Court Opinion

ID: 9576957
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:30:17.665199+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:19:45.046227
License: Public Domain

Hunt, Chief Justice,
concurring.
I concur in the judgment because I agree that argument on the issue of the general deterrent effect of the death penalty is permissible as long as that argument is confined by the rationale of Walker v. State, 254 Ga. 149, 159 (14) (327 SE2d 475) (1985) and I do not believe the opinion holds otherwise. In Walker we said:
[While] considerations of neither general deterrence nor retribution will demand the imposition of the death penalty. . . . [T]hat is not to say that a prosecutor may not urge vigorously that a death sentence is appropriate punishment *544in the case at hand, or that in doing so he may not remind the jury of the retributive and general deterrent function of its verdict.
(Emphasis in the original).
I read that to say, consistent also with Simmons, that a prosecutor may argue to the sentencing body both the purposes of the sentencing scheme and the appropriate level of punishment in a particular case. He or she may refer to deterrence, general or specific, as a valid goal of punishment. He or she may argue that notice of the jury’s verdict of death will serve to inform the public of the serious consequences of the crime of murder and may well serve as a deterrent to the commission of that crime. But that is as far as a prosecutor may go. If the prosecutor insists that the goal of deterrence has in fact been achieved or that it is well known or well established; or if the prosecutor contends that jurisdictions that have enforced the death penalty have lower crime rates than those jurisdictions which do not, then I believe, in fairness, the defendant’s response is not limited to argument but may include evidence to the contrary, if such is available.
Under these circumstances I would agree with the dissent that any reasonable interpretation of Simmons would authorize this result. I must also say that the dissent’s position that no argument is permitted is the safer rule and prosecutors would be well advised to confine their remarks to the appropriateness of a particular punishment for a particular offender.