Court Opinion

ID: 9625410
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 07:40:19.988057+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:28:10.964345
License: Public Domain

SHEPARD, Chief Justice,
dissenting.
The majority declines to spell out the details of the acts for which defendant-appellant was convicted of first degree murder. In light of the recent decisions of Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U.S. 586, 98 S.Ct. 2954, 57 L.Ed.2d 973 (1978), and Bell v. Ohio, 438 U.S. 637, 98 S.Ct. 2977, 57 L.Ed.2d 1010 (1978), I believe those details are necessary to the decision.
Although the defendant-appellant took the stand in his own defense and denied much of the testimony of the key witnesses in the State’s case, following trial and conviction but prior to sentencing, the defendant confessed his participation in the crime. Hence, the facts are largely uncontroverted.
Phillip Lindquist, as specifically found by the trial judge and as indicated in the record, was and is a very intelligent and educated man. He graduated from high school and studied engineering in college. He calls himself a constructibn engineer and has supervised numerous and sizeable construction projects. As categorized by the trial judge, he is a “person who decided intellectually and intelligently to commit a murder for money.”
One Phillip Weitz operated a construction business in Spokane, Washington, and was at one time an employer of Lindquist. Charles Vetch operated a finance business in Spokane and was evidently a man of some wealth. Phillip Weitz formulated a plan to steal gold allegedly owned by Weitz’s father and valued at two million dollars. According to one of the conspirators, the killing of the elder Weitz and his wife would have been necessary during that proposed crime. Phillip Weitz felt that a substantial sum of money would be necessary to finance that crime. He had no ready source of sufficient money and thus decided upon the killing of his wife, Joy Weitz, in such a fashion as to appear an accident and thereby collect $60,000.00 in insurance proceeds. Joy Weitz was the mother of three children, aged six, four and three, and at the timé of her death was pregnant with twins. Phillip Weitz contacted Vetch, who in turn contacted Lindquist and arranged for the murder of Joy Weitz. Lindquist was to be paid $10,000.00 for doing the actual killing and Weitz and Vetch were to split the $60,000.00 insurance proceeds.
Lindquist made five separate attempts to murder Joy Weitz, all of which failed except the last. Included among those prior plans was to be a simulated hunting accident, a car-truck accident, and an incident in which she was to be drugged, placed in a car and the car pushed into a deep lake.
The violence did not stop with the arrest of the defendant. The state’s key witness, because of threats on his life, had to be hidden away with an assumed identity under the protection of U.S. Marshals. The trial judge was advised that threats had been made against certain witnesses and security precautions were taken and spectators at trial were searched. Threats were made upon the lives of the family and children of the prosecuting attorney.
The scenario for the attempt which finally succeeded was that Phillip Weitz would lure his wife Joy Weitz to a remote area on *773the pretext of needing her help in the recovery of construction equipment. Lindquist would appear, strike her on the head and then run over her with a truck. Joy Weitz appeared at the location, as did Lindquist. He proceeded to beat her on the head with a two by four wooden club, but she did not lose consciousness. She begged and pleaded with him for not only her own life, but those of her unborn children. Somehow she was able to elude him, climb back into her car and lock the doors. Not being able to gain access, Lindquist shot her to death through the closed window of the car. He then left the scene and drove some miles away where he left a red rag tied to a stake at a predesignated spot on the road as a signal to Vetch and Weitz that his portion of the murder scheme had been completed. It is for this crime that the majority of this Court remands the defendant for resentencing for second degree murder.
The root cause of what I deem to be the majority’s error, however lies not with members of this Court but which others. In my judgment, this Court today errs in accepting at face value, without sufficient analysis, what a seriously divided United States Supreme Court purportedly stated in Woodson. The majority opinion here is restrained in its terminology describing the language and the actions of the high Court in the area of capital punishment cases. It states that the language of that Court is “rather confusing.” Mr. Justice Rehnquist states: “The Court has gone from pillar to post, with the result that the sort of reasonable predictability upon which legislatures, trial courts, and appellate courts must of necessity rely has been all but completely sacrificed.” See Lockett v. Ohio, supra, (Rehnquist, J. dissenting). Mr. Justice White, in Lockett, has described the Court’s “about face.” Perhaps he had in mind Karl Llewellyn’s doggerel:
There was a man in our town and he was wondrous wise;
he jumped into a BRAMBLE BUSH and scratched out both his eyes—
and when he saw that he was blind, with all his might and main
he jumped into another one and scratched them in again.
