Court Opinion

ID: 9850983
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 05:05:23.962133+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:20:46.490784
License: Public Domain

Utter, J.
(dissenting) — In my previous dissent in State v. Harris, 106 Wn.2d 784, 802, 725 P.2d 975 (1986), cert. denied, 480 U.S. 940 (1987) (Utter, J., dissenting), I voiced concern over the lack of clear proportionality standards and the incongruity between petitioner's death sentence and the lesser sentences imposed for more egregious contract killings. Harris, at 803-06. These concerns still exist. In this personal restraint petition, however, petitioner raises additional issues concerning the constitutionality of the death penalty as applied to him. Two of these issues have great merit: the arbitrary nature of the Pierce County Prosecutor's death penalty charging policy and the danger of introducing, at the special sentencing hearing, constitutionally defective convictions as additional aggravating factors. Because I cannot agree with the majority's treatment of these issues, I must dissent.
I
Pierce County's aggravated murder charging policy is unconstitutional, violating equal protection and Washington Constitution article 1, section 14. At the time relevant here, the Pierce County Prosecutor, in every aggravated murder case, automatically filed a notice of intent to seek the death penalty. Only if the defendant himself came forward, before the filing of this notice of intent, with evidence mitigating against seeking the death penalty, would the prosecutor consider any mitigating factors. In the present case, the prosecutor filed the notice 6 days after charging Harris with murder — days after counsel was appointed to defend him. This raises several serious problems.
In State v. Dictado, 102 Wn.2d 277, 687 P.2d 172 (1984), this court upheld the constitutionality of RCW 10.95.040(1) *703against a challenge that it conferred too much discretion on prosecutors in choosing to seek the death sentence or life without parole, violating the equal protection doctrine of State v. Zornes, 78 Wn.2d 9, 21, 475 P.2d 109 (1970).1 The statute's saving grace, we held, was that it required the prosecutor to evaluate the evidence of mitigating circumstances before making his or her final charging decision. This evaluation to a vital degree directed the prosecutor's discretion in deciding whether to seek the harsher sentence. 102 Wn.2d at 297. This court reached a similar result in State v. Campbell, 103 Wn.2d 1, 25, 691 P.2d 929 (1984), cert. denied, 471 U.S. 1094 (1985).
Pierce County's policy, as it operated in Harris's case, did not fulfill this requirement because it allowed the prosecutor to file the notice of special hearing without considering mitigating evidence. This failure resulted from the prosecutor relying solely on the defendant to come forward with the mitigating factors. If, for whatever reason, the defense failed to produce such evidence, the Pierce County Prosecutor would have no mitigating factors to consider. Without even the prosecutor's attempt to obtain evidence of mitigating factors, there could be no information to direct discretion. Because of this, there was no assurance that the careful consideration demanded by Dictado and Campbell has been undertaken. The apparent fact that the prosecutor's office automatically sought the death penalty further *704suggests that such a consideration was not the practice there.2
The record also shows that the prosecutor allowed inadequate time — only 6 days — for the defense to come forward with mitigating evidence. Six days is not enough time when the decision to seek a person's execution is being made. Gathering psychological data, family history, employment records, and other information about the defendant— whether done by the prosecutor or by defense counsel— generally will take much more time than this. More importantly, the statute requires the prosecutor to evaluate the mitigating evidence before him before making the charging decision. I doubt, even if the prosecutor already had the evidence before him, that 6 days is enough time to make the careful, informed decision the statute envisions. This limited period of time begs the inevitable outcome; it suggests that the decision was made in advance.
In support of Pierce County's policy, the State cites our decisions in State v. Bartholomew, 101 Wn.2d 631, 683 P.2d 1079 (1984) (Bartholomew II) and State v. Jones, 99 Wn.2d 735, 664 P.2d 1216 (1983).3 Reliance on these two cases is improper, for neither of them deal with death penalty charging procedure. Bartholomew II limited the type of *705evidence that the prosecution could introduce at the aggravated murder sentencing proceeding itself. We held there that the prosecutor's presentation of nonstatutory aggravating factors was "limited to defendant's criminal record, evidence that would have been admissible at the guilt phase, and evidence to rebut matters raised in mitigation by the defendant." 101 Wn.2d at 642. In so holding, we limited the liberal language of RCW 10.95.070 allowing the jury to "consider any relevant factors" during the sentencing proceeding to the consideration of mitigating factors only. One can infer from this holding that it will be the defense which presents the mitigating factors to the jury. Bartholomew II, however, says nothing about a duty of the defense to present mitigating factors to the prosecutor at the charging stage. To justify Pierce County's policy on the basis of this authority misconceives the thrust of that opinion.
