Court Opinion

ID: 9486257
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 11:42:19.593157+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:51:36.363401
License: Public Domain

CUDAHY, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
Mr. Free committed an atrocious crime and it is certainly not surprising that the jury ordained death as his penalty.
However, the Eighth Amendment requires that, when a sentencing body is given discretion “on a matter so grave as the determination of whether a human life should be taken or spared, that discretion must be suitably directed and limited so as to minimize the risk of wholly arbitrary and capricious action.” Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 158, 189, 96 S.Ct. 2909, 2932, 49 L.Ed.2d 859 (1976).
Suitably directing and limiting the jury’s discretion has become an increasingly complicated task. The Constitution recognizes that it is a grave matter for a society to execute one of its members,1 and a variety of rarified rules govern the process through which a state may permissibly decide to impose the death penalty. See, e.g., Stringer v. Black, — U.S. -, 112 S.Ct. 1130, 117 L.Ed.2d 367 (1992); Eddings v. Oklahoma, 455 U.S. 104, 102 S.Ct. 869, 71 L.Ed.2d 1 (1982); Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U.S. 586, 98 S.Ct. 2954, 57 L.Ed.2d 973 (1978). This effort to systematize the imposition of the death penalty seems to be an important factor in the evolution of complex instructions like the 1987 Illinois pattern death penalty *708instruction containing a quadruple negative, see Gacy, 994 F.2d at 314 (Easterbrook, J.).
It would be ironic but not surprising if the effort'to make death sentencing rational also contributed mightily to confusing the jury. But despite its “[polysyllabic mystification,” id, previous panels of this court have found the- language of the Illinois pattern instruction to be sufficiently lucid (and therefore to adequately cabin the exercise of sentencing discretion) to satisfy the Constitution. See Silagy v. Peters, 905 F.2d 986 (7th Cir.1990); Williams v. Chrans, 945 F.2d 926 (7th Cir.1991).
The Zeisel study asks us to revisit that conclusion. The Gacy court considered the study immaterial, apparently announcing an unrebuttable presumption that jurors understand their instructions. As Gacy noted, 994 F.2d at 311-14, Zeisel’s was not the first study to suggest very imperfect understanding of instructions by a jury. Nor will it be the last. No doubt this is a disappointing insight into the workings of a revered institution. But despite the discomfort involved, I think we are better off attempting to cope ■with reality rather than settling for'a mere judicial ritual. Today’s majority apparently agrees. Stopping short of Gacy’s remarkable act of faith, the court closely examines Zeisel’s conclusions. His study is not irrelevant, only inadequate. But the facts of this case come to us under reassuring auspices. The magistrate judge conducted an extensive fact-finding hearing eliciting testimony from an, array of well-qualified witnesses. The experienced and able district judge,- who is a former state prosecutor and a former state trial judge, carefully studied the record and accepted the magistrate judge’s recommendation over the state’s objections. These are stubborn facts, which would give me pause in brushing off the entire exercise as unworthy of a passing grade. The trial courts are our window on -reality, and I would be exceedingly cautious in arrogating their functions to ourselves.
I am therefore prepared — as was the magistrate judge who saw and heard the witnesses and the district judge who found the facts — to take Professor Zeisel’s conclusions rather seriously. I do not think an appellate court should be quite so cavalier, in upsetting these factual findings. While both Gacy and today’s majority insist that the district court “announced a rule” (thereby justifying the plenary. appellate review),2 I do not agree. The Zeisel study makes an empirical claim: “the people to whom I asked these questions responded in the following manner.” From this data, he draws an inference: jurors most likely do not understand the Illinois pattern instructions. The empirical claim is not disputed, and the inference was accepted by the magistrate and the trial court.3 '
The majority rejects the Zeisel study because it finds two flaws. The first problem was Zeisel’s methodology. His subjects were unlike real jurors, and his test, instead of testing comprehension, may have tested test-taking skills. Unlike my two distinguished brethren who have critiqued his work here and in Gacy, I knew the late Professor Zeisel only by reputation. But a third academic colleague of Professor Zeisel lauded his rig- or. “As an academic and a thinker, Hans *709was a scientist, an anticonceptiialist, a positivist ... Ms real concern was how claims about the effects of law could be tested and found to be correct or not.” Cass R. Sun-stein, In Memoriam: Hans, 59 U.ChiL.Rév. 571, 572 (1992). While I am reluctant to attempt an evaluation of Professor Zeisel’s investigative techniques, even my brethren who knew him well concede that he was an experienced and respected student of juries. The other witnesses who have testified here are equally credible. I do not think we can simply ignore their conclusions as the product of slap-dash research and scatter-brained analysis.4
The second problem that the majority identifies in the Zeisel study is the absence of a control group. TMs may be an important flaw. Is there some alternative instruction that would satisfy the mandate of Gregg v. Georgia and the Eighth Amendment? Is it possible to recast the flawed instructions in language that a test panel will understand? If it is, we have stronger grounds to doubt the propriety of tMs proceeding. If it is not, our troubles may have just begun. But Free did introduce evidence, the testimony of a lingmstic expert, that a better instruction could have been drafted. In fact, the Gacy court itself suggested more intelligible language: “If after full discussion any one of you believes that a mitigating factor makes death an excessive pumshment, then you must return a sentence of imprisonment,” 994 F.2d at 314. But because we do not know to what extent such an instruction would improve the jury’s comprehension, I would remand the case to the district court to take further evidence involving a control group or such other matters as may now seem germane.5

. But see Gacy v. Welborn, 994 F.2d 305, 306 (7th Cir.1993) (emphasis in original) (“judge and jury cannot decide whether a murderer will die, but only how soon").

. In describing Judge Aspen's decision crediting the Zeisel study as a "new rule,” both Gacy and today’s majority conclude that the decision violates the proscription of Teague v. Lane, 489 U.S. 288, 109 S.Ct. 1060, 103 L.Ed.2d 334 (1989), under which federal courts in habeas cases are not to announce or apply new constitutional rules. In my view, Judge Aspen did no such thing. The relevant “rule” is the rule of Gregg v. Georgia: it is cruel and unusual punishment, forbidden by the Eighth Amendment, for a state to take a life unless the sentencing body’s discretion is cabined in an intelligible manner. Free is not asking us to announce a new rule, only to apply the facts, facts derived from the Zeisel study (admittedly a new factual approach), to a well-accepted rule of law.' How the Supreme Court might view recourse to a wholly new factual approach (like the Zeisel study) on collateral review remains to be seen.

. The issue whether instructions are confusing is a mixed question of law and fact but certainly, in the context of the Zeisel study, is quite fact-intensive. Expert witnesses testified at length ■ and in detail on both sides of the ultimate issue and subsidiary issues. Obviously, the triers-of-fact do not have the last word, but they are entitled to deference at least on the subsidiary fact questions. It seems to me that the majority proceeds almost as if there were no trial court. On the question of conflicting findings by different trial judges, isn’t this what the rules of res judicata and collateral estoppel address?

. Judge Bauer, concurring, points out correctly that a jury functions as a collective and seems to suggest that the wisdom of the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. There is no doubt truth to this although I do not know the consequence for Zeisel's research.

. There is also a substantial question whether the statute making a murder death eligible if the killing occurs “in the course of ... rape” fairly put the defendant on notice when the accompanying crime was attempted rape. The majority employs the statutory language “in the course of” essentially to equate rape with attempted rape. I believe, however, that-"in the course of” merely requires a nexus between the murder and the rape. In sum, we ought not to say that the sentence is constitutional because the statute is vague.