Court Opinion

ID: 9456546
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 19:56:26.188252+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:01.418702
License: Public Domain

HAYNSWORTH, Chief Judge.
PETITION FOR REHEARING
I joined in the panel decision and in the vote denying a rehearing only because of the explicit testimony of the victim’s physician that she suffered no lasting physical or' psychological harm. This fact seems to me of crucial significance in separating this case from those other rape cases in which the death penalty may be justified under the Eighth Amendment.
The harm done the victim may or may not bear upon the moral guilt of her attacker. If there is lasting physical injury, it probably will, but it well may not if the lasting harm is psychological. But the nature, degree and duration of the harm have long been recognized as important criteria in determining the appropriateness of punishment. The difference between murder and attempted murder is a fortuitous accident without relevance to the assailant’s moral culpability, but in every jurisdiction which retains capital punishment for murder, the survival of the victim avoids all possibility of imposition of the death penalty.
The victim of any rape, of course, suffers harm and great indignity, but if the harm is not lasting, either physically or psychologically, as her physician testified without contradiction, one of the most important criteria which may be thought to justify the death penalty in other rape cases is simply absent.
There is nothing in the court’s opinion suggestive of mitigation of the rapist’s conduct or suggesting that he be released from imprisonment. The state can confine him as long as he lives. There is, however, a qualitative difference between life and death which cannot be so readily disregarded as even vast differences between terms of years. For myself, therefore, I will find myself entirely free in another case to find no bar in the Eighth Amendment against the imposition of the death penalty for rape if the victim suffered grievous physical or psychological harm whether or not it clearly appeared that her life had been endangered.
BOREMAN, Circuit Judge, with whom BRYAN, Circuit Judge, joins, dissenting from the majority’s refusal to grant rehearing en bane:
A three-judge panel of this court has held that the imposition of the death penalty upon William Ralph for rape violates the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments and has remanded the case to the district court with directions to withhold the writ of habeas corpus for a reasonable time to permit the State of Maryland to impose a sentence other than death. The panel has determined that the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment forbids Ralph’s execution for rape since his victim’s life was neither taken nor endangered. The decision does not hold that the Maryland statute authorizing the death penalty for the crime of rape is unconstitutional per se, but determines that the punishment imposed in this case was so disproportionate to the crime of rape committed upon the victim that it violates the Eighth Amendment. Indeed, the panel decision states *795A majority of this court has ordered that Maryland’s petition for rehearing en banc be denied.
*794“At issue, therefore, is the constitutionality of the trial court’s selection of the death penalty from the alternatives allowed by the statute * *
*795In 1964 this court considered and disposed of several questions then presented on appeal from a denial of habeas corpus relief by the United States District Court for the District of Maryland. Ralph v. Pepersack, 335 F.2d 128. At page 141 we noted Ralph’s contention that the imposition of the death penalty on a convicted rapist is “uncivilized conduct” and constitutes cruel and inhuman punishment where he has neither taken nor endangered the life of his victim and pointed to Rudolph v. Alabama, 375 U.S. 889, 84 S.Ct. 155, 11 L.Ed.2d 119 (1963), in which the Court denied certiorari. Ordinarily, the mere denial of certiorari is not to be considered as decisive of questions raised by the application but in Rudolph a majority of the Court clearly refused to consider the question here presented. Such refusal was reflected in Justice Goldberg’s dissent (in which he was joined by Justices Douglas and Brennan), the dissenters arguing that the Court should grant certiorari for the express purpose of considering this Eighth Amendment question. Justice Goldberg called attention to the trend away from capital punishment, just as does the opinion in the instant case, and referred to statistics then available in 1963. Thus, in Rudolph it clearly appeared that the Supreme Court had the opportunity to consider the very question here presented but declined to do so and we, therefore, stated that we had found no Supreme Court decision to support Ralph’s Eighth Amendment contention and that we were not disposed to act favorably upon it.1
The panel decision in the instant case is premised upon two principal factors: First, what is couched in terms as a trend demonstrated by legislatures to abolish capital punishment for the crime of rape, coupled with the infrequency of the exaction of the supreme penalty in jurisdictions that still authorize it; and, secondly, that the selection of the death penalty from the range of punishments authorized by the statute is anomalous when considering the large numbers of rapists who are sentenced to prison in eases where the life of the victim has not been taken or endangered.
