Court Opinion

ID: 9582120
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:22:48.951463+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:37:28.265327
License: Public Domain

*922BISTLINE, Justice,
concurring in the opinion of HUNTLEY, Justice.
Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U.S. 586, 98 S.Ct. 2954, 57 L.Ed.2d 973 (1978), teaches in footnote 16 that the Supreme Court specifically did not address, and so reserved for another day, contentions that the federal Constitution requires jury sentencing and that Ohio’s death penalty statutory procedures impermissibly deny a defendant’s right to be tried by a jury. 98 S.Ct. at 2967. Hence, it is with some concern that today I read a majority opinion of this Court which declares that “the Supreme Court has recognized, in dicta, that judge sentencing should lead to greater consistency in sentencing ... Proffitt v. Florida, 428 U.S. 242, 96 S.Ct. 2960, 49 L.Ed.2d 913 (1976) .... ” It is, perhaps, excusable to confuse remarks of obiter dictum with remarks of a three-member plurality. I am equally concerned that today’s majority opinion intimates that Barclay v. Florida, - U.S. -,103 S.Ct. 3418, 77 L.Ed.2d 1134 (1983), is also authority which should persuade us that jury sentencing is not mandated by the federal Constitution. My reading of that case discloses only that in Florida the jury’s function is simply to recommend and the trial judge, who is the sentencer, is not bound by the recommendation. The Florida procedure is neither like our pre-Furman Idaho procedure nor like our post-Furman Idaho procedure. Rather obviously the majority’s reliance on Barclay for the particular point is a grasp at something, anything, to support a declaration that “[w]e see no reason why a sentencing scheme not involving the jury should be declared unconstitutional under the United States Constitution.” 1 In time the Supreme Court will recognize, as it did in Lockett, its obligation to provide guidance. (“The States now deserve the clearest guidance that the Court can provide; .... ” Lockett, 98 S.Ct. at 2963.) Meanwhile, given the meaningless and misleading intimations of today’s majority opinion on an issue which this Court should meet in response to Justice Huntley’s well-documented Creech opinion, and given the invalidity of our Idaho statute removing the jury as sentencer — as measured against our Idaho Constitution — I have again joined the opinion of Justice Huntley in this case as I did in Creech. The Supreme Court, however, cannot continue to reserve the question if it is to live up to the promise of Lockett. Ultimately it, and only it can make the final decision that something is basically wrong where a nation is divided amongst itself as to the use and utility of capital punishment. Can it be and should it be that in one nation a murderer in one state will be executed, whilst murderers in another state are not? Is a line the purpose of which is to define geographic boundaries of states to forever be the determining factor in determining whether a convicted murderer will live or suffer death? If that be so, then many will see that in and of itself as arbitrary and capricious if one considers the question as the nationál issue, which in reality it is. And assuming that it is wrong on a national basis that the punishment meted out to murderers differs according to State law, then where two murderers are convicted of the same crime committed in one state, is it not arbitrary and capricious that each is sentenced by a different judge? — a proposition to which I shall turn in my own dissenting opinion time permitting. It should be carefully noted that Judge Newhouse in sentencing Sivak could not consider the Bainbridge sentence — which had not been imposed. This Court, however, does have both, and is obligated to consider any dis-proportionality in Sivak’s sentence as compared to that imposed in Bainbridge.

. Today’s majority again, as in Creech, offers no response of any substance.