Court Opinion

ID: 9836923
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-02 03:15:32.526825+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:45:19.348702
License: Public Domain

PER CURIAM:
A general court-martial convicted appellee, Lance Corporal (LCpl) Curtis, of the premeditated murder of his officer-in-charge, premeditated murder of the officer’s wife, indecent assault of the officer’s wife, and several related offenses, in violation of Articles 92, 108, 118, 121, 129, 130, and 134, Uniform Code of Military Justice, 10 USC §§ 892, 908, 918, 921, 929, 930, and 934, respectively. The court-martial sentenced him to death, and the convening authority approved the sentence.
The Court of Military Review (now the Court of Criminal Appeals), sitting en banc, *167affirmed the findings unanimously, and affirmed the sentence in a divided vote. 28 MJ 1074, 1095 (1989); id. at 1095-96 (Byrne, Chief Judge, concurring in part and dissenting in part); id. at 1096-1113 (Albertson, Judge, concurring in part and dissenting in part).
In a bifurcated review, this court upheld the constitutionality of the capital punishment procedures for courts-martial, 32 MJ 252 (1991), and then remanded the case after plenary review of the remaining issues. 33 MJ 101 (1991). The Court of Military Review, sitting en banc, again affirmed the findings and sentence with one judge dissenting. 38 MJ 530, 544 (1993); id. at 544-45 (Molli-son, Judge, dissenting). After a second plenary review, this Court affirmed the decision of the court below. 44 MJ 106 (1996). However, we then granted LCpl Curtis’ request for reconsideration and reversed the decision of the court below as to sentence, on the ground that trial defense counsel’s performance during the sentencing hearing was deficient. 46 MJ 129 (1997).
The decretal paragraph of our decision on reconsideration stated:
The decision of the United States Navy-Marine Corps Court of Military Review is reversed as to sentence. The record of trial is returned to the Judge Advocate General of the Navy for remand to the United States Navy-Marine Corps Court of Criminal Appeals. That court may affirm a sentence of life imprisonment and accessory penalties, or order a rehearing on sentence.
Id. at 130. The Government requested reconsideration of this Court’s holding that defense counsel was ineffective, but did not challenge this Court’s mandate directing the Court of Criminal Appeals to affirm a life sentence or order a rehearing. Neither the Government’s petition for reconsideration nor the certificate for review questioned the wisdom or propriety of vesting the decision whether to order a sentence rehearing in the Court of Criminal Appeals instead of the Judge Advocate General, as does our dissenting colleague. This Court denied the Gov-emment’s request for reconsideration. 48 MJ 331 (1997).
After our remand, the Government did not exercise its statutory option under 28 USC § 1259 to seek Supreme Court review of our decision as to the ineffectiveness of counsel on sentencing, nor did it challenge our mandate directing the court below to either affirm a sentence of life imprisonment or order a rehearing on sentence.
Our colleague’s dissent is based in part on the legal premise that the Judge Advocate General has discretion to decide whether to send a case to the Court of Criminal Appeals after this Court has reversed a decision of that court. Article 67(e), UCMJ, 10 USC § 867(e), expressly authorizes the action taken by our Court in the present case: to “direct the Judge Advocate General to return the record to the Court of Criminal Appeals for further review in accordance with the decision of the court.” (Emphasis added.)
On remand, the Court of Criminal Appeals, 1998 WL 918810 sitting en banc, affirmed a sentence of life imprisonment. The court’s opinion recites the appellate history of the case and states that its decision was reached “[ajfter a careful review of the entire record and in light of the foregoing.” Unpub. op. at 2. In the proceedings before the Court of Criminal Appeals, the Government did not challenge the sentence reassessment authority of that court either in the brief or in its motion for reconsideration.
The Judge Advocate General of the Navy certified the following issues:
I
WHETHER COURTS OF CRIMINAL APPEALS HAVE THE AUTHORITY TO REASSESS SENTENCES IN CAPITAL CASES.
II
WHETHER THE NAVY-MARINE CORPS COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEALS ABUSED ITS DISCRETION IN THIS CAPITAL CASE BY REASSESSING APPELLANT’S SENTENCE *168RATHER THAN ORDERING A REHEARING ON SENTENCE.
For the reasons set out below, we answer the first certified question in the affirmative and the second certified question in the negative.

