence, the death sentence is automatic. See Beck v. Alabama, 447 U. S. 625, 642, 644 (1980). Of course, even though the verdict is automatic, the jury might believe that the defendant should die.2 But even if the jury did *395intend the consequent death sentence in some sense, it did so with “no guidance whatsoever,” id., at 640, and without the “particularized consideration” of relevant factors that the Constitution requires in capital cases. Woodson, supra, at 303; see Roberts v. Louisiana, 428 U. S. 325, 333-336 (1976) (opinion of Stewart, Powell, and Stevens, JJ.). Thus a mandatory jury death sentence cannot be said to represent the sort of considered community judgment the Court has approved in the past. See Jurek v. Texas, 428 U. S. 262, 271-275 (1976) (opinion of Stewart, Powell, and Stevens, JJ.); Witherspoon v. Illinois, 391 U. S. 510, 519 (1968).3 Instead, such a mandatory sentence is so “uncertain] and unreliable]” that it “cannot be tolerated in a capital case.” Beck, supra, at 643.
The arbitrariness and uncertainty of the message conveyed by a mandatory jury death sentence makes such a sentence a constitutionally impermissible factor in a sentencing judge’s deliberations. Rather than representing the considered *396judgment of the community based on consideration of all relevant information concerning the particular offense and defendant at bar, such a sentence represents at best the jury’s unguided and arbitrary judgment regarding the proper sentence, and at worst merely an unwillingness to set a violent criminal free even though the jury would not have imposed death had it had any discretion. Because the sentencing judge cannot possibly know what meaning, if any, a mandatory jury death sentence conveys, such a sentence is “totally irrelevant to the sentencing process.” Zant v. Stephens, 462 U. S. 862, 885 (1983). In my view, due process of law requires that any death sentence based even in part on such a factor be set aside. Ibid.
The record in this case plainly indicates that the jury’s sentence was, in fact, on the mind of the judge that sentenced Baldwin in 1977.4 When the judge scheduled Baldwin’s sentencing hearing, he noted that “the jury has ... set your punishment at death by electrocution, but. . . first” he would hold a hearing to consider “all. . . circumstances.” 2 Record 249 (emphasis added). His subsequent decision to sentence Baldwin to death was delivered not without reference to the jury’s sentence, but rather in terms of “accepting]” the death penalty “as fixed by the jury.” App. 18. Theoretical speculation regarding what the judge “logically” should have concluded regarding the jury’s sentence, ante, at 385, is insufficient to overcome the obvious consideration demonstrated by the judge’s repeated references to the jury’s sentence. We do not know how the sentence weighed in the judge’s deliberations, but not even the most careful parsing of words can support a conclusion that he did not “conside[r]” it at all. Ibid.
Moreover, it is unrealistic to maintain that such a sentence from the jury does not enter the mind of the sentencing judge. When the Court examined this same sentencing pro*397vision in 1980, seven Justices agreed that “it is manifest that the jury’s verdict must have a tendency to motivate the judge to impose the same sentence that the jury did.” Beck v. Alabama, 447 U. S., at 645. Today, three Justices have changed their view, and the Court now maintains that “[i]t defies logic to assume that a judge will be swayed to impose the death penalty” by a jury sentence of death that was mandatory. Ante, at 388. I cannot so easily change my appraisal of human nature. Judges in Alabama, as in many States, are elected. Ala. Const., Amdt. No. 328, § 6.13. They are not insulated from community pressure; indeed, responsiveness and accountability to the community provide the justification for an elected judiciary.5 Although a judge may understand that a mandatory jury sentence of death is, in some sense, meaningless (but see n. 2, swpra), the community probably does not. A jury sentence of death is likely to be reported and understood as a real sentence of death, as it was in this case.6
Whether it “logically” need be so or not, ante, at 385, 388, the plain fact is that a judge who later decides to sentence to life in such circumstances is publicly perceived to have rejected the jury’s sentence; indeed, the terms of the statute itself embody that perception. The pressures on a judge that inevitably result should not be ignored.7 In my view, *398only the Court’s distance from the realities of an elected state trial bench can explain its declaration that, as a matter of fact, a jury’s mandatory sentence of death will not enter the judge’s mind when he considers whether to “refuse” or “accept” the jury’s sentence.
Baldwin’s argument is not that a capital sentencing judge may never consider the views of a jury as to the appropriate sentence. The Court has approved a capital sentencing system in which a judge ultimately determines the appropriate punishment after receiving an advisory sentence from a fully informed and properly instructed jury. Proffitt v. Florida, 428 U. S. 242 (1976). But when the jury’s sentence is mandatory — as it is here — it does not represent the jury’s view of an “appropriate” sentence based on full information and the exercise of guided discretion. Rather than providing a sentencing judge with some arguably helpful information about the community’s view, such a sentence is either misleading or, at best, irrelevant to the capital sentencing decision.8
*399The statutory provision at issue has been repealed and is unlikely ever to be replicated. Nevertheless, 10 persons remain to be executed under its command. Because capital punishment is the most extreme and uniquely irreversible expression of societal condemnation, I continue to believe that “[i]t is of vital importance to the defendant and to the community that any decision to impose the death sentence be, and appear to be, based on reason rather than caprice or emotion.” Gardner v. Florida, 430 U. S. 349, 358 (1977) (opinion of Stevens, J.) (emphasis added); accord, Barefoot v. Estelle, 463 U. S. 880, 938 (1983) (Blackmun, J., dissenting). A mandatory jury death sentence serves only to mislead the public and to complicate the task of the sentencing judge with confusing signals and irrelevant pressures. Because I believe the Constitution prohibits such influences in capital cases, I respectfully dissent.

