Court Opinion

ID: 9770792
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 16:21:39.290139+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:20.830217
License: Public Domain

BLACKMAR, Justice,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I.
The exclusion of jurors on account of views on capital punishment must be analyzed in terms of Witherspoon v. Illinois, 391 U.S. 510, 88 S.Ct. 1770, 20 L.Ed.2d 776 (1968) and Wainwright v. Witt, 469 U.S. 412, 105 S.Ct. 844, 83 L.Ed.2d 841 (1985). The conclusion of the principal opinion can be justified under Witt because the excluded jurors indicated that they would place a burden of proof on the state greater than “beyond a reasonable doubt” in determining guilt or innocence. The application of a more severe burden during the guilt phase of the trial would be inconsistent with the applicable instructions.
If the venirepersons had said that they would place a higher burden on the state only at the punishment stage, it would have been patent error to exclude them on that basis. A juror has a duty to consider the death penalty, but no duty to vote for it, and may impose an extremely stringent burden on the state to justify imposition of death. To allow prosecutors to tread too close to the line is to court reversible error.
I am not easy with the holding that the exclusions in this case were proper. It appears that the prosecutor skillfully led the venire, in an attempt to cull those who were merely unsympathetic to the death penalty but not unequivocally opposed to it. Witherspoon and Witt seek to inhibit such culling. I doubt that the panel members really thought in terms of the meticulously legalistic questions tendered.
II.
As to the punishment, I start with the distinct sense that the facts of this offense, gruesome as they may be, do not constitute the type of crime the legislature had in mind when it reauthorized the death penalty. The defendant and his companions went out on a drunken and violent spree. They ended up brutally beating a young man who had displeased them in some way. Their offense seems to me to be one of impulse and passion.
This Court continually refuses to face up to its responsibilities in proportionality review. The Supreme Court of the United States in Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, 92 S.Ct. 2726, 33 L.Ed.2d 346 (1972) struck down the death penalty, with a plethora of opinions, because none of the statutes then before it provided a sufficient basis for canalizing the assessment of the death sentence. That Court later upheld a Georgia death sentence statute in Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153, 96 S.Ct. 2909, 49 L.Ed.2d 859 (1976), holding that the statute supplied the deficiencies observed in Furman because it was a carefully devised plan for assessing the death sentence. Our statute is modeled largely upon Georgia’s.
From the very beginning, however, this Court has been uneasy with proportionality *720review, as though it resented an increased burden of a review which, though mandated by statute, is unusual in criminal appeals. Even though the Court was provided with an officer for the purpose of comparing death sentences, § 565.035.6, RSMo 1986, it has seldom made use of his services for this purpose. The Court very early substantially limited the scope of review by excluding (1) cases in which the prosecutor did not seek the death penalty even though it was authorized for the offense charged, and (2) cases in which the jury was asked to return a death sentence, but found guilt of a lesser degree than would authorize a death sentence.1 The restrictions remove from the Court’s consideration data necessary for any meaningful comparative analysis of the application of the death penalty.
Even in the cases in which the death penalty was submitted and assessed this Court has never enunciated any meaningful standards for comparison. The late Judge Billings expressed the Court’s approach in a concurring opinion in State v. Bibb, 702 S.W.2d 462, 466 (Mo. banc 1985), as follows:
We should not use our statutory grant of proportionality review as a vehicle to circumvent the declared public policy of this State approving the death penalty in certain instances.
This is a frank and realistic characterization of the Court’s attitude, even though proportionality review is part and parcel of our state’s policy. Death sentences are routinely affirmed, with review of the sentence only for prejudicial error, and without a genuine proportionality review.
The attempt at proportionality analysis in the principal opinion demonstrates the flaw in the Court’s whole approach to its statutory obligation. The opinion tries to find some cases which have some of the characteristics of this offense. Apparently any one will do. This approach falls short of the Court’s responsibility under § 356.-035.3(3) to consider “the crime, the strength of the evidence, and the defendant.” The cases which are cited are all cases in which the Court did not engage in the systematic review mandated by the governing statute, and so share the flaw of the principal opinion.
