Court Opinion

ID: 9678466
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 06:20:25.814612+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:04.774227
License: Public Domain

HARBISON, Justice,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent, particularly from that portion of the majority opinion which recognizes but refuses to follow and to apply the holding of the Supreme Court of the United States in Dobbert v. Florida, 432 U.S. 282, 97 S.Ct. 2290, 53 L.Ed.2d 344 (1977).
In that case the Supreme Court of the United States, in a six-to-three decision, construed the ex post facto provisions of the United States Constitution fully and authoritatively. The majority of this Court has seen fit to accept the rationale of the dissenting opinion, rather than the majority opinion of that Court, and has accepted arguments advanced in this case which were considered in depth and expressly rejected by the United States Supreme Court.
The Constitution of Tennessee has neither been cited, briefed nor argued in this case. I think that it is an unfortunate development in constitutional law for the Court, sua sponte, to conclude that the term “ex post facto” has a different meaning in the Constitution of Tennessee from the identical words used in the Constitution of the United States. Heretofore, the courts of this state, in discussing ex post facto laws, have cited and relied upon interpretations of Article I, Section 10, of the United States Constitution, and there has never been the slightest suggestion that the provisions of the Tennessee Constitution were any different in content, scope and meaning from those in the federal constitution. See Stinson v. State, 208 Tenn. 159, 344 S.W.2d 369 (1961); Davis v. Beeler, 185 Tenn. 638, 207 S.W.2d 343 (1947).
Implicit in the majority opinion is a conclusion that the 1977 statute, under which petitioner was brought to trial, m some way “enhanced” or “increased” the punishment for first-degree murder. That statute, rather than making the death penalty for first-degree murder mandatory, made it discretionary and expressly authorized the trier of fact to consider specific aggravating circumstances and any and all mitigating circumstances which the accused might wish to present. In an identical situation, the Supreme Court of the United States in Dobbert v. Florida, supra, held that there was no enhancement of punishment in such a new statute, but that the new statute was basically procedural and tended to ameliorate, not to enhance, the punishment prescribed in an earlier mandatory death penalty statute.1
There is not the slightest suggestion in the majority opinion that Dobbert v. Florida, supra, can be distinguished, in any constitutional sense, from the instant case. The “sequence of events” set forth in the appendix to the majority opinion is almost identical to that which occurred in Florida, as outlined in the majority opinion in Dob-bert. There the murder was committed several months before an existing mandatory death penalty was held invalid. A new statute was enacted subsequently, and the accused was brought to trial thereunder. Holding that there was no ex post facto application of the new statute, the Supreme Court of the United States rejected the contention, accepted by the majority here, that there was no “valid” death penalty “in effect” on the date of the crime — and the implicit notion contained in such contention that a criminal, somehow, acquires a constitutional “right” to commit first-degree murder and be immunized from any power of the state later to subject him to the death penalty.
Responding to the argument that the mandatory death penalty contained in the statutes at the time the murder was committed could not be enforced, and that, therefore, a later death penalty provision *764could not be applied to the criminal offense, the majority of the Supreme Court stated:
“But this sophistic argument mocks the substance of the ex post facto clause. Whether or not the old statute would in the future, withstand constitutional attack, it clearly indicated Florida’s view of the severity of murder and of the degree of punishment which the legislature wished to impose upon murderers. The statute was intended to provide maximum deterrence, and its existence on the statute books provided fair warning as to the degree of culpability which the State ascribed to the act of murder.” 432 U.S. at 297, 97 S.Ct. at 2300.
Whether Tennessee does or does not have a death penalty is a matter to be determined by the duly elected representatives of the people of this state. Consistently since 1919, the General Assembly has provided for the death penalty for first-degree murder. The experiment attempted in 1915, abolishing the death penalty, was short-lived. Regardless of our views as to the desirability or effectiveness of the death penalty, it is the General Assembly which must make the policy for the state on this subject. In my opinion, that body has spoken in clear, decisive terms and has enacted a statute which is not vulnerable to the ex post facto or retroactivity arguments advanced by the majority in this case.
