Court Opinion

ID: 9711972
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 04:43:09.324745+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:08.762077
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE SIMON, dissenting: The defendant in this case should be given the opportunity to demonstrate, through an evidentiary hearing, whether the death penalty statute is being applied in this State both in a racially discriminatory manner and as a result of the arbitrary and capricious exercise of prosecutorial discretion. In McCleskey v. Kemp (1987), 481 U.S. 279, 95 L. Ed. 2d 262, 107 S. Ct. 1756, a defendant sentenced to death argued that the Georgia death penalty statute was unconstitutional because it violated his rights to equal protection of the laws under the fourteenth amendment. Defendant based his allegation on statistical evidence contained in the Baldus study, showing that black persons were more likely to be sentenced to death than white persons and that murderers of black persons were less likely to be sentenced to death than murderers of white persons. In rejecting his argument, the United States Supreme Court held that in order to prove unconstitutional discrimination the defendant would have to prove that “the decisionmakers in his case acted with discriminatory- purpose.” (Emphasis in original.) (481 U.S. at 292, 95 L. Ed. 2d at 278, 107 S. Ct. at 1766.) The Court concluded that the Baldus study was “insufficient to support an inference that any of the decision-makers in McCleskey’s case acted with discriminatory purpose.” (481 U.S. at 297, 95 L. Ed. 2d at 281-82, 107 S. Ct. at 1769.) However, the Court did not foreclose entirely the possibility that equal protection violations could be proven in an individual case through the use of statistical evidence, stating only that' “we would demand exceptionally clear proof before we would infer that the discretion [to implement the death penalty in an individual case] has been abused.” 481 U.S. at 297, 95 L. Ed. 2d at 281, 107 S. Ct. at 1769. Similarly, in rejecting the defendant’s eighth amendment challenge, the McCleskey Court found that, at most, the study proffered by the defendant “indicates a discrepancy that appears to correlate with race,” and therefore concluded that the study “does not demonstrate a constitutionally significant risk of racial bias affecting the Georgia capital-sentencing process.” (481 U.S. at 312, 313, 95 L. Ed. 2d at 291, 292, 107 S. Ct. at 1777, 1778.) Again, the Court did not reject entirely the possibility that a defendant could demonstrate a constitutionally significant risk of racial bias through statistics, but did not articulate a test or threshold showing necessary to establish such a risk. The majority notes that in People v. Davis (1987), 119 Ill. 2d 61 (in which I did not participate), this court rejected a claim similar to the one raised by the defendants in McCleskey and in the present case. In Davis defendant argued that his death sentence was unconstitutional, based on statistical evidence contained in the Gross study (Gross & Mauro, Patterns of Death: An Analysis of Racial Disparities in Capital Sentencing & Homicide Victimization, 37 Stan. L. Rev. 27 (1984)). The study concludes there has been racial discrimination in the imposition of the death penalty in Illinois under the current statute. The majority in Davis, without analyzing the merits of the Gross study, rejected the defendant’s claim on the assumption that the Gross study could be no more compelling than the Baldus study rejected by the Supreme Court in McCleskey. The majority in the present case takes the same conclusory approach, brushing aside defendant’s arguments with a discussion of Mc-Cleskey, but without analyzing the Gross study or the merits of the constitutional issues implicated by the study. In the Gross study, researchers examined the imposition of the death penalty under post-Furman statutes in several States, including Illinois. Using primarily data from Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHR’s) filed by local police agencies under the Uniform Crime Reporting system between January 1976 and December 1980, researchers tabulated the race of the victim and murderer in each reported homicide. The researchers found that in Illinois a defendant convicted of killing a white victim was about six times more likely to receive the death penalty than the murderer of a black victim. Furthermore, 7.5% of the black defendants who killed white victims received the death penalty, compared with 1.9% of their white counterparts. The researchers then analyzed these racial disparities while controlling for other factors, including felony murder, multiple murder, murder of a stranger, and number of aggravating factors. Even considering these factors, the researchers concluded that “the race of the victim had a sizable and statistically significant effect on the odds of a defendant receiving a death sentence.” (37 Stan. L. Rev. at 78.) In Illinois, after controlling for all variables, “the overall odds of an offender receiving the death penalty for killing a white were 4.0 times greater than for killing a black.” (37 Stan. L. Rev. at 79.) The researchers also concluded that in Illinois there was also “some evidence that the race of the suspect had an independent effect on capital sentencing.” 