 “Because it is the one punishment that cannot be prescribed by a rule of law as judges normally understand such rules, but rather is ultimately understood only as an expression of the community’s outrage — its sense that an individual has lost his moral entitlement to live — I am convinced that the danger of an excessive response can only be avoided if the decision to impose the death penalty is made by a jury rather than by a single governmental official. This conviction is consistent with the judgment of history and the current consensus of opinion that juries are better equipped than judges to make capital sentencing decisions. The basic explanation for that consensus lies in the fact that the question whether a sentence of death is excessive in the particular circumstances of any case is one that must be answered by the decisionmaker that is best able to ‘express the conscience of the community on the ultimate question of life or death.’ Witherspoon v. Illinois, 391 U. S. 510, 519 (1968) (footnote omitted).” 468 U. S., at 468-470 (footnotes omitted).

 “ ‘[M]ost, if not all, jurors at this point in our history perhaps equally abhor setting free a defendant where the evidence establishes his guilt of a serious crime. We have no way of knowing Beck v. Alabama, 447 U. S., at 642, quoting Jacobs v. State, 361 So. 2d 640, 652 (Ala. 1978) (Shores, J., dissenting), cert. denied, 439 U. S. 1122 (1979). In this case, Baldwin’s jury was told that death was the mandatory sentence upon conviction. 1 Record 20 (“This is a capital crime under the law of this state and the punishment upon conviction is death by electrocution. There are no lesser included offenses”). The jury was not informed that the judge could later refuse its death sentence. See 2 id,., at 237-247, 298-303; Beck, supra, at 639, n. 15. The jury’s subsequent verdict stated: “We, the Jury, find the defendant guilty as charged in the indictment, and fix his punishment at death by electrocution.” App. 4. Given these facts, I cannot agree with the Court’s view that the jury’s sentence necessarily “conveys nothing more than the verdict of guilty.” Ante, at 388. It may or it *395may not. The unavoidable uncertainty of the message is one reason such a sentence creates constitutional difficulties.

