Court Opinion

ID: 9748773
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 16:12:36.569682+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:39.295734
License: Public Domain

ROBERT M. BELL, Judge,
dissenting.
In part IV.F. of its opinion, the majority reiterates what it has held two times in the very recent past, see Oken v. State, 327 Md. 628, 612 A.2d 258 (1992) and Booth v. State, 327 Md. 142, 608 A.2d 162 (1992), that a sentencing jury need not be informed that its failure to reach an unanimous sentencing decision is a perfectly acceptable result. I filed *633dissenting opinions in both Oken and Booth. For the reasons set forth in those cases, I again dissent.
It continues to escape me how, at the same time, it can be an acceptable result, prescribed by the Legislature, see Maryland Code (1957, 1992 Repl.Vol.) Art. 27, § 413(k)(2), for a capital sentencing jury not to agree as to the ultimate sentence, with the result that death may not be imposed as the sentence, and that jury be prohibited from knowing that it is. If the ultimate decision in a capital sentencing may be determined by an inability to agree, I do not understand how resolution of one, or more, of its parts must be determined on a different standard. To instruct the jury as the majority holds is permitted will require capital sentencing instructions to be misleading and inconsistent with the legislative directive. This Court ought not bless misleading jury instructions, especially in capital cases.
I am not at all sure that the petitioner’s contention, addressed by the majority in part IV.B., lacks merit. I share the petitioner’s view that the instruction given by the trial judge, even taken as a whole, creates a real, and substantial, possibility that the jurors may be left with the impression that they must unanimously find a mitigating factor before it may be included in the weighing process. Op. at 613-15. In this case, however, one or more, but fewer than 12, of the jurors found three mitigating circumstances to exist, as follows: (1) the unlikelihood that the defendant would engage in further criminal activity that would constitute a continuing threat to society; (2) severe mental distress inflicted upon the defendant’s daughter and immediate family and (3) “[tjhree life sentences without parole + 130 years + one life sentence.” But for the fact that, by its verdict, the jury indicated that it was not misled by the instructions, I would reverse on this point, as well.