K. N. Llewellyn, Bramble Bush, 3d ed., 1969.
I believe it beyond cavil that the United States Supreme Court engages in the making of major social policy for this country. Such decisions are couched in terms of construction of portions of the United States Constitution. In times past the debate has raged over whether such “intrusion” of the court into social policy determinations was the correct place for the court in the scheme of government, but I believe the court has largely been accepted as the conscience of the nation. Such is perhaps demonstrated by the response of our people in state governments to those decisions which seek to remove the cancers of intolerance, hatred and disparate treatment of minorities from our nation’s face; the reapportionment and redistricting cases seeking more representative government at the state level; and those decisions seeking to require improved law enforcement through the medium of exclusionary rule decisions. The response of those in the law to those types of decisions has ranged from near apoplexy to sheer joy dependent upon whose own personal philosophy has been vindicated or shattered. Most of us have fallen somewhere in between and have recognized that the court of last resort may not always be “correct” (whatever that means), but that it is the court of last resort, it has spoken and in the concept of the supremacy clause of the United States Constitution, we are bound in state cases to follow, as best we can, the decisions of the United States Supreme Court.
Unfortunately, such is not true in the area in which we treat today. In 1972, in Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, 92 S.Ct. 2726, 33 L.Ed.2d 346, the court struck down statutes relating to the death penalty. At best that decision is confusing. One thing I deem clear, however, was that the beliefs of some members of the court were not adopted, i. e., that the taking of human life by society in retribution for crime regardless of circumstances was unconstitutional. *774That philosophy was argued, commented upon, accepted by some members of the court and firmly rejected by a majority. What was thought by members of the court to be gained from those opinions such as Furman v. Georgia, supra, is less than clear as is demonstrated by its own members in subsequent decisions. What is important is what the people of this nation and the state governments derived from the court’s opinions. It was believed, and not without reason, that the court desired certainty and equality of treatment in sentencing for capital crimes. What better way to accomplish those goals than requiring the death penalty. Thereafter no question of uncertainty could result and all assuredly would be treated the same. No matter that such a mandatory penalty had supposedly fallen from favor with the people and their legislators — where the court would lead the states would follow. It was and is clear, in my judgment, that the people desire the continuation of the death penalty. Since the court had not barred the death penalty, it could and should be continued but under such terms and procedures as prescribed by the court. Many state legislatures, including Idaho’s, so acted, as urged by other responsible state officials. Since that time the states and their courts, and the United States Supreme Court, have been locked in a maelstrom of contradiction and confusion.
All of this leads to a consideration of Woodson held by today’s majority to be controlling. There three members of the Court join in an opinion which, for some reason, is denominated the “plurality.” That “plurality” opinion states clearly “we reject this argument [that “the imposition of the death penalty is cruel and unusual punishment”]. 428 U.S. p. 285, 96 S.Ct. 2978, Two other members of the Court disagree with that view and state that the death penalty is a cruel and unusual punishment under any circumstances. Three other members of the Woodson court dissented and joined with White, J. in voting for affirmance of the court below. Blackmun, J. dissented on the basis of his “excruciating agony of the spirit” expressed in Fur-man.
What madness is that this denominates such thought process by some members of that Court as the “law of the land” and enjoins on those of us in the law not only the task of attempting to understand, but the clear duty and responsibility to apply its result and “reasoning.”
The majority in the case at bar today tells us that in Woodson the Supreme Court did not mean what it said in Furman, but rather that there should be flexibility and disparate treatment of offenders depending on the “circumstances of the offense and the character and propensities of the offender.” We are told that the “practice of individualizing sentencing determinations” is not only “enlightened policy” but becomes a “constitutional imperative” in capital cases.