 Justice Jones of the Alabama Supreme Court relied on similar reasoning to make a slightly different nonconstitutional point in his dissent from affirmance of Baldwin’s death sentence:
“In my opinion, [the Court’s result] overlooks the statutory scheme . . . that gives the jury a vital role in the sentencing process. It may well be that, under the United States Supreme Court’s guidelines for administering the death penalty, the [Alabama] statutory scheme would meet federal constitutional muster if the jury’s role in the sentencing process had been omitted altogether (assuming, of course, that the statute prescribes an appropriate bifurcated sentencing hearing before the trial judge). But it was not omitted ....
“Obviously, the legislature, in retaining the jury’s role in the two-step sentencing process, intended for the trial judge, as the final sentencing authority, to have the benefit of the community’s input as expressed in the jury’s ‘recommendation’ of sentence. That legislative will — as a due process requisite — is thwarted where the jury is legally bound to ‘recommend’ only the death penalty.” Ex parte Baldwin, 456 So. 2d 129, 141-142 (1984) (concurring in part and dissenting in part) (emphasis in original).

 Cf. Eddings v. Oklahoma, 455 U. S. 104, 112-114 (1982) (considering record evidence of judge’s actual application of Oklahoma capital sentencing law).

 See, e. g., P. Dubois, From Ballot to Bench: Judicial Elections and the Quest for Accountability 3, 29, 145 (1980); Sheldon & Lovrich, Judicial Accountability vs. Responsibility: Balancing the Views of Voters and Judges, 65 Judicature 470, 471 (1982).

 The day after the jury rendered its verdict, the two major newspapers in Alabama reported the result as “[Baldwin] gets death,” The Birmingham News, Aug. 10,1977, p. 2 and “[Baldwin] Gets Death Penalty,” The Montgomery Advertiser, Aug. 10, 1977, p. 15.

 We approvingly quoted Justice Jones of the Supreme Court of Alabama to this effect in Beck, 447 U. S., at 645, n. 22, after noting that “it is fair to infer that the jury verdict will ordinarily be followed by the judge,” id., at 645.
“[T]o leave sentence reduction in the prerogative of the trial court is to place undue pressures upon this office. Again, admittedly, a trial judge *398must often be the bulwark of the legal system when presented with unpopular causes and adverse public opinion. This State’s recent history, however, reflects the outcry of unjustified criticism attendant with a trial judge’s reduction of a sentence to life imprisonment without possibility of parole, after a jury has returned a sentence of death. Clearly, this pressure constitutes an undue compulsion on the trial judge to conform the sentence which he imposes with that previously returned by the jury.” Jacobs v. State, 361 So. 2d, at 650-651.
See also Spaziano v. Florida, 468 U. S., at 475, n. 14 (Stevens, J., dissenting) (“if the jury recommends death, an elected Florida judge sensitive to community sentiment would have an additional reason to follow that recommendation”); Ritter v. Smith, 568 F. Supp. 1499, 1521 (SD Ala. 1983) (the identical claim to Baldwin’s “appears to be substantial. The automatic death penalty, combined with the inclusion of that penalty in the actual sentencing formula and the sentencing judge’s position with respect to the public, might in some circumstances prejudice a defendant where the sentencing decision presented a close case”).

 Alabama argues that the mandatory jury verdict is really only a procedural mechanism by which the legislature conveys to the sentencing judge its legislative judgment that death presumptively should be the punishment when the definitional facts of capital murder are proved. Aside from the fact that there is no evidence that the legislature actually so intended *399the mandatory verdict, the implausibility of the legislature choosing such a clumsy means to achieve the suggested end argues against this pendente lite interpretation. The Alabama Supreme Court has suggested instead that this mandatory scheme was merely the legislature’s response to this Court’s somewhat confusing signals in Furman v. Georgia, 408 U. S. 238 (1972). See Ritter v. State, 429 So. 2d 928, 934 (Ala. 1983).
In any case, such a purpose would not save this scheme from invalidation, given the arbitrariness inherent in the means. Because every jury in this situation knows that death is the mandatory sentence and has the option of acquittal, the legislature’s message will be conveyed only at the whim of any particular jury. Thus, whether or not such a legislative message would be constitutional standing alone, the constitutional procedural flaw of “unguided and unchecked jury discretion” condemned in Woodson v. North Carolina, 428 U. S. 280, 302 (1976) (opinion of Stewart, Powell, and Stevens, JJ.), is not removed by the State’s theory.