Court Opinion

ID: 9842059
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-22 20:12:33.871745+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:09:28.652122
License: Public Domain

Justice Rehnquist,
with whom Justice White joins,
dissenting.
Today the Court affirms the decision of the Arizona Supreme Court vacating the death sentence imposed on respondent for a murder committed in the course of an armed robbery. Applying the interpretation given the Double Jeopardy Clause by a bare majority of this Court in Bullington v. Missouri, 451 U. S. 430 (1981), the Court concludes that in this case the first sentencing also amounted to an implied acquittal of respondent’s eligibility for the death penalty. I continue to believe that Bullington was wrongly decided for the reasons expressed in Justice Powell’s dissent in that case. But even apart from those views, I do not believe that the reasoning underlying Bullington applies to this remand for resentencing to correct a legal error. Accordingly, I dissent.
The central premise of the Court’s holding today is that the trial court’s first finding — that there were no aggravating and no mitigating circumstances and therefore only a life sentence could be imposed — amounted to an “implied acquittal” on the merits of respondent’s eligibility for the death sentence, thereby barring the possibility of an enhanced sentence upon resentencing by virtue of the Double Jeopardy Clause. But the Court’s continued reliance on the “implied acquittal” rationale of Bullington is simply inapt. Unlike the jury’s decision in Bullington, where the jury had broad discretion to decide whether capital punishment was appropriate, the trial judge’s discretion in this case was carefully confined and directed to determining whether certain specified aggravating factors existed. Compare Mo. Rev. Stat. §565.008 (1979) with Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann. §13-703(E) *214(Supp. 1983-1984). It is obvious from the record that the State established at the first hearing that respondent murdered his victim in the course of an armed robbery, a fact which was undisputed at sentencing. In no sense can it be meaningfully argued that the State failed to “prove” its case — the existence of at least one aggravating circumstance. It is hard to see how there has been an “implied acquittal” of a statutory aggravating circumstance when the record explicitly establishes the factual basis that such an aggravating circumstance existed. But for the trial judge’s erroneous construction of governing state law, the judge would have been required to impose the death penalty.
If, as a matter of state law, the Arizona Supreme Court had simply corrected the erroneous sentence itself without remanding, there could be no argument that Bullington would prevent the imposition of the death sentence. That much was made clear in our decision in United States v. Wilson, 420 U. S. 332 (1975). After stating the well-settled rule that an appellate court’s order reversing a conviction is subject to further review without subjecting a defendant to double jeopardy, we wrote:
“It is difficult to see why the rule should be any different simply because the defendant has gotten a favorable postverdict ruling of law from the District Judge rather than from the Court of Appeals, or because the District Judge has relied to some degree on evidence presented at trial in making his ruling. Although review of any ruling of law discharging a defendant obviously enhances the likelihood of conviction and subjects him to continuing expense and anxiety, a defendant has no legitimate claim to benefit from an error of law when that error could be corrected without subjecting him to a second trial before a second trier of fact.” Id., at 345.
The fact that in this case the legal error was ultimately corrected by the trial court did not mean that the State sought to marshal the same or additional evidence against a *215capital defendant which had proved insufficient to prove the State’s “case” against him the first time. There is no logical reason for a different result here simply because the Arizona Supreme Court remanded the case to the trial court for the purpose of correcting the legal error, particularly when the resentencing did not constitute the kind of “retrial” which the BuWmgton Court condemned. Accordingly, I would reverse the decision of the Arizona Supreme Court in this case.