Court Opinion

ID: 9738971
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 20:06:21.85948+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:09.500989
License: Public Domain

DeBRULER, Justice,
dissenting.
While I remain convinced in my own mind that the death penalty is contrary to the requirement of Art. 1, § 18 of the Indiana Constitution that the criminal code be based upon principles of reformation and not vindictive justice, a position heretofore expressly rejected, by a majority of this Court in Adams v. State, (1971) 259 Ind. 64, 271 N.E.2d 425, and that it is contrary to the mandate of the Eighth Amendment that cruel and unusual punishments not be inflicted, a position expressly rejected by a majority of the United States Supreme Court in Gregg v. Georgia, (1975) 428 U.S. 153, 96 S.Ct. 2909, 49 L.Ed.2d 859, I cannot agree that the process of arriving at a sentence of death involving proof of the aggravating circumstance of having previously committed an act of murder under Ind. Code § 35-50-2-9, is contrary to due process of law. The jury’s determination beyond a reasonable doubt of the existence of one or more of the nine aggravating circumstances is only the first step in a multi-step process. If the jury makes this first determination of an aggravating circumstance in the affirmative, it then has clearance to weigh it against mitigating circumstances and to thereafter recommend the extreme penalty. The statute goes on to provide that:
*282“The court shall make the final determination of the sentence, after considering the jury’s recommendation, and the sentence shall be based on the same standards that the jury was required to consider. The court is not bound by the jury’s recommendation.”
As I read this provision the trial judge can only sentence to death if he too is convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that the aggravating circumstance has been shown. And finally thereafter determinations by both the jury and the judge are subject to automatic review by this Court.
I cannot fathom how this process fails to satisfy sentencing due process even where the aggravating circumstance is a prior act of murder not reduced to a conviction. If there is a taint or prejudice against the defendant in the jury at the time of the sentencing hearing because of its knowledge of the facts of the charged crime of which it has just convicted the defendant, the level thereof is consistent with due process for several reasons.
First, the taint or prejudice against the defendant at the sentencing hearing flowing from the immediately preceding trial partakes of the same nature as that flowing from the introduction of a prior conviction of an accused for murder at a regular trial. Such collateral taint does not offend due process. Spencer v. Texas, (1967) 385 U.S. 554, 87 S.Ct. 648, 17 L.Ed.2d 606. Second, the determination of the existence of the aggravating circumstance is required to be weighed against mitigating factors. Third, the determination of the jury that the death penalty should be meted out is only advisory to the judge and does not dictate the death sentence. Fourth, the trial judge who has conducted the sentencing hearing, and previously the trial, must determine in an independent judicial act that the aggravating act of murder occurred to a moral certainty beyond a reasonable doubt before the sentence of death may be ordered. This operates as a check upon the jury determination. And fifth, the determinations of both the jury and the judge are subject to immediate and automatic review by this Court. There is no reason to conclude that under this multi-step process there will be a substantial risk that the death penalty will be inflicted in an arbitrary and capricious manner where the aggravating circumstance is an act of murder. Gregg v. Georgia, supra. The conduct of a trial upon the alleged act of murder at the sentencing hearing would not render the decisional processes of the jury and judge without limit or direction, Id., 428 U.S. at 189, 96 S.Ct. at 2932, and would not vitiate the mandatory requirement that the defendant have an opportunity to present mitigating circumstances.
The trial court should be reversed and Count II should be ordered reinstated.