It is well settled that the imposition of a sentence in a criminal case is ordinarily a matter peculiarly within the province of the trial judge and that a sentence within limits prescribed by law will be reviewed on appeal only where it is so grossly and inordinately disproportionate to the offense that the sentence obviously was dictated not by a sense of public duty, but by passion, prejudice, ill will, vidictiveness or other unworthy motive.2
3
The conclusion of the panel that the two factors above mentioned coalesce to establish that the death sentence is so disproportionate to the crime of rape when the victim’s life is neither taken nor endangered that it violates the Eighth Amendment runs contra to these principles.
In the first place, this court now seeks to modify a sentence meted out under a statute constitutionally valid in 1961 because trends in other jurisdictions indicate that, in 1970, death is considered an excessive penalty for rape. Punishment is inflicted according to the law at the time of the judgment; and if standards of today dictate a mitigation of the penalty for a 1961 crime, executive clemency or legislative action specifically providing that new laws shall apply to punishment under the old are the appropriate modes and methods for applying today’s standards. These functions should not be usurped by the courts. This is not to say that the Eighth Amendment is not a limitation on both legislative and judicial action but this court should not excuse its interference in these functions by saying at issue is the constitutionality *796of the trial court’s selection of the death penalty when, in 1961, in selecting the death penalty the court obviously could not anticipate the trends in 1970. The decision in this case actually legislates, limiting the Maryland penalties for rape and the imposition of the death sentence thereunder to precise circumstances where the victim’s life was either taken or endangered.3 But the term “endangered” in itself is extremely imprecise; what circumstances may be encompassed by the term are very broad and, indeed, the term “endangered” may well have encompassed the circumstances in the instant case. The Maryland statute is broad in its scope and provides great latitude to the sentencing court in fixing the penalty for rape, as minimal as eighteen months and as severe as death. See Ann.Code of Md. (Repl.Vol, 1967), Art. 27, § 461. Is this Maryland statute unconstitutional in its present form or is it constitutional on its face but unconstitutionally applied if the death penalty is imposed in cases other than those in which a victim’s life is taken or endangered?
Second, and foremost, the very facts recited in rather abbreviated form in the court’s opinion are contrary to the decision as rendered:
“Armed with a tire iron, Ralph broke into the victim’s home late at night. Threatening her and her young son, who was asleep in another room, with death if she did not submit, he forcibly committed rape and sodomy.”
But there are other facts and circumstances which properly may be taken into consideration. Ralph entered the victim’s home in the dead of night and as he entered through the garage and basement he pulled out the fuse box to make certain that he would be operating in the dark and thus make identification more difficult. He picked up a metal tire tool which he carried with him to the victim’s bedroom and which was later found there. It was apparent that he had had the victim’s home under surveillance before breaking in at 2 o’clock in the morning and his visit appears to have been carefully planned and premeditated. It was obvious that he was bent on rape and was prepared to resort to such violence as might be necessary. The victim was not selected at random. She was a small, frail woman and Ralph threatened that if she made an outcry he would kill her and her young son asleep in the next room. To me, this is an aggravated case, not only because of the threats of death to the victim and her son which put her in mortal fear but also for the reason that before the crime of rape was perpetrated the defendant performed perverted and degrading acts upon the person of the victim and then subjected her to further degradations and perversions. Many a victim under such circumstances might well prefer death.
The offense here was committed on March 21, 1960, in Maryland’s Montgomery County near the District of Columbia line. Two or three nights later a black male answering to Ralph’s description entered another home not far distant from the scene of this crime where he attempted to commit rape but was beaten off by the woman’s daughter and he made good his escape. It was only two or three nights after that when Ralph was arrested on a street near a wooded area to which the police had been dispatched after reports of a woman’s screams. This woman, Mrs. Robinson, also described her attacker as a black male, the description fitting this prisoner, but when she was called to the police station in Washington and saw Ralph she was not able to positively identify him since she had been attacked in the dark. She had been grabbed while walking along the street and was forced by her attacker into the woods and there, before being raped, she was forced to submit to acts of perversion. Despite the failure *797of the victim to identify him, Ralph confessed that he was Mrs. Robinson’s attacker.
