Presnell v. Georgia
| Decision Date | 06 November 1978 |
| Docket Number | No. 77-6885,77-6885 |
| Citation | 58 L.Ed.2d 207,99 S.Ct. 235,439 U.S. 14 |
| Parties | Virgil Delano PRESNELL, Jr. v. State of GEORGIA |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
Petitioner was indicted and found guilty by a jury of three capital offenses—rape, kidnaping with bodily injury, and murder with malice aforethought. Under Georgia law, a jury may impose the death penalty if it finds that the offender committed a capital felony under at least 1 of 10 statutorily enumerated aggravating circumstances. Ga.Code § 27-2534.1(b) (1975). The only such circumstance relevant here is that
"[t]he [capital] offense . . . was committed while the offender was engaged in the commission of another capital felony . . . ." § 27-2534.1(b)(2).
At the penalty phase of petitioner's trial, the jury was instructed that it could impose the death penalty (1) for rape if that offense was committed while petitioner was engaged in the commission of murder, (2) for kidnaping with bodily injury if that offense was committed while petitioner was engaged in the commission of rape, or (3) for murder if that offense was committed while petitioner was engaged in the commission of "kidnapping with bodily harm, aggravated sodomy." The jury found that all three offenses were committed during the commission of the specified additional offenses, and it imposed three death sentences on petitioner.
On appeal, the Supreme Court of Georgia held that the first two death sentences imposed by the jury could not stand. 241 Ga. 49, 52, 64, 243 S.E.2d 496, 501, 508 (1978). Both sentences depended upon petitioner's having committed forcible rape, and the court determined that the jury had not properly convicted petitioner of that offense.1
In addition, the Supreme Court of Georgia held that the State could not rely upon sodomy as constituting the bodily injury associated with the kidnaping.2 Nonetheless, despite the fact that the jury had been instructed that the death penalty for murder depended upon a finding that it was committed while petitioner was engaged in "kidnapping with bodily harm, aggravated sodomy " (emphasis added), the Georgia Supreme Court upheld the third death penalty imposed by the jury. It did so on the theory that, despite the lack of a jury finding of forcible rape, evidence in the record supported the conclusion that petitioner was guilty of that offense, which in turn established the element of bodily harm necessary to make the kidnaping a sufficiently aggravating circumstance to justify the death sentence.
In Cole v. Arkansas, 333 U.S. 196, 68 S.Ct. 514, 92 L.Ed. 644 (1948), petitioners were convicted at trial of one offense but their convictions were affirmed by the Supreme Court of Arkansas on the basis of evidence in the record indicating that they had committed another offense on which the jury had not been instructed. In reversing the convictions, Mr. Justice Black wrote for a unanimous Court:
"It is as much a violation of due process to send an accused to prison following conviction of a charge on which he was never tried as it would be to convict him upon a charge that was never made. . . . "To conform to due process of law, petitioners were entitled to have the validity of their convictions appraised on consideration of the case as it was tried and as the issues were determined in the trial court." Id., at 201-202, 68 S.Ct. at 517.3
These fundamental principles of procedural fairness apply with no less force at the penalty phase of a trial in a capital case than they do in the guilt-determining phase of any criminal trial. Cf. Gardner v. Florida, 430 U.S. 349, 97 S.Ct. 1197, 51 L.Ed.2d 393 (1977). In light of these principles, the death sentence for the crime of murder with malice aforethought cannot stand.
Insofar as the petition for certiorari challenges the conviction for kidnaping with bodily injury 4 and the imposition of the death sentence, it is granted along with petitioner's motion to proceed in forma pauperis. The judgment of the Supreme Court of Georgia affirming the conviction for kidnaping with bodily injury and the death sentence for murder is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion. Insofar as the petition challenges the convictions for murder, kidnaping, and statutory rape, it is denied.
It is so ordered.
I join the opinion of the Court. For the reasons stated in my dissenting opinion in Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153, 227, 96 S.Ct. 2909, 2950, 49 L.Ed.2d 859 (1976), I would in addition hold that the death penalty violates the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments and that therefore petitioner may not be resentenced to death in any proceedings following remand from this Court.
While I join the opinion of the Court, I again emphasize my opinion that the death penalty in any proceeding is unconstitutional.
