CAPITAL SENTENCING JURY INSTRUCTIONS - DUE PROCESS
Case: Weeks v. Angelone
Issue: Is the Constitution "violated when a trial judge directs a capital jury’s attention to a specific paragraph of a constitutionally sufficient instruction in response to a question regarding the proper consideration [during the punishment phase] of mitigating circumstances[?]"
Facts: A Virginia jury was deliberating about whether or not to impose the death penalty on defendant Weeks, having previously found him guilty of capital murder. To do so, they had to decide (at a minimum) if the prosecution had proven at least one of two alternative aggravating circumstances beyond a reasonable doubt (that the defendant would constitute a continuing serious violent threat to society or that his conduct involved depravity of mind beyond the minimum necessary to accomplish murder). During punishment deliberations, the jury asked the judge the following question:
If we believe that Lonnie Weeks, Jr. is guilty of at least 1 of the alternatives, then is it our duty as a jury to issue the death penalty? Or must we decide (even though he is guilty of one of the alternatives) whether or not to issue the death penalty, or one of the life sentences? What is the Rule? Please clarify?
The judge responded by pointing the jury to a specific paragraph, paragraph two, of an instruction he had already given them, which paragraph read as follows:
If you find from the evidence that the Commonwealth has proved, beyond a reasonable doubt, either of the two alternatives, and as to that alternative, you are unanimous, then you may fix the punishment of the defendant at death, or if you believe from all the evidence that the death penalty is not justified, then you shall fix the punishment of the defendant at life imprisonment, or imprisonment for live [sic] with a fine not to exceed $100,000.
The judge explained to counsel that he believed he could not answer the question "any clearer than the instruction." The prosecution agreed with the judge’s solution, but the defense counsel objected, indicating that he thought the jury should be instructed that regardless of the alternatives they believed had been proved, they still could impose one of the life sentences instead of the death penalty. [Paragraph one of the instruction in question set out the alternative aggravating factors while paragraph three stated as follows: "If the Commonwealth has failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt at least one of the alternatives, then you shall fix the punishment of the defendant at life imprisonment or imprisonment for live [sic] and a fine of a specific amount, but not more than $100,00.00."]
Over two hours later, the jury returned a verdict sentencing the defendant to death, having found Weeks guilty of murder, having "unanimously found that his conduct . . . involved depravity of mind . . . and having considered the evidence in mitigation of the offense." Then, "the jurors were polled and all responded affirmatively that the foregoing was their verdict in the case."
After the Virginia Supreme Court affirmed petitioner’s conviction and sentence and dismissed his state habeas petition, the case worked its way to the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit which denied a certificate of appealability and dismissed Weeks’s petition.
Holding: When a jury deliberating punishment issues in a capital case poses a question to the court, the Constitution does not require the trial judge to do more than refer the jurors to a constitutionally adequate instruction he has previously given them.
Reasoning: The Chief Justice, who delivered the majority opinion of the Court, noted that a "sentencer may not be precluded from considering, and may not refuse to consider, any constitutionally relevant mitigating evidence." In Buchanan v. Angelone, 522 U.S. 269 (1998), the Court had "further noted that the ‘standard for determining whether jury instructions satisfy these principles was "whether there is a reasonable likelihood that the jury has applied the challenged instruction in a way that prevents the consideration of constitutionally relevant evidence.’" Ibid. (quoting Boyde v. California, 494 U.S. 370, 380 (1990))." Rehnquist then explained that the jury instructions given here passed this test because they were the very instructions the Court "upheld in Buchanan v. Angelone . . . as being sufficient to allow the jury to consider mitigating evidence." He also noted that in addition to these instructions, the trial judge "gave a specific instruction on mitigating evidence that was not given in Buchanan."
Since the original instructions were constitutionally sufficient, and the trial judge responded to the jury’s inquiry by pointing to a specific paragraph of that adequate instruction, the question that remained was whether the Constitution required anything more. To answer this question, the Court pointed to two presumptions: (1)"a jury is presumed to follow its instructions, Richardson v. Marsh, 481 U.S. 200, 211 (1987)," and (2) "a jury is presumed to understand a judge’s answer to its question. See, e.g., Armstrong v. Toler, 11 Wheat. 258, 279 (1826) (opinion of Marshall, C.J.)." Based on these two presumptions, the Court concluded that the jury was not confused about the verdict options before it and the judge’s response was sufficient. Additionally, the Court noted that in this particular case, there was empirical evidence suggesting the jury understood its job.
The Court then concluded that "[a]t best, petitioner has demonstrated only that there exists a slight possibility that the jury considered itself precluded from considering mitigating evidence. Such a demonstration is insufficient to prove a constitutional violation under Boyde, which requires the showing of a reasonable likelihood that the jury felt so restrained."
Since petitioner was seeking a federal writ of habeas corpus from a state sentence, 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d) controlled. "Section 2254(d) prohibits federal habeas relief on any claim ‘adjudicated on the merits in state court proceedings,’ unless the adjudication resulted in a decision that was ‘contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application, of clearly established federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States.’" Based on the foregoing analysis, the Supreme Court of Virginia’s opinion a fortiori passed this statutory test.
Other Opinions: Justice Stevens was joined in dissent by Justices Ginsburg and Breyer and in part by Justice Souter. While he agreed that the standard for judging jury instructions is whether there is a reasonable likelihood that the jury applied the challenged instruction in a way that prevented the consideration of constitutionally relevant evidence, he disagreed about the proper conclusion to draw from the record. In particular, he argued that a number of factors–the text of the instructions, the judge’s responses to the jury’s inquiries, the verdict forms given to the jury, and the court reporter’s transcription of the polling of the jury -- established to a "virtual certainty" that Week’s jury did not understand that it could find one of the aggravating factors to be present and still not impose the death penalty because of mitigating evidence.
Stevens believed that the jury considered mitigation only in the context of determining the existence vel non of aggravating factors and repeatedly stressed that the trial court could have easily answered the jury’s inquiry in a clean and explicit manner.
Comment: Although Justice Stevens is undoubtedly correct in his assertion that the trial judge could have done a better job of answering the jury’s question, his characterization of the record is remarkably tendentious. His dissent completely fails to mention paragraph three of the challenged instruction which informs the jury that it "shall" fix punishment at life if the Commonwealth of Virginia fails to prove at least one alternative aggravating factor. This paragraph, combined with paragraph two which tells the jury that it "may" fix punishment at death if the Commonwealth of Virginia proves either aggravating alternative beyond a reasonable doubt, clearly informs a rational jury that it need not fix punishment at death, even if Virginia proves an aggravating factor.