Court Opinion

ID: 9477745
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:30:01.469736+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:46:01.313586
License: Public Domain

KING, Circuit Judge,
dissenting in part:
I respectfully dissent from the majority’s conclusion that the prosecutor’s undeniably improper remarks about the finality of the death penalty determination did not violate the eighth amendment as interpreted and applied by the Supreme Court in Caldwell v. Mississippi, 472 U.S. 320, 105 S.Ct. 2633, 86 L.Ed.2d 231 (1985). I have several major concerns with the majority’s analysis. First, by applying the fundamental fairness test of Donnelly v. DeChristoforo, 416 U.S. 637, 94 S.Ct. 1868, 40 L.Ed.2d 431 (1974), instead of the “no effect” test of Caldwell, the majority has reviewed the prosecutor’s comments in this case under the wrong standard. Second, by holding that “a most critical factor in Caldwell was the trial judge’s approval” of the prosecutor’s'remarks, the majority has adopted an artificially narrow and incorrect interpretation of Caldwell — an interpretation which effectively eviscerates the holding in that case. Third, the majority has also mischaracterized the prosecutor’s comments here in order to force them outside the ambit of Caldwell. And finally, the majority has erroneously implied that other remarks by the trial court, prosecutor and defense counsel were sufficient to cure the comments of any constitutional impropriety.

The Prosecutor’s Argument

The majority opinion gives the facts of the alleged Caldwell violation short shrift. But I think it is important to understand exactly what the prosecutor said here. The comments at issue were made by the prosecutor in his closing argument at the sentencing phase of Sawyer’s capital trial. The prosecutor, in describing the jury’s role, remarked:
The law provides that if you find one of these circumstances then what you are doing as a juror, you yourself will not be sentencing Robert Sawyer to the electric chair. What you are saying to this Court, to the people of this Parish, to any appellate court, the Supreme Court of this State, the Supreme Court possibly of the United States, that you the people as a fact finding body from all the facts and evidence you have heard in relationship to this man’s conduct are of the opinion that there are aggravating circumstances as defined by the statute, by the State Legislature that this is ■the type of crime that deserves that penalty. It is merely a recommendation so try as he may, if Mr. Weidner tells you that each and every one of you *600I hope you can live with your conscience and try and play upon your emotions, you cannot deny, it is a difficult decision. No one likes to make those [sic] type of decision but you have to realize if but for this man’s actions, but for the type of life that he has decided to live, if of his own free choosing, I wouldn’t be here presenting evidence and making argument to you. You wouldn’t have to make the decision (emphasis supplied).
The prosecutor went on to describe the brutal nature of the crime and, briefly, its impact on the victim and her mother. Then, once again turning to the function of the jury, the prosecutor stated:
There is really not a whole lot that can be said at this point in time that hasn’t already been said and done. The decision is in your hands. You are the 'people that are going to take the initial step and only the initial step and all you are saying to this court, to the people of this Parish, to this man, to all the Judges that are going to review this case after this day, is that you the people do not agree and will not tolerate an individual to commit such a heinous and atrocious crime to degrade such a fellow human being without the authority and the impact, the full authority and impact of the law of Louisiana. All you are saying is that this man from his actions could be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. No more and no less (emphasis supplied).
Finally, after arguing that a death penalty would be justified in this case, the prosecutor noted:
It’s all your doing. Don’t feel otherwise. Don’t feel like you are the one, because it is very easy for defense lawyers to try and make each and every one of you feel like you are pulling the switch. That is not so. It is not so and if you are wrong in your decision believe me, believe me there will be others who will be behind you to either agree with you or to say you are wrong so I ask that you do have the courage of your convictions (emphasis supplied).

