Court Opinion

ID: 9765423
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 04:02:27.275718+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:09.854268
License: Public Domain

McAuliffe, Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I concur in the affirmance of the conviction, but dissent from the decision to affirm the sentence of death.
For the reasons stated in the concurring and dissenting opinion in Evans v. State, 304 Md. 487, 539-40, 499 A.2d 1261 (1985), I believe the Maryland death penalty statute is in part unconstitutional. I agree with the contention made by Booth in his eighteenth argument that our statute impermissibly places the burden on the defendant to prove that mitigating circumstances outweigh aggravating circumstances in order to avoid the penalty of death.
Unfortunately, the erroneous allocation of the burden of persuasion that originated in the statute was perpetuated in the instructions given to this jury. Although the trial judge stated he was granting Booth’s proposed instruction number 9, which correctly assigned to the State the burden of establishing that the aggravating circumstances outweighed the mitigating circumstances in order to justify a sentence of death, he did not give that instruction.1 Rather, *242he instructed the jury in the language of the statute and of the Findings and Sentencing Determination Form, and therefore effectively conveyed to the jury the erroneous message that in order to avoid a sentence of death the burden rested upon the defendant to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that the mitigating circumstances outweighed the aggravating circumstances.
I would vacate the sentence and remand for a new sentencing proceeding.

. The majority opinion sets forth, in footnote 14, only the concluding sentence of Booth’s proposed Instruction No. 9. I believe it is helpful to view the proposed instruction in its entirety:
Your next duty will be to weigh any mitigating circumstances which exists (sic) against any aggravating circumstances which exist.
*242Because the State is attempting to establish that death is the appropriate punishment, the State bears the burden of establishing that the aggravating circumstances which you find outweigh the mitigating circumstances. Unless you find, after considering the totality of the aggravating and mitigating circumstances, that the aggravating factors, discounted by whatever mitigating circumstances exist, are sufficiently serious to require the sentence of death, you must impose life imprisonment. If a comparison of the totality of the aggravating factors with a totality of the mitigating factors leaves you in doubt as to the proper penalty you must impose life imprisonment.