State v. Jones, supra, is even less persuasive. Jones had nothing to do with the aggravated murder charging procedure at issue here. It dealt with the right of a man charged with second degree assault to plead not guilty over the trial court's imposed plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. 99 Wn.2d at 747.
If the informed use of discretion and consideration of mitigating factors keeps RCW 10.95.040(1) from violating Zornes, then lack of these saving graces must violate the equal protection doctrine set out in that case. See 78 Wn.2d at 21.
Not only does Pierce County's policy violate the strictures set down in Dictado, it also raises a different sort of equal protection issue. By depending on defendant and his or her counsel to come forward with the mitigating factors, the prosecutor's policy places great importance on the quality of the defendant's counsel. Because of this, an aggravated murder defendant having the resources to hire an expert defense attorney immediately may stand a lesser chance of facing a special sentencing proceeding than the indigent who has had counsel appointed for him. Many *706commentators argue that the death penalty is applied more frequently to minorities and those defendants with fewer resources. See, e.g., M. Meltsner, Cruel and Unusual — The Supreme Court and Capital Punishment (1973); Baldus, Plaski & Woodworth, Arbitrariness and Discrimination in the Administration of the Death Penalty: A Challenge to State Supreme Courts, 15 Stetson L. Rev. 133 (1986); Comment, McCleskey v. Kemp: Constitutional Tolerance for Racially Disparate Capital Sentencing, 41 Miami L. Rev. 295 (1986). Pierce County's policy seems even to go beyond this, creating circumstances where less fortunate defendants have a greater chance of facing the special sentencing proceeding in the first place. The "safety valve" that the majority refers to may only be available to the more fortunate.4
Compounding the problem of placing the burden on the defendant to produce the mitigating factors is the issue of the death penalty statute's vagueness, which I discussed in my dissent in Campbell, 103 Wn.2d at 43 (Utter, J., dissenting). As I stated there, although RCW 10.95.070 lists examples of factors a jury may consider in finding leniency, the statute does not define a "mitigating factor." This shortcoming fails to direct a prosecutor's discretion in choosing to seek the death sentence. Worse, if the onus is on the defendant to produce these undefined mitigating factors, the statute produces even less certainty that the prosecutor has not exercised standardless discretion. The defendant is left to guess which factors the prosecutor will find mitigating enough to stay his hand. This is far from what I believe this court had in mind in upholding the death penalty against equal protection and void for vagueness challenges. See State v. Campbell, supra. Pierce County's policy appears to produce a predilection for seeking the death penalty in aggravated murder cases. A survey *707of Pierce County's docket files shows that the prosecutor filed for a special sentencing proceeding in four out of the five aggravated murder cases prosecuted in that jurisdiction since 1981. See State v. Petersen, Pierce County cause 85-1-01855-1 (June 17, 1986) (death penalty sought); State v. St. Pierre, Pierce County cause 84-1-00992-8 (May 22, 1985) (death penalty sought); State v. Harris, Pierce County cause 84-1-01190-6 (January 14, 1985) (death penalty sought); State v. Anderson, Pierce County cause 81-1-01368-8 (May 10, 1982) (death penalty not sought); State v. Bartholomew, Pierce County cause 81-1-00579-1 (December 21, 1981) (death penalty sought).
In my dissenting opinion in this court's previous consideration of Harris's case, I cited a number of other aggravated murder cases which dealt with contract killings. State v. Harris, 106 Wn.2d 784, 802-06, 725 P.2d 975 (1986), cert. denied, 480 U.S. 940 (1987) (Utter, J., dissenting). Although most of those cases were much more egregious than Harris's, in none of them did the prosecution seek the death penalty. To date, Harris has been the only defendant prosecuted under RCW 10.95.020(5) to face a special sentencing procedure. This illustrates the arbitrary nature of the prosecutorial discretion allowed by RCW 10.95.040(1). There is, as well, a link between this discrepancy and Pierce County's charging policy which favors seeking the death penalty in aggravated murder cases.
II
As a second matter, the majority takes too casual a look at the danger of using constitutionally defective convictions as nonstatutory aggravating factors for the jury's consideration during the special sentencing proceeding. To operate constitutionally, this state's death penalty scheme cannot allow, under any standard of scrutiny, the use of such convictions. The most certain way of assuring the constitutionality of such past convictions is to have the prosecution affirmatively prove their validity.