Caldwell, Donnelly and Darden

In Caldwell, the Supreme Court held “that it is constitutionally impermissible to rest a death sentence on a determination made by a sentencer who has been led to believe that the responsibility for determining the appropriateness of the defendant’s death rests elsewhere.” Caldwell, 472 U.S. at 328-29, 105 S.Ct. at 2639. The Court noted that the capital sentencing scheme is premised on a “[b]elief in the truth of the assumption that sentencers treat their power to determine the appropriateness of death as an ‘awesome responsibility’ [which allows the] Court to view sentencer discretion as consistent with— and indeed as indispensable to — the Eighth Amendment’s ‘need for reliability in the determination that death is the appropriate punishment in a specific case.’ ” Id. at 330, 105 S.Ct. at 2640 (quoting Woodson v. North Carolina, 428 U.S. 280, 305, 96 S.Ct. 2978, 2991, 49 L.Ed.2d 944 (1976) (plurality opinion)). The Court went on to specify a number of “specific reasons to fear substantial unreliability as well as bias in favor of death sentences when there are state induced suggestions that the sentencing jury may shift its sense of responsibility to an appellate court.” Caldwell, 472 U.S. at 330, 105 S.Ct. at 2640.1 Turning to *601the facts before it, the Court, concluded that the prosecutor’s comments sought to give the jury a view of its role in the capital sentencing procedure that was fundamentally incompatible with the eighth amendment’s heightened need for reliability. Id. at 340, 105 S.Ct. at 2645. As the Court “[could not] say that [the State’s] effort had no effect on the sentencing decision,” it was compelled to vacate the death sentence. Id. at 341, 105 S.Ct. at 2646.
In reaching its conclusion, the Court was careful to distinguish, on two separate grounds, the fourteenth amendment fundamental fairness inquiry of Donnelly v. DeChristoforo, 416 U.S. 637, 94 S.Ct. 1868, 40 L.Ed.2d 431 (1974), from the case before it. First, the trial judge in Donnelly had agreed that the prosecutor’s remarks in that case were improper and had given the jury a strong curative instruction. By contrast, in Caldwell, the trial judge not only failed to correct the prosecutor’s remarks, but in fact openly agreed with them. Caldwell, 472 U.S. at 339, 105 S.Ct. at 2645. Second, the prosecutor’s remarks in Donnelly were ambiguous and did not so prejudice a specific constitutional right as to amount to a denial of that right. The remarks in Caldwell, in contrast, “were quite focused, unambiguous, and strong” and “were pointedly directed at the issue that [the] Court has described as ‘the principal concern’ of [its] jurisprudence regarding the death penalty, the procedure by which the State imposes the death sentence.” Id. at 340, 105 S.Ct. at 2645 (citation omitted).
The Court subsequently clarified the reach of Caldwell and Donnelly in Darden v. Wainwright, 477 U.S. 168, 106 S.Ct. 2464, 91 L.Ed.2d 144 (1986). In Darden, the Court was confronted by a variety of challenges to the prosecutor’s closing argument at the guilt phase of a capital murder trial. The Court relied on Donnelly in treating the relevant question as “whether the prosecutor’s comments ‘so infected the trial with unfairness as to make the resulting conviction a denial of due process.’ ” Darden, 106 S.Ct. at 2472 (quoting Donnelly, 416 U.S. at 643, 94 S.Ct. at 1871). The Darden majority was quite careful, however, to distinguish the facts in front of it from those in Caldwell.2 The Darden Court specifically limited Caldwell “to certain types of comment — those that mislead the jury as to its role in the sentencing process in a way that allows the jury to feel less responsible than it should for the sentencing decision.” Darden, 106 S.Ct. at 2473 n. 15. As the prosecutor’s comments in Darden did not mislead the jury as to its role in the sentencing decision, Caldwell was inapplicable.