The Court is enjoined to consider the defendant’s age at the time of the crime. § 565.032.3(7). The principal opinion lists such cases as State v. Kilgore, 771 S.W.2d 57 (Mo. banc), cert. denied, 493 U.S. 874, 110 S.Ct. 211, 107 L.Ed.2d 164 (1989); State v. Lashley, 667 S.W.2d 712 (Mo. banc), cert. denied, 469 U.S. 873, 105 S.Ct. 229, 83 L.Ed.2d 158 (1984); State v. Battle, 661 S.W.2d 487 (Mo. banc 1983), cert. denied, 466 U.S. 993, 104 S.Ct. 2375, 80 L.Ed.2d 847 (1984); and State v. Walls, 744 S.W.2d 791 (Mo. banc), cert. denied, 488 U.S. 871, 109 S.Ct. 181, 102 L.Ed.2d 150 (1988). See also State v. Wilkins, 736 S.W.2d 409 (Mo. banc 1987), aff'd sub nom., Stanford v. Kentucky, 492 U.S. 361, 109 S.Ct. 2969, 106 L.Ed.2d 306 (1989). By observing that the defendants in those cases were young, the principal opinion seems to dismiss the defendant’s age in any future proportionality review, and thus disregards the statute. All the cases cited involved willful and deliberate murders committed during robberies. The facts of those cases are very different from this case, and do not support the conclusion that this death penalty is proportionate.
In dealing with the circumstance that the defendant’s companion in crime, who struck blows along with him, was allowed to plead guilty to murder in the first degree, in return for the state’s agreement not to seek a death sentence, the principal opinion cites no comparable case. State v. Laws, 661 S.W.2d 526 (Mo. banc 1983), cert. denied, 467 U.S. 1210, 104 S.Ct. 2401, 81 L.Ed.2d 357 (1984), is not pertinent authority for the proportionality analysis in this case. Laws involved a premeditated series of robberies and murders of elderly victims. For this reason Laws is utterly incomparable to the present case, in which the killing was the impulsive reaction of two people. The principal opinion seems to hold, however, that the punishment of the defendants’ associates in crime is never a *721material circumstance when weighing the appropriateness of the death penalty. This anomaly would surprise any detached observer.
The aggravating circumstances in this case are flimsy. The instruction allowed the jury to find the “depravity” circumstance solely on a finding of intent to mutilate the victim’s body. The instruction violates the teachings of Godfrey v. Georgia, 446 U.S. 420,100 S.Ct. 1759, 64 L.Ed.2d 398 (1980) and Maynard v. Cartwright, 486 U.S. 356, 108 S.Ct. 1853, 100 L.Ed.2d 372 (1988), which suggest that instructions on depravity of mind must be closely confined to assure that the jury is not allowed a roving commission. The instruction given in this case is insufficient, under Godfrey and Maynard, to satisfy the Gregg rule that the death penalty may be imposed only under a carefully devised statutory scheme. As those opinions point out, any deliberate killing may be characterized as “outrageously or wantonly vile, horrible or inhuman” and to involve “depravity of mind.” It seems strange that the mutilation of a corpse would make the difference between life and death. Yet this jury was instructed that it could.
I see more reason in the “serious assaultive conviction” aggravating circumstance. If we are to have the death penalty, it might be an appropriate sanction for those who show a persistent proclivity toward uncontrolled violence, which might continue in the prison system. In this case, however, two of the four convictions relate to the same spree that gave rise to the murder charges. The forcible sodomy and felonious restraint offenses do not strike me as the kind of assaultive convictions the general assembly had in mind when it codified as an aggravating circumstance a defendant’s prior “conviction for murder in the first degree, or ... serious assaultive criminal convictions.” § 565.032.2(1).
It is also of interest that all of the convictions were entered after the defendant was arrested and charged in the present case. I do not mean to suggest that assaultive convictions subsequent to the crime may not be considered at the punishment stage, but the prosecutor seems to have made a concerted effort to get convictions on the record to aid in this prosecution. In our proportionality review we should examine the assaultive convictions considered by the jury, rather than simply approving the death penalty for a defendant with any record of assaultive convictions.
In State v. Davis, 814 S.W.2d 593 (Mo. banc 1991), cert. denied, — U.S. -, 112 S.Ct. 911, 116 L.Ed.2d 812 (1992), I commented on the Court’s neglect of its responsibility for proportionality review. I adhere to the views there expressed, as well as to my partial dissent in State v. Powell, 798 S.W.2d 709, 718 (Mo. banc 1990). That case involved two killings, which might be a special circumstance the Court properly could enunciate in establishing standards. But the Court in Powell proceeded in its customary ad hoc manner, although the behavior of the defendant appeared to be spontaneous and impulsive. The net result of the Court’s neglect is a continuing series of affirmances, supported only by citations of cases which themselves lack meaningful proportionality review. I cannot vote to sustain the death sentence on the facts of this case.
The state points out that proportionality review is not required by the Supreme Court of the United States. That Court has shown a disposition in recent years to give the states greater freedom in the implementation of the death penalty. The Court does not seem to realize that this greater freedom simply enhances our responsibility. See State v. Feltrop, 803 S.W.2d 1, 23 (Mo. banc 1991) (Blackmar, J. dissenting).
I would vacate the death sentence. On this record, I would exercise our statutory responsibility by directing a sentence of life imprisonment without parole.

. State v. Bolder, 635 S.W.2d 673, 685 (Mo. banc 1982).