Court Opinion

ID: 9769528
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 14:53:26.572624+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:37:55.158165
License: Public Domain

HENRY, Justice,
concurring.
I concur in the opinion prepared for the Court by Mr. Justice Harbison. I particularly applaud the following language:
In these cases each jury was instructed as to first degree murder, second degree murder, and all lesser included offenses. The two juries had the opportunity and authority to impose a lesser sentence but declined to do so. Since the defendants received the maximum penalty of death at the hands of juries, there is nothing in our statutory or constitutional law or the decisions of this Court requiring that they be given a second jury trial as to punishment under the circumstances presented here.
This is precisely what I pointed out in my dissent from the first opinion of the Court in this case.
Specifically, I reasoned:
It is incontestably true that a conviction of first degree murder carries with it a conviction of all lesser included offenses, ranging all the way down to simple assault. As an inevitable corollary, such a conviction entails punishment ranging from death by electrocution, under the law then in effect, all the way down to a monetary penalty or confinement in the county jail.
The defendant, in such a case, has had his full constitutional right to trial by jury, and, in legal effect, has been found guilty of all offenses and subject to all sentences.
In the case of these defendants each jury had all these options. True, if they found guilt of first degree murder they could only punish by electrocution, but they were not compelled to make such a finding. They could have found either defendant guilty of murder in the second degree and fixed punishment at life or at ten years or more. And, again, such finding and punishment are necessarily included in the finding of murder in the first degree and death by electrocution.
At the time I prepared my Separate Opinion, I could find no precedent, and, finding none had no choice but to proceed upon the basis of what I considered to be irrefutable logic. Fortunately, with the passage of time has come precedent from other jurisdictions.
Some three weeks after the main opinion and the dissent were filed in the instant case the Supreme Court of Nevada released its opinion in Smith v. State, 93 Nev. Advance Opinion 35, 560 P.2d 158 (Feb. 17, 1977). The Nevada mandatory death penalty is incorporated in NRS 200.030, which defines “capital murder” and provides that it “shall be punished by death.” In Smith the Nevada Court, pursuant to the mandate of Woodson v. North Carolina, 428 U.S. 280, 96 S.Ct. 2978, 49 L.Ed.2d 944 (1976) and Roberts v. Louisiana, 428 U.S. 325, 96 S.Ct. 3001, 49 L.Ed.2d 974 (1976), declared the Nevada death penalty to be unconstitutional, and imposed “life imprisonment without possibility of parole.”
The Nevada Court, in Anderson v. State, 528 P.2d 1023 (Nev.1974), instructs us that after the decision in Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, 92 S.Ct. 2726, 33 L.Ed.2d 346 (1972), “life imprisonment without the possibility of parole became the maximum sentence that could be imposed in Nevada against a person convicted of first degree murder.” Therefore, the Court held:
The district judge was authorized to re-sentence the appellant and invoke the penalty of life without possibility of parole, it being the only lawful penalty which could have been entered upon the *652conviction and finding of the jury that Anderson should receive the maximum sentence permitted by law. (Emphasis supplied). 528 P.2d at 1025.
An even more significant case is Boyd v. Commonwealth of Kentucky, 550 S.W.2d 507 (opinion filed March 11, 1977), wherein the Kentucky Supreme Court held that state’s mandatory death penalty to be unconstitutional,1 and reduced the punishment to life imprisonment. Pertinent to the case at bar is the following:
The jury found Boyd guilty of the intentional multiple murders of Gilliam and Howard. In order for the jury to reach this result it was necessary that it find Boyd guilty of the intentional murders of both Gilliam and Howard under aggravated conditions and reject all possibilities of intentional simple murder or manslaughter convictions.
The jury chose to convict Boyd of the most serious and aggravated offense and invoke the ultimate punishment of death. It deliberately rejected the opportunity to extend mercy by declining to convict Boyd of simple intentional murder or manslaughter in the first degree. It was clearly the intention of the jury to impose the maximum punishment legally permissible. The maximum punishment constitutionally permissible under Kentucky’s 1974 penal code is life imprisonment. Unless the verdict of the jury is to be completely frustrated, it is this punishment which must be imposed upon Boyd for each of the two murders of which he stands convicted.
Thus, the Kentucky Court, under statutory provisions having precisely the same effect as Sec. 39-2405, 2406, T.C.A., followed the identical procedure heretofore suggested in my dissent and now adopted by the majority opinion.
It would be unthinkable for this Court to hold that the Governor of Tennessee does not have the power to issue a commutation in these cases. I, therefore, agree with the majority opinion that he acted “within the constitutional power of the executive, and we cannot refuse to recognize its validity.” However, it is not necessary that we reach this issue. All that is necessary is that we recede from the views expressed in the original opinion and reduce these sentences to life imprisonment.

. Sec. 507.020, KRS defines murder and makes it a capital offense in cases involving multiple murders (as was the case in Boyd). Sec. 532.-030 KRS provides for a mandatory death penalty.