Standard of Review

I differ with the majority on the appropriate standard by which to review the comments at issue here. The majority, relying on Darden and Donnelly, holds that the fundamental question, in this case as in other habeas cases involving improper prosecutorial comments, is whether the petitioner has demonstrated that the remarks rendered the trial fundamentally unfair so as to deny due process.3 A fair reading of *602Caldwell and Darden cannot support this conclusion.
In Caldwell, the Court wrote: “Because we cannot say that this effort [to minimize the jury’s sense of responsibility for determining the appropriateness of death] had no effect on the sentencing decision, that decision does not meet the standard of reliability that the Eighth Amendment requires.” 472 U.S. at 341, 105 S.Ct. at 2646. The majority, while recognizing that the phrase exists and that the “no effect” test is a plausible interpretation of the Court’s language, concludes, for a variety of reasons, that the Court could not have meant to place a higher burden on the State in an eighth amendment Caldwell-type situation than would otherwise be borne under the due process jurisprudence of Donnelly and its progeny. I find the majority’s reasoning unpersuasive.
The majority argues that the adoption of the “no effect” test would impose a “well-nigh impossible burden upon the State.” According to the majority, the State would be forced to show that any remark which tended to minimize the jury’s sense of responsibility in a capital case had no effect on the sentencing decision. That is not so. In order to qualify as a Caldwell violation, the prosecutor’s remarks concerning the jury’s role must be “focused, unambiguous and strong.” Id. at 340, 105 S.Ct. at 2645. Moreover, the remarks would typically be made at the sentencing phase of trial rather than during voir dire, see Byrne v. Butler, 845 F.2d 501, 509 (5th Cir. 1988), or during the guilt-innocence stage, see Darden, 106 S.Ct. at 2473 n. 15. Finally, the remarks must not be corrected by an appropriate instruction from the trial court. Caldwell’s “no effect” test, therefore, is limited to a subset of particularly forceful prosecutorial comments on a narrow topic, generally presented to a capital jury at the sentencing phase of trial, which are not corrected by the trial court. So, while the burden on the State may in fact be “well-nigh impossible,” it is borne only in a narrow class of cases.
The majority also argues that the “no effect” test cannot be squared with Darden ’s reaffirmation of the Donnelly test in most cases involving improper remarks by a prosecutor. The principles of Caldwell, however, were not applicable in Darden. Darden, 106 S.Ct. at 2473 n. 15. Since the prosecutor’s comments in Darden could not have misled the jury into thinking that it had a reduced role in the sentencing process, any eighth amendment argument was unconvincing and the Court felt free to apply the more generally applicable due process standard of review. Darden did not hold that the Donnelly standard should be applied to Caldwell violations. If it had, the Court would not have needed to go to such great lengths to distinguish Caldwell.4 See id. It is clear, therefore, that in *603the peculiar eighth amendment context of the Caldwell violation, a stricter standard of review applies.5 Prosecutorial comments which truly qualify as Caldwell violations cannot be reviewed under the Donnelly standard.6