Issue I: Authority to Reassess a Death Sentence

Article 67(e) provides: “After it has acted on a case, the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces may direct the Judge Advocate General to return the record to the Court of Criminal Appeals for further review in accordance with the decision of the Court.” RCM 1204(c)(1), Manual for Courts-Martial, United States (1998 ed.),* contains almost identical language.
Article 66(c), UCMJ, 10 USC § 866(c), provides that a Court of Criminal Appeals “may affirm only such findings of guilty and the sentence or such part or amount of the sentence, as it finds correct in law and fact and determines, on the basis of the entire record, should be approved.” In Jackson, v. Taylor, 353 U.S. 569, 578, 77 S.Ct. 1027, 1 L.Ed.2d 1045 (1957), the Supreme Court traced the legislative history of Article 66(c) and held that the board of review (now the Court of Criminal Appeals) acted within its authority under Article 66(c) when it reduced a life sentence to confinement for 20 years. In United States v. Russo, 11 USCMA 352, 358, 29 CMR 168, 174 (1960), this Court, citing Jackson v. Taylor, held that a board of review had authority to reduce a death sentence to life imprisonment. In United States v. Murphy, 50 MJ 4, 16 (1998), this Court gave the Army Court of Criminal Appeals the same option as in appellee’s case, ie., to cure defective representation during the sentencing hearing by affirming a life sentence or ordering a rehearing. In view of the foregoing statutes and precedents, we hold that the sentence reassessment authority of the Courts of Criminal Appeals includes capital cases.
The Government argues that there was no sentence to be reassessed after this Court set aside the death sentence. It relies on a sentence in United States v. Gonzalez-Candelaria, 27 MJ 402-03 (1988), that says, “If the sentence had been set aside by the Court of Military Appeals, we would have no sentence to reassess.”
The Government takes the sentence from Gonzalez-Candelaria out of context. The decision set up a straw man and then knocked it down, explaining that the sentence was set aside conditionally and that the court below was empowered to reassess the sentence if no rehearing was conducted. In the present case, we did not set aside the sentence of the court-martial. We set aside that portion of the Court of Criminal Appeals’ opinion that affirmed the death penalty, which left that court with the option of affirming the remaining portion of the sentence — confinement for life, or authorizing a capital rehearing. The court below stated: “[W]e hereby affirm a sentence of imprisonment for life.” Unpub. op. at 2 (emphasis added).
Finally, the Government argues that only a court-martial composed of members may impose a death sentence, and thus the court below had no authority to “impose” sentence •in a capital case. This Court rejected a similar argument in Russo. The Court of Criminal Appeals did not “impose” a sentence; rather, as noted above, it affirmed a sentence of imprisonment for life.
We hold that the plain language of Article 67 authorized this Court’s remand to the Court of Criminal Appeals. We further hold that the plain language of Article 66(c), its legislative history, and the precedents of the Supreme Court and this Court interpreting Article 66(c) provide ample authority for the Court of Criminal Appeals to cure an error in the imposition of a death sentence by reassessing the sentence to life imprisonment. The court below could confidently say that a life sentence would have been adjudged at the court-martial absent the error, because a life sentence was the mandatory minimum. Accordingly, we answer the first certified question in the affirmative.

*169
Issue II: Abuse of Discretion

The Government asserts that the Court of Criminal Appeals abused its discretion on the ground that the court, in the Government’s view, did not explain its decision. While conceding that Courts of Criminal Appeals generally are not required to explain their decisions, the Government argues that it is necessary in a capital case to ensure public confidence and to ensure that the court has not applied an incorrect legal standard.
At the outset, we note that the Court below provided an explanation for its decision, noting that it was based upon “a careful review of the entire record” and that it was made “in light of’ the prior proceedings in the case. The question raised by the Government is whether this explanation is inadequate as a matter of law.
In United States v. Clifton, 35 MJ 79, 81 (CMA -1992), this Court held that Courts of Criminal Appeals are not required to explain their decisions. Most recently, in United States v. Stuart, 50 MJ 72 (1999), this Court declined to presume that the court below erroneously applied the law, even though the court below did not expressly state the legal basis for its decision. Because the court below in this case was not required to explain its decision, we need not weigh the sufficiency of the explanation that was provided.
In United States v. Taylor, 47 MJ 322 (1997), this Court held: “When prejudicial error occurs at trial, the Court of Criminal Appeals may reassess the sentence instead of ordering a sentencing rehearing if the court is convinced that appellant’s sentence ‘would have been at least of a certain magnitude.’ ” Id. at 324, quoting United States v. Sales, 22 MJ 305, 307 (CMA 1986). In Sales, this Court held that if the Court of Criminal Appeals can determine that the sentence “would have been at least of a certain magnitude,” then it “need not order a rehearing on sentence, but instead may itself reassess the sentence.” See also United States v. Davis, 48 MJ 494, 495 (1998).
Nothing in the record suggests that the Court of Criminal Appeals did not follow Taylor and Sales. Since it was the statutory minimum, the Court of Criminal Appeals was able to discern that the sentence would have been at least life imprisonment. See Art. 118.
The Government’s complaint about the lack of detailed explanation from the court below appears to be directed less at the court’s determination that the sentence “would have been at least of a certain magnitude,” and more at the decision not to order a rehearing. The flaw in the Government’s position is that it inverts the decision process. The court below was not required to consider a rehearing unless it determined that it could not reliably reassess the sentence.
In Davis, this Court set out the standard for reviewing sentence reassessments by the court below: “We will only disturb the [lower court’s] reassessment in order to ‘prevent obvious miscarriages of justice or abuses of discretion.’ ” 48 MJ at 495, quoting United States v. Jones, 39 MJ 315, 317 (CMA 1994). In United States v. Travers, 25 MJ 61, 62 (CMA 1987), this Court defined “abuse of discretion” as follows:
To reverse for “an abuse of discretion involves far more than a difference in ... opinion____ The challenged action must ... be found to be ‘arbitrary, fanciful, clearly unreasonable,’ or ‘clearly erroneous’ in order to be invalidated on appeal.”
Applying these standards, we hold that the Court of Criminal Appeals did not abuse its discretion. Accordingly, we answer the second certified question in the negative.

Decision

The decision of the United States Navy-Marine Corps Court of Criminal Appeals is affirmed.

The current version of RCM 1204 is identical to the one in effect at the time we reversed the decision of the court below as to sentence and remanded.