It must be remembered, after all, that we are dealing with first-degree murder, one of the highest crimes against society. When the unspeakably brutal murder involved herein was committed by the petitioner, the penalty prescribed by the General Assembly of this state was death by electrocution, and that penalty was mandatory in all cases of first-degree murder. The 1977 statute, under which petitioner was tried, made the penalty discretionary. The same conduct was proscribed in both statutes, however, and the definition of first-degree murder, insofar as pertinent to this case, was not changed by the 1977 legislation.
Every contention advanced by the petitioner in this case was thoroughly and carefully considered by the Supreme Court of the United States in Dobbert v. Florida, supra, and was rejected. Similar arguments were rejected by the Supreme Court of Virginia in the recent case of Smith v. Commonwealth, 219 Va. 455, 248 S.E.2d 135 (1978).
I cannot concur in or approve the statement contained in the majority opinion that this Court will not “accept the holding of Dobbert as a matter of Tennessee constitutional law.”
I have reviewed the record in this case in detail. After considering all of the assignments of error made by counsel appointed to represent the petitioner, I would affirm both the conviction and the sentence imposed pursuant thereto.
I am authorized to state that Mr. Justice Fones joins in this dissenting opinion.
MEMORANDUM ON PETITIONS TO REHEAR
Both Miller and the State have filed petitions to rehear. The State asks us to reconsider our determination that application of the 1977 Act to Miller violates the ex post facto provision of the Tennessee Constitution. This Court labored long and laboriously in a concentrated effort to reconcile conflicting internal views. We decline to accept the State’s invitation. The majority continues to be of the opinion that the penalty of death by electrocution is invalid under Article I, Section 11 of the Constitution of Tennessee. Justices Harbison and Fones continue to adhere to a contrary view.
Miller argues that the Court should have remanded the case and allowed a jury to fix his punishment for a term of years between twenty years and life imprisonment. This claim is predicated upon the original disposition ordered in Collins v. State, 550 S.W.2d 643 (Tenn.1977).
The first opinion in Collins applied the rule that the invalidation of a statute operates to revive prior valid acts. See State v. Dixon, 530 S.W.2d 73 (Tenn.1975). Then we looked briefly to Chapter 5 of the Acts of 1919, which recited, inter alia:
*765When any person is convicted of the crime of murder in the first degree, or as an accessory before the fact of such a crime, it shall be the duty of the Jury convicting him in their verdict to fix his punishment, which punishment shall be death in the mode prescribed by law for the infliction of the death penalty in capital cases, or the Jury may, if they are of opinion that there are mitigating circumstances, fix the punishment at imprisonment in the penitentiary for life, or for some period over twenty years.
We then observed that this statute “did not prescribe sufficiently detailed procedures to accomplish ‘controlled discretion’ by the jury in the imposition of the death penalty . . . .” Therefore, we declared the death penalty provisions contained therein void. This, however, in the view of the Court, affected only the death penalty and not the remaining penal provisions of the Act. Hence, in the original opinion, we remanded to the trial court, under the 1919 Act, for the assessment of punishment ranging from twenty years to life imprisonment.
We note, upon examination of Chapter 5 of the Acts of 1919, that it contains no severability clause. In the absence of such a clause the unconstitutional death penalty provision may not be elided from the Act. The doctrine of elision is not favored in the law, Armistead v. Karseh, 192 Tenn. 137, 237 S.W.2d 960 (1951). There is also a presumption arising from the absence of a severability clause that the Legislature would not have passed the enactment without the objectionable matter. Maury County v. Porter, 195 Tenn. 116, 257 S.W.2d 16 (1953). In order for the Court to elide, we must be able to say that the statute would have been passed without the omitted provision. Phillips v. West, 187 Tenn. 57, 213 S.W.2d 3 (1952). The brevity of the statute and the fact that the penal provisions are so closely related and interdependent make it unwise and untenable for us to speculate that the Legislature would have passed one provision without the other.
The result is that Chapter 5 of the Acts of 1919 is unconstitutional. This validates the assertion contained in the main opinion that “the legally effective punishment for first degree murder on the date of the crime . . . was life imprisonment,” pursuant to ch. 181 of the 1915 Act.
The petitions to rehear are respectfully overruled.
BROCK, C. J., and COOPER, J., concurring.
FONES and HARBISON, JJ., dissenting.

. In the present case the petitioner made n attempt to prove any mitigating circumstances at the sentencing hearing.