Nature of a Caldwell Violation

I also differ with the majority’s description of the nature of what has come to be called a Caldwell violation. Not content with Darden’s express limitation of Caldwell to a particular type of prosecutorial comment at the sentencing phase of trial, the majority would further restrict the reach of Caldwell to those rare instances in which the trial court expressly approves the prosecutor’s improper remarks. Essentially, the majority would make the trial court’s imprimatur a prerequisite to finding a Caldwell violation. The majority’s position is based on a tortured reading of Caldwell.
The majority ignores the fact that the Supreme Court framed the Caldwell issue throughout the majority opinion solely in terms of the prosecutor’s remarks:
In this case, a prosecutor urged the jury not to view itself as determining whether the defendant would die, because a death sentence would be reviewed for correctness by the State Supreme Court. We granted certiorari ... to consider petitioner’s contention that the prosecutor’s argument rendered the capital sentencing proceeding inconsistent with the Eighth Amendment’s ‘heightened need for reliability....’”
Caldwell, 472 U.S. at 323, 105 S.Ct. at 2636 (emphasis supplied). The majority opinion in Caldwell is divided into approximately thirteen parts and subparts, and the only mention of the trial court’s endorsement of the prosecutor’s remarks is in Part IV-C of the opinion in which the Court sought to distinguish Donnelly. While the Court did note that the trial judge had approved the remarks in the case before it, it did not establish that fact as a prerequisite to its ultimate condemnation of the prosecutor’s actions. Rather, the Court identified two important factors which distinguished Donnelly. First, the Court looked at the trial court’s actions and found that, unlike in Donnelly, the trial court not only failed to correct the improper remarks, it also endorsed them. Id. at 339, 105 S.Ct. at 2645. Next, the Court looked to the character of *604the remarks and determined that the "prosecutor’s comments differed from those in Donnelly because they were “focused, unambiguous, and strong” and because they prejudiced a specific constitutional right, i.e., an eighth amendment right. Id. at 340-41, 105 S.Ct. at 2645-46. The Court went on to confirm that such comments, if left uncorrected, might so affect the fundamental fairness of the sentencing proceeding as to violate the eighth amendment. Id.
Given Caldwell’s overwhelming emphasis on the character and effect of the prosecutor’s argument itself,7 the question of whether the trial court endorsed the comments must be viewed as merely a factor in a larger inquiry. A proper inquiry must focus on the nature of the prosecutor’s remarks themselves and on the character of the trial court’s response to those remarks. Moreover, an evaluation of the trial court’s response is not limited to the question of whether the trial court endorsed the remarks. Were, this not the case, the Court’s references to curative action would be superfluous for silence would be sufficient medicine for what ailed the proceedings. I do not think Caldwell can fairly be read, therefore, as holding that the trial court’s endorsement of the prosecutor’s remarks is a prerequisite to finding an eighth amendment violation.

Nature of the Prosecutor’s Remarks

The majority, casting the prosecutor’s remarks in a more favorable light than they merit, weaves the threads of an admittedly “improper” argument into a harmless tapestry of vague, disjointed and forgiveable8 prosecutorial comments. My own review of the record has led me to conclude that the prosecutor’s remarks in the instant case are sufficiently similar to those found constitutionally wanting in Caldwell as to merit vacation of Sawyer’s sentence.
In the instant case, the prosecutor told the jury:
Don’t feel like you are the one, because it is very easy for defense lawyers to try and make each and every one of you feel like you are pulling the switch. That is not so. It is not so and if you are wrong in your decision believe me, believe me there will be others who will be behind you to either agree with you or to say you are wrong....
While the majority is arguably correct in dismissing the first portion of this comment as a permissible “joint-responsibility” argument, it is remiss in not recognizing the answer to the query it asks with re*605spect to the latter portion: who are the “others” who will be behind the jury to agree with their decision or correct them if they are wrong? The answer is suggested in an earlier comment by the prosecutor:
... what you are doing as a juror, you yourself will not be sentencing Robert Sawyer to the electric chair. What you are saying to this Court, to the people of this Parish, to any appellate court, the Supreme Court of this State, the Supreme Court possibly of the United States, that you the people as a fact finding body ... are of the opinion that there are aggravating circumstances as defined by the statute, by the State Legislature that this is the type of crime that deserves that penalty.
Just as the Caldwell prosecutor referred to the ultimate reviewability of the jury’s determination, so too did the prosecutor here make several unambiguous allusions to the inevitability of appellate scrutiny, naming the potential reviewers as he did so. As if the intended suggestion was not already clear enough, the prosecutor went on to hammer home his point by explicitly referring to judicial review and by couching his description of the jury’s decision in language bespeaking possibility rather than finality:
You are the people that are going to take the initial step and only the initial step and all you are saying to this court, to the people of this Parish, to this man, to all the Judges that are going to review this case after this day.... All you are saying is that this man from his actions could be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. No more and no less.
The contested remarks here are precisely the sort of comments condemned in Caldwell as tending to impart to the jury a view of its role in the capital sentencing procedure that is fundamentally incompatible with the eighth amendment’s heightened need for reliability in the death sentence determination. It is unnecessary to decide whether any one remark violated Caldwell for it is readily apparent that the prosecutor’s repeated references to appellate review and the jury’s limited role in the death sentence calculus surely did so. When viewed in their totality, the remarks appear “focused, unambiguous, and strong.” See Caldwell, 472 U.S. at 340, 105 S.Ct. at 2645. The prosecutor clearly sought to leave the jury with the notion that their recommendation of death would be merely “the initial step” and that the “others who will be behind” them would be there to correct any error in that determination. The message of non-finality was clear.