Ignoring that lateral arabesque which takes courts away from certainty and sameness of treatment of offenders where do we nonetheless arrive. If we assume that the “plurality” of Woodson has any validity, what does it purport to tell. The dissents inform us it tells nothing. I disagree in part. We are informed “death is a punishment different from all other sanctions” and for this advice we should be truly grateful. Aside from that, I find significant only a discussion of the North Carolina statute.
The Woodson court suggests that the North Carolina statute failed “to allow the particularized consideration of relevant aspects of the character and record of each convicted defendant,” “the circumstances of the particular offense,” and the “possibility of compassionate or mitigating factors stemming from the diverse frailties of humankind.” The statute it was said “treats all persons convicted of a designated offense not as unique individual human beings, but as members of a faceless undifferentiated mass to be subjected to the blind infliction of the penalty of death.” Of more recent vintage are Bell v. Ohio, supra, and Lockett v. Ohio, supra, which seem to indicate that the statute under consideration there would bar any consideration of *775whether the defendant either intended to kill or participated in the actual killing. I deem the majority opinion today to err in its examination only of our statute and inexplicably omit any consideration of the actual sentencing procedures utilized by the trial judge. I believe such consideration is not only desirable but necessary in view of Proffitt v. Florida, 428 U.S. 242, 96 S.Ct. 2960, 49 L.Ed.2d 913 (1976), and Jurek v. Texas, 428 U.S. 262, 96 S.Ct. 2950, 49 L.Ed.2d 929 (1976). As noted in Lockett, the statute approved in Proffitt contained a list of mitigating factors but six members of the Court assumed that in approving the statute that the range of mitigating factors was not exclusive. There also it was noted that Jurek involved a Texas statute which made no explicit reference to mitigating factors, but the Texas court had so interpreted the statute to permit a sentencer to consider whatever mitigating circumstances there might be despite the facial narrowness of the Texas statute.
I deem the record here to be clear that the trial judge with perhaps more prescience than could be expected anticipated rulings of the United States Supreme Court following Furman v. Georgia, supra. The trial judge here initially adopted a dual approach in questioning his authority to impose a death sentence. The record contains substantial dialogue between court and counsel regarding his sentencing options, particularly in view of the questioned continued vitality of State v. McCoy, 94 Idaho 236, 486 P.2d 247 (1971). It is clear to me that at the time of pronouncing sentence the trial judge assumed and believed that he need not impose the death sentence as supposedly mandated by the statute, but could commute, withhold or grant any sentence less than death.
Following trial the defendant was ordered to submit to extensive psychological testing and psychiatric evaluation, the results of which were before the sentencing judge. A presentence report was ordered, prepared, submitted and considered by the trial judge. An opportunity was furnished the defense to provide any matters in mitigation. The sentencing judge specifically found that the defendant was not suffering any neurosis or psychosis and had no existent personality disorder. He considered “the very cold deliberate and vicious manner” in which the defendant undertook to kill this woman, undertook it not only once, but several times repeatedly before she was killed.” He was “made aware that she was pregnant and expecting” and “aware that she was already the mother of children
The sentencing judge stated, “I have studied all of the psychiatric and psychological reports, the presentence report time and time again. I reviewed time and again my notes of your trial. I don’t know what more could possibly be presented to learn in this case.”
To equate the procedure here and the consideration of this defendant and the circumstances of this crime with what was criticized in Woodson as the blind infliction of the death penalty on a faceless undifferentiated mass is impossible for me to accept.
With all deference and respect to our brethren on the Bench of the United States Supreme Court, I regret that I can neither understand what they have said as a court, where they now stand as a court or where they may be going in this important area of the law involving capital cases and the death penalty. I may well be wrong in my interpretation of what they have said and what they will do. I believe it is equally possible that today’s majority may be in error in their understanding. I am sure the sentencing judge here suffered an agony of the spirit much greater than that of Mr. Justice Blackmun. This Judge had need to face the human rather than decide in the sanctity and solitude of his chambers while considering an abstract principle. The trial judge shouldered his heavy burden and I think this Court should affirm his decision, leaving to the United States Supreme Court, if they so desire, the option of deciding the fate of Phillip Lewis Lindquist.
DONALDSON, J., concurs.