Court Opinion

ID: 9576958
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:30:17.671849+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:19:45.047797
License: Public Domain

Fletcher, Justice,
dissenting.
I agree with Justice Sears that if the state asks the jury to impose the death penalty as a general deterrent to crime, fundamental due process requires that the defendant be able to rebut this argument with contrary evidence. I would go further, however, and exclude both argument and evidence on public policy grounds.
While the admission of expert evidence is required to satisfy due process, it will also prolong the trial and dramatically increase the cost as both the state and defense employ competing experts.7 Additionally, I recognize that legislatures rather than juries are best equipped to consider sociological evidence on the deterrent value of the death penalty.8 To meet these concerns and satisfy due process *545requirements we should simply preclude the state from arguing that the death penalty deters crime, and thus avoid the quagmire created by battling sociological experts. Prohibiting this argument and evidence will also allow the jury to remain focused on the individual circumstances of the crime and the defendant.9
Furthermore, while there are studies that suggest that capital punishment does not serve as a general deterrent to crime,10 to date there are no statistics, data, or other evidence conclusively supporting or refuting the value of the death penalty as a general deterrent. Thus, argument or evidence about the general deterrent effect of the death penalty would merely manipulate a juror by taking advantage of preconceived notions of the nature and effect of capital punish*546ment. Moreover, because the evidence is inconclusive, its use could lead a juror to impose the death penalty based, at best, on vague and unsubstantiated notions of deterrence, and, at worst, on false notions thereof. This court should not sanction such arbitrary sentencing decisions.
In summary, I am persuaded that the fairest practice is to exclude any argument or evidence on the deterrent value of the death penalty, as two of our sister states have done.11
I am authorized to state that Justice Sears joins in this dissent.

 The state contends that it “could also search around the country and find its own experts that would come in and testify that imposing the death sentence has enormous value in deterring future crime ... in general.”

 In Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U. S. 153, 186 (96 SC 2909, 49 LE2d 859) (1976), the United States Supreme Court emphasized that deterrence is an issue for legislatures rather than courts and juries:
*545[t]he value of capital punishment as a deterrent of crime is a complex factual issue the resolution of which properly rests with the legislatures, which can evaluate the results of statistical studies in terms of their own local conditions and with a flexibility of approach that is not available to the courts.

 Gregg, 428 U. S. at 206 (upholding Georgia’s death penalty procedures because they “focus the jury’s attention on the particularized nature of the crime and the particularized characteristics of the individual defendant”); Connor v. State, 251 Ga. 113, 118 (303 SE2d 266), cert. denied, 464 U. S. 865 (104 SC 197, 78 LE2d 173) (1983).

 These studies include: D. Baldus & James W. L. Cole, A Comparison of the Work of Thorsten Sellin & Isaac Ehrlich on the Deterrent Effect of Capital Punishment, 85 Yale L.J. 170 (1975); W. Bowers, Executions in America 19-20 (1974); T. Sellin, Capital Punishment, 25 Fed. Probation 3 (1961); Cochran, Chamblin & Seth, Deterrence or Brutalization? An Impact Assessment of Oklahoma’s Return to Capital Punishment, 32 Criminology 107 (1994); W. Espy, Capital Punishment and Deterrence: What the Statistics Cannot Show, 26 Crime & Delinq. 537 (1980); T. Sellin, The Death Penalty (ALI 1959); W. Bowers & G. Pierce, The Illusion of Deterrence in Isaac Ehrlich’s Research on Capital Punishment, 85 Yale L.J. 187 (1975); W. Bailey, Disaggregation in Deterrence and Death Penalty Research: The Case of Murder in Chicago, 74 J. Crim. L. 827 (1983); H. Bedau, The Death Penalty in America (3d ed. 1982); T. Sellin, The Penalty of Death (1980); W. Bailey, Murder and Capital Punishment: Some Further Evidence, 45 Am. J. Orthopsychiatry 669 (1975); H. E. Barnes & N. Teeters, New Horizons on Criminology 355 (1951); Brier & Fienberg, Recent Econometric Modeling of Crime and Punishment: Support for the Deterrence Hypothesis?, 4 Evaluation Rev. 147 (1980); Klein, Forst, & Filatov, The Deterrent Effect of Capital Punishment: An Assessment of the Estimates, in Deterrence and Incapacitation: Estimating the Effects of Criminal Sanctions on Crime Rates (A. Blumstein, J. Cohen, & D. Nagin eds. 1978); Passell & Taylor, The Deterrent Effect of Capital Punishment: Another View, 67 Am. Econ. Rev. 445 (1977); Bailey, A Multivariate Cross-Sectional Analysis of the Deterrent Effect of the Death Penalty, 69 Soc. & Soc. Research 193 (1980); Bailey, Imprisonment v. the Death Penalty as a Deterrent to Murder, 1 Law & Hum. Behav. 239 (1977); Black & Orsagh, New Evidence on the Efficacy of Sanctions as Deterrent to Homicide, 58 Soc. Sci. Q. 616 (1978); Forst, The Deterrent Effect of Capital Punishment: A Cross-State Analysis of the 1960’s, 61 Minn. L. Rev. 743 (1977); Kleck, Capital Punishment, Gun Ownership, and Homicide, 84 Am. J. Soc. 882 (1979); Passell, The Deterrent Effect of the Death Penalty: A Statistical Test, 28 Stan. L. Rev. 61 (1975); Bailey, The Deterrent Effect of the Death Penalty: An Extended Time-Series Analysis, 10 Omega 237 (1979-80); Bowers & Pierce, Deterrence or Brutalization: What is the Effect of Executions?, 26 Crime & Delinq. 453 (1980); King, The Brutalization Effect: Execution Publicity and the Incidence of Homicide in South Carolina, 57 Soc. Forces 683 (1978); B. Forst, Capital Punishment and Deterrence: Conflicting Evidence, 74 J. Crim. Law 927 (1983); Archer, Gartner & Brittel, Homicide and the Death Penalty: A Cross-National Test of a Deterrence Hypothesis, 74 J. Crim. Law 991 (1983).

 See State v. Zuniga, 357 SE2d 898, 920 (N.C.), cert. denied, 484 U. S. 959 (108 SC 359, 98 LE2d 384) (1987); State v. Smith, 857 SW2d 1, 13 (Tenn.) (prohibiting argument), cert. denied,_U. S. _ (114 SC 561, 126 LE2d _) (1993); State v. Johnson, 632 SW2d 542, 548 (Tenn.) (excluding evidence), cert. denied, 459 U. S. 882 (103 SC 183, 74 LE2d 148) (1982).