The Trial Court’s Response

Having determined that the prosecutor’s remarks were inappropriate under Caldwell, a question remains whether subsequent action by the trial court was sufficient to preclude reversal. See Caldwell, 472 U.S. at 339-40, 105 S.Ct. at 2645; see also Bell v. Lynaugh, 828 F.2d 1085 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, — U.S.-, 108 S.Ct. 310, 98 L.Ed.2d 268 (1987). The majority notes that the trial court delivered a standard form jury instruction informing the jury that it was their responsibility to deliver a sentence of death or life imprisonment. While that much is true, it is equally clear that the trial court did little if anything to correct the damage that was done. This is particularly so with respect to the prosecutor’s comments regarding appellate review. Even if the trial court’s instructions left the jury with the view that they had an important role to play, they did nothing to undermine the prosecutor’s suggestion that the jury’s determination would be reviewed by an appellate court to assure its correctness. See Caldwell, 472 U.S. at 340 n. 7, 105 S.Ct. at 2645 n. 7.
This is not a case where the trial court admonished the jury to disregard the prosecutor’s comments. Nor is this a case where the trial court meticulously instructed the jury on the errors in the prosecutor’s argument. I do not presume to establish a general standard by which to judge the efficacy of a trial court’s curative instructions in a Caldwell violation context. I merely note that in the instant case, the trial court’s instructions 9 were insufficient *606to disabuse the jury of the notion that final responsibility for the sentencing decision might lay elsewhere.
In summary, because I believe that the prosecutor’s effort to minimize the jury’s sense of responsibility for determining the appropriateness of death cannot be said to have had no effect on the sentencing decision, I believe that the writ must be granted as to the sentence imposed upon Sawyer. I dissent from the majority’s decision to affirm the district court’s denial of the writ.

. Initially, the Court recognized that "[b]ias against the defendant clearly stems from the institutional limits on what an appellate court can do — limits that jurors often might not understand.” Caldwell, 472 U.S. at 330, 105 S.Ct. at 240. The Court also noted that "[e]ven when a sentencing jury is unconvinced that death is the appropriate punishment, it might nevertheless wish to ‘send a message' of extreme disapproval for the defendant’s acts. This desire might make the jury very receptive to the prosecutor’s assurance that it can freely ‘err because the error may be corrected on appeal.’ ” Id. at 331, 105 S.Ct. at 2641 (quoting Maggio v. Williams, 464 U.S. 46, 54-55, 104 S.Ct. 311, 316, 78 L.Ed.2d 43 (1983)). A defendant could be executed, therefore, although no sentencer had ever made a determination that death was the appropriate sentence. The Court also raised the possibility that the jury, assuming that only a death sentence will be reviewed, might "understand that any decision to ‘delegate’ responsibility for sentencing can only be effectuated by returning that sentence.” Caldwell, 472 U.S. at 332, 105 S.Ct. at 2641. The sentence that would emerge from such a proceeding would not represent a decision that the appropriateness of the defendant’s death had been demonstrated; rath*601er, the decision would present "the specter of the imposition of death based on a factor wholly irrelevant to legitimate sentencing concerns”— namely the desire to avoid responsibility for the decision. Id. Finally, given the fact that a capital sentencing jury is "made up of individuals placed in a very unfamiliar situation and called on to make a difficult and uncomfortable choice,” an uncorrected suggestion that the ultimate determination of death rests elsewhere presents "an intolerable danger that the jury will in fact choose to minimize the importance of its role.” Id. at 333, 105 S.Ct. at 2642.