37 Stan. L. Rev. at 83. I believe the seriousness and irrevocability of the penalty in this case, as well as the court’s duty to ensure that the laws of this State do not abridge the rights guaranteed by our State and Federal constitutions, entitle defendant to more than the perfunctory consideration of the Gross study and its constitutional implications that this court has thus far afforded him. In McCleskey, the United States Supreme Court did not foreclose the possibility that statistical proof could be sufficient to prove constitutional violations in the imposition of the death penalty. That ultimate issue — whether the Gross study is strong enough evidence to prove racial discrimination in defendant’s death sentencing — is not before this court, but only the issue whether defendant has made a sufficient showing to warrant a further evidentiary hearing on the matter. I believe, based on the Gross study, that defendant has made such a showing and is thereby entitled to a hearing in which he could present additional evidence in support of the Gross study and his allegation of racial discrimination in his sentencing. Where a defendant’s life hangs in the balance, this court’s refusal to undertake or allow an examination of the Gross study is significant error. Moreover, even if McCleskey forecloses defendant’s arguments under the Federal Constitution, it is beyond dispute that the States may extend rights under their own constitutions beyond those afforded under Federal law. (See, e.g., Moran v. Burbine (1986), 475 U.S. 412, 428, 89 L. Ed. 2d 410, 425, 106 S. Ct. 1135, 1145 (while deciding an issue under Federal law, the Court noted: “Nothing we say today disables the states from adopting different requirements *** as a matter of state law”); McAffee, The Illinois Bill of Rights and our Independent Legal Tradition: A Critique of the Illinois Lock-Step Doctrine, 12 S. Ill. U. L.J. 1 (1987).) It is therefore disturbing that this court has apparently rejected any argument that racial disparities in death penalty sentencing, as evidenced by the Gross study, violate the Illinois Constitution, without ever actually considering the merits of such arguments. The majority simply cites Davis as authority for the proposition that this court “held that the Gross study could not substantiate a claim under the Illinois Constitution” (121 Ill. 2d at 108), but does not acknowledge that the court’s “analysis” of the Illinois constitutional issue in Davis consisted of a single sentence: “Nor do we believe that the defendant states a better claim under the due process and equal protection clauses of our State Constitution, particularly since he has not provided us with any separate argument for greater State constitutional protection” (People v. Davis (1987), 119 Ill. 2d 61, 68). Because it is obvious that the Illinois constitutional issue was not squarely before the court, the language in Davis, at most, leaves the issue undecided. The majority’s conversion of the Davis language into a statement of settled law is completely unwarranted. The defendant is also entitled to an evidentiary hearing based on a second ground: his allegations that prosecutorial discretion in Illinois has been exercised in an arbitrary and capricious manner in the imposition of the death penalty. The defendant bases this argument on a survey of Illinois State’s Attorney’s offices conducted by the Chicago Lawyer. While I agree with the majority that a defendant is not barred by the principles of res judicata from raising a challenge to the death penalty statute as applied where he has previously raised a challenge only to the facial validity of the statute, I disagree with the majority’s conclusion that the Chicago Lawyer survey is insufficient to establish a substantial showing of a constitutional violation. In Gregg v. Georgia (1976), 428 U.S. 153, 49 L. Ed. 2d 859, 96 S. Ct. 2909, the United States Supreme Court held that for a capital sentencing scheme to meet constitutional strictures it must afford the defendant an individualized inquiry into the facts and circumstances of the particular crime at issue. This requirement has been consistently reaffirmed in later cases “to ensure that capital sentencing decisions rest on the individualized inquiry contemplated in Gregg." (McCleskey v. Kemp, 481 U.S. at 303, 95 L. Ed. 2d at 285, 107 S. Ct. at 1772.) In addition, the Court has rejected capital schemes which require mandatory application of the death penalty, instead endorsing capital sentencing schemes which employ guided discretion. (See, e.g., Woodson v. North Carolina (1976), 428 U.S. 280, 49 L. Ed. 2d 944, 96 S. Ct. 2978; Roberts v. Louisiana (1976), 428 U.S. 325, 49 L. Ed. 2d 974, 96 S. Ct. 3001.) Therefore, the Constitution is not violated by a prosecutor’s discretionary decision to show an individual defendant mercy or leniency. Gregg, 428 U.S. at 199, 49 L. Ed. 2d at 889, 96 S. Ct. at 2937; McCleskey, 481 U.S. at 311-12, 95 L. Ed. 2d at 291, 107 S. Ct. at 1777. The Chicago Lawyer survey responses reveal, however, that the discretion of Illinois prosecutors in capital sentencing decisions is being exercised in an extremely disparate fashion, and in some cases is not being exercised to show defendants mercy or leniency, but quite the opposite. The policy of some prosecutors, such as those in De Kalb,. Gallatin, and Champaign Counties, is apparently to seek the death penalty in each and every death-eligible case, regardless of the particular facts