*708The use of constitutionally defective convictions or administrative determinations to inform subsequent proceedings violates due process of law. See, e.g., Burgett v. Texas, 389 U.S. 109, 19 L. Ed. 2d 319, 88 S. Ct. 258 (1967) (prohibiting use of unconstitutional conviction in habitual criminal sentence enhancement);5 United States ex rel. Lasky v. LaVallee, 472 F.2d 960 (2d Cir. 1973) (same); State v. Rinier, 93 Wn.2d 309, 316, 609 P.2d 1358 (1980) (same); see also United States v. Mendoza-Lopez, 481 U.S. 828, 95 L. Ed. 2d 772, 107 S. Ct. 2148 (1987) (prohibiting use of constitutionally defective deportation order as an element to prosecution under 8 U.S.C. § 1326 (illegal entry after deportation)).
The use of prior convictions in sentencing enhancement hearings under the habitual criminal statute provides a useful, but incomplete, analogy to the present case. In State v. Rinier, supra, this court considered the acceptability of a prior conviction based on a guilty plea containing the blanket statement that defendant was '"advised of his rights and plea of guilty was entered'." We rejected the use of that conviction because the statement concerning its constitutional validity was too vague and incomplete. 93 Wn.2d at 316. In our analysis in that case, we restated that the State has the burden of proving the validity of a prior guilty plea in a habitual criminal proceeding. Such pleas are not presumed to be valid. See State v. Holsworth, 93 Wn.2d 148, 154, 607 P.2d 845 (1980).
*709The analogy is incomplete because, as the United States Supreme Court has put it, "the imposition of death by public authority is . . . profoundly different from all other penalties ..." Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U.S. 586, 605, 57 L. Ed. 2d 973, 98 S. Ct. 2954 (1978). The care taken in habitual criminal proceedings must be amplified in the special sentencing stage of an aggravated murder prosecution. If today's death penalty statutes escape constitutional invalidation, it is because they adhere to the "super due process" required by the United States Supreme Court cases which reshaped the use of this penalty in the 1970's. See, e.g., Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, 33 L. Ed. 2d 346, 92 S. Ct. 2726 (1972); Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153, 49 L. Ed. 2d 859, 96 S. Ct. 2909 (1976). In order to comport with these due process requirements, we must take all possible measures to ensure that constitutionally defective information does not inform the sentencing process.
In State v. Bartholomew, supra, this court strictly limited the use of nonstatutory factors before the jury during the special sentencing proceeding. While past criminal convictions were one of the few nonstatutory factors allowed by that case, this court certainly did not envision the use of unconstitutional ones. To do otherwise would violate the spirit of that opinion and approach the danger noted in Henry v. Wainwright, 661 F.2d 56 (5th Cir. 1981) cited in State v. Bartholomew, 98 Wn.2d 173, 195, 654 P.2d 1170 (1982), State's cert. granted and remanded, 463 U.S. 1203, defendant's cert. denied, 463 U.S. 1212 (1983) (Bartholomew I): "By sanctioning consideration of statutory aggravating factors plus anything else the jury determines to be aggravating, such an instruction broadens jury discretion rather than channels it and obscures any meaningful basis for distinguishing cases in which the death penalty is imposed from those in which it is not.''
The majority's standard for determining the constitutionality of past offenses is too loosely fitted. It leaves open the possibility that constitutionally unusable information *710will be used to guide the jury's determination. We must not allow that possibility.
The majority insists that the prior offense here is not an element of a present one — as in a habitual criminal proceeding — but merely one factor for the jury to consider. This is true. Nonetheless, the severe nature of the death penalty and the irreversible dangers inherent in allowing the jury to consider constitutionally defective information more than make up for this difference. The curious disproportionate nature of Harris's death sentence to other contract murder prosecutions causes one to wonder whether the previous conviction may have indeed tipped the scales in favor of death. We should at least be certain that this conviction was constitutionally proper. The burden of proof for this matter should be on the State; the State, after all, sought the death penalty in the first place and sought to use the previous conviction in order to obtain it.
I find serious defects in the way Benjamin Harris was charged with the death sentence and the type of nonstatu-tory evidence used in the special sentencing proceeding. Because of these defects, I would grant Harris's personal restraint petition.
Pearson, C.J., concurs with Utter, J.