. In Darden, the Court wrote that:
There are several factual reasons for distinguishing Caldwell from the present case. The comments in Caldwell were made at the sentencing phase of trial and were approved by the trial judge. In this case, the comments were made at the guilt-innocence stage of trial, greatly reducing the chance that they had any effect at all on sentencing. The trial judge did not approve of the comments, and several times instructed the jurors that the arguments were not evidence and that their decision was to be based only on the evidence.
Darden, 106 S.Ct. at 2473 n. 15.

. The genesis of this proposition may be found in the Eleventh Circuit's decision in Tucker v. Kemp, 802 F.2d 1293 (11th Cir.1986) (en banc), cert. denied, — U.S.-, 107 S.Ct. 1359, 94 L.Ed.2d 529 (1987). In Tucker, the court "borrowed” the prejudice prong of Strickland in *602order to apply the Donnelly fundamental fairness standard to Caldwell-type violations. See Tucker, 802 F.2d at 1295. That decision was roundly criticized by three judges in dissent. The dissenting opinion in Tucker discussed a number of shortcomings in the Eleventh Circuit’s approach. The dissent noted, for example, that Strickland and Caldwell are fundamentally different in their assignment of the burden of proving prejudice. Tucker, 802 F.2d at 1298 (dissenting opinion). Unlike Strickland, Caldwell places the prejudice burden on the State. "Once the petitioner has shown that the prosecution attempted to minimize the jury’s responsibility at the capital sentencing hearing, the state must show that ‘this effort had no effect on the sentencing decision.’” Id. (quoting Caldwell, 472 U.S. at 341, 105 S.Ct. at 2646). The dissent also stressed that while “the government is not responsible for, and hence not able to prevent, [defense] attorney errors that will result in reversal,” see Strickland, 466 U.S. at 693, 104 S.Ct. at 2067, “the state can control prosecutorial conduct and, in the capital sentencing context, is constitutionally obligated to do so.” Tucker, 802 F.2d at 1298 (dissenting opinion). Finally, the dissent found it significant that the Supreme Court itself "did not apply its Strickland prejudice analysis to Caldwell’s claim of prosecutorial misconduct at sentencing but instead reaffirmed the long line of cases requiring heightened reliability in capital sentencing proceedings.” Id.

. By reviewing Justice Blackmun’s dissenting opinion in Darden, which was joined by three of the other four members of the Caldwell majority, the error in the majority’s analysis can be readily discerned. In Darden, the dissent charged that the Court rejected "the ‘no effect’ test set out in Caldwell" without identifying which standard it was using. Darden, 106 S.Ct. at 2480 (Blackmun, J., dissenting). The Court responded to the dissent's charges by distinguishing Caldwell so that it could apply the Donnelly standard to the facts before it. At no *603point, however, did the Court take issue with the dissent’s characterization of the Caldwell standard as a "no effect” test.

. Justice Rehnquist, in his dissenting opinion in Caldwell, clearly believed that the Court had rejected the Donnelly standard. Justice Rehnquist "[found] unconvincing the Court’s scramble to identify an independent Eighth Amendment norm that was violated by the [prosecutor’s] statements,” and concluded that "[a]lthough the Eighth Amendment requires certain processes designed to prevent the arbitrary imposition of capital punishment, it does not follow that every proceeding that strays from the optimum is ipso facto constitutionally unreliable.” Caldwell, 472 U.S. at 350-51, 105 S.Ct. at 2650-51 (Rehnquist, J., dissenting). Justice Rehnquist chided the Court for not heeding the directives of Donnelly and for not applying a fundamental fairness test. Id.