and circumstances involved. Policies such as these fly in the face of the particularized sentencing and guided discretion procedures envisioned by the United States Supreme Court in Gregg. In fact, such inflexible and automatic sentencing policies seem dangerously akin to the mandatory sentencing schemes denounced by the Court in Woodson and Roberts. On the other hand, the Chicago Lawyer survey reveals at least two State’s Attorney’s offices, in Rock Island and Sangamon Counties, which during the period of the study apparently never sought the death penalty in a death-eligible case. The prosecutorial policies of other offices fall somewhere in between, with many different approaches to reaching the decision to seek the death penalty, including case-by-case analysis and consultation with the Illinois Attorney General’s office. As the majority acknowledges, this court has envisioned particularized use of prosecutorial discretion in capital sentencing procedures. In People ex rel. Carey v. Cousins (1979), 77 Ill. 2d 531, in the words of the majority, “this court recognized that the death penalty would not be sought in every ‘death-eligible’ case. Rather, the decision to seek a death sentence will depend on various factors, such as an ‘estimate of what testimony and other evidence will be available and its persuasive effect.’ ” (121 Ill. 2d at 110-11, quoting Cousins, 77 Ill. 2d at 543.) The policies of some Illinois prosecutors to always seek the death penalty, regardless of the particular facts or circumstances of the case, demonstrate how far the exercise of prosecutorial discretion in Illinois has strayed from the spirit of Cousins. Obviously, the decision to seek the death penalty, at least in the hands of some Illinois prosecutors, does not depend on the “various factors” envisioned by the Cousins court, but is a purely automatic response to a finding of death eligibility. Moreover, that the defendant was properly found to be death eligible under the statute should not end the inquiry into whether the decision to impose the death penalty was proper, because an otherwise constitutional finding of death eligibility may be rendered improper by subsequent arbitrary exercises of prosecutorial discretion. The Supreme Court has now made clear that even if the first step of a particular procedure adequately protects a defendant’s constitutional rights, a prosecutor may not then resort to tactics which impinge upon those constitutional rights at a later stage of the proceedings. In Batson v. Kentucky (1986), 476 U.S. 79, 90 L. Ed. 2d 69, 106 S. Ct. 1712, the Court held that even though a jury venire has been constitutionally impaneled, a prosecutor’s subsequent discriminatory use of peremptory challenges constitutes a violation of the defendant’s constitutional rights. The situation presented by this case is analogous: defendants are found to be death eligible through application of a statute which provides specific variables consistent with the requirements of Gregg. However, by subsequent application of a prosecutor’s inflexible policy to always seek the death penalty for death-eligible defendants, the constitutional guarantees of particularized sentencing and guided discretion provided under the statute are destroyed. Prosecutors should not be allowed to pervert one of the final steps in the State’s determination of which defendants will be sentenced to death by resorting to automatic death-sentencing decisions instead of consideration of the particular facts and circumstances of each case. To allow imposition of a death sentence under such circumstances is as ridiculous as allowing a defendant to be sentenced to death by a judge or jury which has a stated policy of always imposing the death penalty on death-eligible defendants, no matter what the circumstances or evidence. To avoid arbitrary and capricious imposition of the death penalty, each step of the sentencing process, including the prosecutor’s decisión whether or not to seek the death penalty in a particular case, must be governed by the exercise of rational, guided discretion as envisioned in Gregg. Finally, the majority’s argument that “ ‘a prosecutor cannot arbitrarily impose the death penalty’ since imposition of that penalty is the province and responsibility of the sentencing body” (121 Ill. 2d at 112, quoting People v. Lewis (1984), 105 Ill. 2d 226, 252) is not persuasive. Without the prosecutor’s decision to seek the death penalty in a particular case, the sentencing authority would never even be given the opportunity to impose a sentence of death. Thus, the majority’s assertion that the decision whether a defendant will receive the death penalty belongs entirely to the judge or jury is misleading, for without the prosecutor’s crucial decision to seek the death penalty, no defendant could ever be sentenced to death. At the very least, therefore, to abide by the spirit of McCleskey and Gregg and ensure this defendant fair and adequate review of the issues raised by his case, this court should allow defendant an evidentiary hearing (such as the hearing given to the defendant in Mc-Cleskey) so that defendant would have the opportunity to demonstrate, if he could, that racial variables and arbitrary prosecutorial discretion played an unconstitutional role in his death sentencing. For these reasons, I believe defendant is entitled to an evidentiary hearing and I respectfully dissent.