In the instant case, the victim reacted to the threats upon her life and the life of her young child and submitted to rape and sodomy. If the victim’s life was not endangered what do these circumstances constitute? If a majority of this court is determined to strike down the death penalty for rape in accordance with the “trend” and intends to limit the circumstances under which the death sentence may be imposed, it should more clearly define “endangered.” Surely the court is not seeking to impose a “harm-to-vie-tim” situation similar to that under various kidnaping statutes, such as under Title 18 U.S.C. § 1201. Is the court’s decision to be construed as saying that the victim in the instant case had to be hit over the head with the tire iron for her life to be endangered? The crime of rape is a crime of force against the consent of the victim and while force is an element of the crime there is the clear alternative, intimidation, which may be by threats of immediate great bodily harm accompanied by the apparent power of execution. To be bashed with a tire iron certainly constitutes great bodily harm and intimidation is the inescapable result when, in the face of a threat of death, a man armed with a tire iron has the immediate and apparent power of executing the threat. Furthermore, there are other dangers to the life and health of the victim inherent in Ralph’s attack which should not be lightly disregarded. What about the possibility of pregnancy and of infecting the victim with a loathsome disease? Is it only when the attack does not produce the possible dire results that the death penalty becomes cruel, inhuman and unusual punishment ?
Ralph’s case was tried in Maryland before a Bench of three judges without a jury and the death penalty was chosen from the statutory alternatives as the appropriate punishment, justifiable under the circumstances. In its opinion the panel here admonishes that the constitutionality of Ralph’s punishment cannot rest on the subjective opinions of the judges who imposed the sentence or of the judges who must review the case; that, on the contrary, his punishment must be tested objectively. If the objective test to be applied in the instant case is to turn upon whether the victim’s life was “endangered,” the death penalty for rape may never be objectively imposed absent further explication and elucidation as to what constitutes danger to life. It is my impression that the judges of the panel in the instant case have imposed their own subjective opinion upon the facts of the instant case and have decided to weigh the trauma, harm and danger to the victim upon the cold record. The panel concludes that
“The prosecuting witness was neither of tender years nor aged, but she was frail and unquestionably her fear was genuine. The physician who thoroughly examined her shortly after the crime testified that he found ‘no outward evidence of injury or violence’ nor any signs of unusual psychological trauma.”
From this, the panel apparently concludes that the victim’s life was not endangered. There may have been no visible evidence of physical injury since the victim admittedly offered no resistance because of the intimidation and the threat of death. Does the fact that the victim was not brutally beaten and there was no evidence of physical violence on the part of the attacker save Ralph from the death penalty? If so, then the permissible punishment in a rape case may depend entirely upon whether the victim submitted or resisted. In my opinion it was for the trial judges who were there to observe and view the witnesses at the trial to make this necessary subjective finding. It was appropriate for them to conclude that the victim’s life was endangered and that she, having been forcibly raped without consent, was, indeed, seriously harmed.
The question of the appropriateness of a particular penalty for a particular crime may be entirely proper, that is, is *798the penalty disproportionate to the actual circumstances of the crime involved ? If the decision here is to be limited to the case of William Ralph, in that his sentence was disproportionate to the crime he committed, then it appears that the question is one as to the subjective judgment of the appellate court versus the subjective judgment of the trial court. I can find no justification here for this court’s substitution of its judgment for that of the trial judges.
The panel’s decision is silent on the meaning of the term “endangered” and I am disappointed that the invitation to render a more definitive decision as to when and under what circumstances a life is endangered has been declined by a majority of the members of this court.

. Ralph v. Pepersack, 335 F.2d 128, at 141.

. Weems v. United States, 217 U.S. 349, 30 S.Ct. 544, 54 L.Ed. 793 (1910) ; 21 Am.Jur.2d Criminal Law §§ 614, 564.

. It seems rather senseless to include a situation where the victim’s life was taken, for by that very act the crime of murder evolves and thus another question is presented as to whether the death penalty is appropriate.