. The panel’s discussion of Chapman v. California., 386 U.S. 18, 87 S.Ct. 824, 17 L.Ed.2d 705 (1967), and Rose v. Clark, 478 U.S. 570, 106 S.Ct. 3101, 92 L.Ed.2d 460 (1986), underscores the error in the majority’s adoption of a fundamental fairness standard in this case. In Chapman, the Court recognized that some errors necessarily render a trial fundamentally unfair. Rose, 106 S.Ct. at 3106. There are certain constitutional protections so basic to a fair trial that without them, a criminal proceeding cannot reliably serve its function as a vehicle for the determination of guilt or innocence, and the criminal sanction may not be regarded as fundamentally fair. Id. Such errors either abort the basic trial process or deny it altogether. Id. at n. 6. The Caldwell violation presents a clear example of a breakdown in the trial process. The pernicious effects of focused, unambiguous and strong prosecutorial remarks concerning the jury’s role in the sentencing process and the inevitability of appellate review are impossible to measure. Consequently, where such remarks are left uncorrected by the trial court, there is an intolerable danger that they affected the sentencing decision. For all the reasons reviewed by the Court in Caldwell, such remarks create an unacceptable risk of systemic breakdown, thereby poisoning the reliability of the death sentence. Given that the eighth amendment demands a heightened degree of reliability in any case where the State seeks to take the life of a defendant, the prosecutor’s remarks necessarily rendered the proceedings fundamentally unfair. It is our inability to measure the effect of such remarks, combined with the very grave threat to the integrity of the proceedings posed by such remarks, that militates in favor of the "no effect" test.

. Justice O’Connor, in her concurring opinion, noted that "the prosecutor’s remarks were impermissible because they were inaccurate and misleading in a manner that diminished the jury's sense of responsibility.” Id. at 342, 105 S.Ct. at 2646 (O’Connor, J., concurring). Justice O’Connor’s concurring opinion focused exclusively on the prosecutor’s remarks, never once mentioning the trial court’s endorsement of those remarks.

. The majority also strives to justify the prosecutor’s remarks on the ground of practical necessity. Prosecutors need such arguments, the majority suggests, to deal with the "formidable” argument, typically urged as a "last-resort” by struggling defense counsel, that the decision whether the defendant merits execution rests with each individual juror, that human judgment is not infallible, that mistakes can be made and that death is one error which cannot be corrected. The majority points out, as it must, that such arguments are "in varying degrees" true. Those weighty factors, however, are precisely the sort of considerations which society has entrusted the jury to weigh in reaching its decision. Those decisions are at the core of the heightened need for reliability demanded by the eighth amendment of sentencing proceedings in capital trials.
The prosecutor is free to emphasize the collective nature of the jury decision. He is also free to emphasize that the defendant himself bears the responsibility for the consequences of his actions. The prosecutor most certainly made those arguments in this case. The prosecutor is not free, however, to diminish the jury’s sense of the finality of their decision by repeatedly alluding to the specter of appellate review. By doing so, the prosecutor may well leave the jurors with the notion that their moral judgment in favor of death will be reviewed for error. See Caldwell, 472 U.S. at 340 n. 7, 105 S.Ct. at 2645 n. 7. This may hold true even when the prosecutor has stressed that "the decision” is in the jury’s hands for "the decision” in that case would be the decision to send a message, or the decision to start the ball rolling, or the decision that the jury wants the case reviewed. See id. at 330-33, 105 S.Ct. at 2640-41. It would not be the decision demanded by society and required by the eighth amendment: that the defendant merits execution because death is the appropriate punishment for the crime he has committed.

. The majority, in an effort to bolster its position that the prosecutor's remarks were later "cured”, points to the fact that defense counsel informed the jury that "[t]he decision whether *606Robert Sawyer lives or dies is in your hands.” That remark was patently insufficient to relieve the jurors of any mistaken impressions they might have held as to their role in the death penalty determination. In fact, any initial confusion by the jury might well have been exacerbated by defense counsel’s espousal of a position contrary to that which the prosecutor seemed to embrace. The jury may have understood the remark, made just after the prosecutor had finished insinuating that the jury’s decision was not final, to signify the existence of a true dispute on the role of the jury. Therefore, defense counsel’s remark, when considered along with the prosecutor’s earlier comments, may well have added to the cloud of uncertainty billowing around the jury about its own role. Consequently, the majority’s reliance on the curative properties of defense counsel’s remark is misplaced.