 As I made clear in my dissent in State v. Campbell, 103 Wn.2d 1, 41, 691 P.2d 929 (1984), cert. denied, 471 U.S. 1094 (1985) (Utter, J., dissenting), I based my concurrence with the Dictado majority because of the latter case's limited application to "the mandatory life sentence and not to the additional problems raised by the death penalty aspect of the sentencing scheme." 103 Wn.2d at 42. I believed then, as I do now, that Washington's capital punishment statute, as a general scheme, is unconstitutional in that it violates equal protection, is void for vagueness, and violates article 1, section 14 of the Washington Constitution by conferring standardless discretion upon the prosecutor. I write this present dissent because I find that the Pierce County charging policy is contrary to not only my own views but to the law expressed in the majority opinions of this court.

 One might argue that a policy which automatically seeks the death penalty does not violate Zornes because all aggravated murder cases are treated "equally." The heart of the Zornes doctrine, however, is the protection from prosecutorial arbitrariness. The mere fact that Pierce County arbitrarily uses its discretion consistently does not save it from offending equal protection.

 The notice of special sentencing proceeding, sent to petitioner, also cited Bartholomew II for authority:
[Tjhere is reason to believe that there are not sufficient mitigating circumstances to merit leniency. The prosecution may open the sentencing phase only with the defendant's criminal record and evidence which would have been admissible at the guilt phase of the trial. Presentation of mitigating circumstances is the responsibility of the defendant. See State v. Bartholomew, 101 Wn.2d 631, 643, [683] P.2d [1079] (1984). No mitigating circumstances have been brought to the attention of this office.
Notice of Special Sentencing Proceeding To Determine Whether the Death Penalty Should Be Imposed, at 2.

 Because of the defects I see in Pierce County's charging policy, I find the majority's "safety valve" argument, distinguishing this case from State v. Pettitt, 93 Wn.2d 288, 609 P.2d 1364 (1980), to be irrelevant.

 The majority's treatment of Burgett, distinguishing that case because defendant Harris had counsel in his prior conviction, misses the point. It is true that the United States Supreme Court found Burgett's previous conviction unusable because in that conviction he was not represented by counsel. See 389 U.S. at 115. These, however, are only the particulars of that case. The principle underlying Burgett excluded unconstitutional evidence from introduction at trial. See 389 U.S. at 114 (discussion of exclusionary rule in relation to other constitutional violations). This principle does not differentiate between the nature of the unusable convictions' unconstitutionality. In this light, the majority's conclusion that Burgett is inapplicable to Harris's case — because the constitutional defect here may have been Harris's guilty plea — makes little sense. This is like distinguishing between rotten apples and rotten oranges. It is true they are different kinds of fruit, but they are both rotten.