If, as the per curiam opinion for the Court states, the Supreme Court of Georgia had found petitioner guilty of kidnap- ing with bodily injury in spite of a failure of the jury to return a proper guilty verdict for that crime, I would join this decision. My review of the record and the opinion of the Georgia court, however, has convinced me that petitioner's conviction for that crime might well have been upheld on the basis of the jury's proper verdict. Because the opinion of the Supreme Court of Georgia is fundamentally ambiguous on this point, I would remand the case for clarification rather than vacating petitioner's sentence of death. Accordingly, I dissent.
Petitioner was indicted for five offenses: murder of Lori Ann Smith; kidnaping of Lori Ann Smith; rape of Andrea Furlong; aggravated sodomy of Andrea Furlong; and the kidnaping of Andrea Furlong "with bodily injury." The aggravated sodomy charge was not submitted to the jury, as the aggravated sodomy of Andrea was alleged to have supplied the bodily injury element of her kidnaping. The jury returned guilty verdicts on all four counts. It sentenced petitioner to death on three of the counts: (i) the murder of Lori Ann, with the kidnaping of Andrea with bodily injury as a specified aggravating circumstance; (ii) the rape of Andrea, with the murder of Lori Ann as a specified aggravating circumstance; and (iii) the kidnaping of Andrea with bodily injury, with the rape of Andrea as a specified aggravating circumstance. Petitioner also was sentenced to a term of years for the kidnaping of Lori Ann.
On appeal, the Georgia court vacated the death sentences for the rape of Andrea and the kidnaping of Andrea with bodily injury. With respect to the rape of Andrea, the court noted that the jury was instructed on both forcible and statutory rape and returned a verdict that did not distinguish between the two crimes. As only forcible rape was a capital crime under Georgia law, petitioner had to be resentenced as if he had been convicted only of statutory rape. With respect to the kidnaping of Andrea, the court did not indicate whether it vacated the sentence because it believed our recent opinion in Coker v. Georgia, 433 U.S. 584, 97 S.Ct. 2861, 53 L.Ed.2d 982 (1977), so mandated, or because the specified aggravating circumstance for this offense, the rape of Andrea, also was tainted by the jury's failure to distinguish between forcible and statutory rape.1 The court did not disturb, however, the conviction for the underlying offense of kidnaping with bodily injury.
The Georgia court did affirm the sentence of death for the murder of Lori Ann, the kidnaping of Andrea with bodily injury being the aggravating circumstance. The validity of that kidnapping conviction is the matter in issue here. According to the Court, the court below ruled that even though as a matter of state law the aggravated sodomy of Andrea could not provide the bodily-injury element of the kidnaping, that element was supplied by the evidence of forcible rape. The Court then holds that the Georgia court could not constitutionally rely on evidence of forcible rape as bodily injury, because the jury may have convicted petitioner only of statutory rape, which requires no finding of force. Statutory rape would therefore be insufficient to provide the bodily-injury element associated with the kidnaping, which in turn would render that offense insufficient as an aggravating circumstance for the purpose of imposing the death penalty.2
Although the opinion of the Georgia court is not a model of clarity, a careful reading of the decision persuades me that the Court has misconstrued a critical part of what was held below. The Court is correct that the Georgia Supreme Court was not entitled to rely upon the evidence in the record of forcible rape to supply the bodily-injury component of the kidnaping.3 But it is incorrect to say that the court below necessarily rejected the jury's unambiguous finding of aggravated sodomy 4 as establishing the bodily injury that converted simple kidnaping into a capital offense under Georgia law. On this point the opinion of the state court is hopelessly obscure. As the Court observes, portions of the opinion may be read as indicating that aggravated sodomy, a crime that has as an element a forcible assault upon the victim, cannot constitute "bodily injury" with respect to the crime of kidnaping with bodily injury. Ante, at 15 n. 2. An equally plausible reading of the opinion, however, is that once the court determined that the evidence of harm inflicted during the rape established bodily injury, it did not think it necessary to decide the question whether aggravated sodomy, considered alone, also could establish that element. Certainly that question was not necessarily decided by the court, as it believed that bodily injury was proved, at least in part, by the evidence of forcible rape.5 Moreover, the trial court expressly held that the sodomy did satisfy the bodily injury requirement,...
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