Zant v. Stephens

• Decision Date: 03 May 1982
• Docket Number: No. 81-89,81-89
• Citation: 72 L.Ed.2d 222,456 U.S. 410,102 S.Ct. 1856
• Parties: Walter ZANT, Warden, Petitioner, v. Alpha Otis O'Daniel STEPHENS
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

456 U.S. 410

102 S.Ct. 1856

72 L.Ed.2d 222

Walter ZANT, Warden, Petitioner,

v Alpha Otis O'Daniel STEPHENS.

No. 81-89.

Argued Feb. 24, 1982.

Decided May 3, 1982.

PER CURIAM.

The respondent was convicted of murder in a Georgia Superior Court. His sentencing jury found the following statutory aggravating circumstances: ¹ "(1) that the offense of murder was committed by a person with a prior record of conviction of a capital felony, Code Ann. § 27-2534.1(b)(1); (2) that the murder was committed by a person who has a substantial history of serious assaultive criminal convictions, Code Ann. § 27-2534.1(b)(1), supra; and, (3) that the offense of murder was committed by a person who had escaped from the lawful custody of a peace officer or a place of lawful confinement, Code Ann. § 27-2534.1(b)(9)." Stephens v. Hopper, 241 Ga. 596, 597-598, 247 S.E.2d 92, 94, cert. denied, 439 U.S. 991, 99 S.Ct. 593, 58 L.Ed.2d 667 (1978).

The jury imposed the death penalty. On direct appeal, the Georgia Supreme Court affirmed. Stephens v. State, 237 Ga. 259, 227 S.E.2d 261, cert. denied, 429 U.S. 986, 97 S.Ct. 508, 50 L.Ed.2d 599 (1976). On the authority of Arnold v. State, 236 Ga. 534, 224 S.E.2d 386 (1976), it set aside the second statutory aggravating circumstance found by the jury. It upheld the death sentence, however, on the ground that in Arnold "that was the sole aggravating circumstance found by the jury," whereas in the case under review "the evidence supports the jury's findings of the other statutory aggravating circumstances, and consequently the sentence is not impaired." 237 Ga., at 261-262, 227 S.E.2d, at 263.

After exhausting his state postconviction remedies, Stephens v. Hopper, supra, the respondent applied for a writ of habeas corpus in Federal District Court. Relief was denied by that court, but the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit "reverse[d] the district court's denial of habeas corpus relief insofar as it le[ft] standing the [respondent's] death sentence, and . . . remanded for further proceedings." 631 F.2d 397, 407 (1980), modified, 648 F.2d 446 (1981). We granted the State's petition for certiorari. 454 U.S. 814, 102 S.Ct. 90, 70 L.Ed.2d 82.

In Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153, 96 S.Ct. 2909, 49 L.Ed.2d 859 (1976), we upheld the Georgia death penalty statute because the standards and procedures set forth therein promised to alleviate to a significant degree the concern of Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, 92 S.Ct. 2726, 33 L.Ed.2d 346 (1972), that the death penalty not be imposed capriciously or in a freakish manner. We recognized that the constitutionality of Georgia death sentences ultimately would depend on the Georgia Supreme Court's construing the statute and reviewing capital sentences consistently with this concern. See 428 U.S., at 198, 201-206, 96 S.Ct., at 2937, 2938-2940 (opinion of Stewart, POWELL and STEVENS, JJ.); id., at 211-212, 222-224, 96 S.Ct., at 2943, 2947-2949 (WHITE, J., concurring in judgment). Our review of the statute did not lead us to examine all of its nuances. It was only after the state law relating to capital sentencing was clarified in concrete cases that we confronted and addressed more specific constitutional challenges in Coker v. Georgia, 433 U.S. 584, 97 S.Ct. 2861, 53 L.Ed.2d 982 (1977); Presnell v. Georgia, 439 U.S. 14, 99 S.Ct. 235, 58 L.Ed.2d 207 (1978); Green v. Georgia, 442 U.S. 95, 99 S.Ct. 2150, 60 L.Ed.2d 738 (1979); and Godfrey v. Georgia, 446 U.S. 420, 100 S.Ct. 1759, 64 L.Ed.2d 398 (1980).

Today, we are asked to decide whether a reviewing court constitutionally may sustain a death sentence as long as at least one of a plurality of statutory aggravating circumstances found by the jury is valid and supported by the evidence. The Georgia Supreme Court consistently has asserted that authority.² Its construction of state law is clear: "Where two or more statutory aggravating circumstances are found by the jury, the failure of one circumstance does not so taint the proceedings as to invalidate the other aggravating circumstance found and the sentence of death based thereon." Gates v. State, 244 Ga. 587, 599, 261 S.E.2d 349, 358 (1979), cert. denied, 445 U.S. 938, 100 S.Ct. 1332, 63 L.Ed.2d 772 (1980).

Despite the clarity of the state rule we are asked to review, there is considerable uncertainty about the state-law prem- ises of that rule.³ The Georgia Supreme Court has never explained the rationale for its position. It may be that implicit in the rule is a determination that multiple findings of statutory aggravating circumstances are superfluous, or a determination that the reviewing court may assume the role of the jury when the sentencing jury recommended the death penalty under legally erroneous instructions. In this Court, the Georgia Attorney General offered as his understanding the following construction of state law: The jury must first find whether one or more statutory aggravating circum- stances have been established beyond a reasonable doubt. The existence of one or more aggravating circumstances is a threshold finding that authorizes the jury to consider imposing the death penalty; it serves as a bridge that takes the jury from the general class of all murders to the narrower class of offenses the state legislature has determined warrant the death penalty. After making the finding that the death penalty is a possible punishment, the jury then makes a separate finding whether the death penalty should be imposed. It bases this finding "not upon the statutory aggravating circumstances but upon all the evidence before the jury in aggravation and mitigation of punishment which ha[s] been introduced at both phases of the trial." Brief for Petitioner 13.

In view of the foregoing uncertainty, it would be premature to decide whether such determinations, or any of the others we might conceive as a basis for the Georgia Supreme Court's position, might undermine the confidence we expressed in Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153, 96 S.Ct. 2909, 49 L.Ed.2d 859 (1976), that the Georgia capital-sentencing system, as we understood it then, would avoid the arbitrary and capricious imposition of the death penalty and would otherwise pass constitutional muster. Suffice it to say that the state-law premises of the Georgia Supreme Court's conclusion of state law are relevant to the constitutional issue at hand.

The Georgia Supreme Court under certain circumstances will decide questions of state law upon certification from this Court. See Ga.Code § 24-4536 (Supp.1980).⁴ We invoke that statute to certify the following question: What are the premises of state law that support the conclusion that the death sentence in this case is not impaired by the invalidity of one of the statutory aggravating circumstances found by the jury?

The Clerk of this Court is directed to transmit this certificate, signed by THE CHIEF JUSTICE and under the official seal of the Court, as well as the briefs and record filed with the Court, to the Supreme Court of Georgia, and simultaneously to transmit copies of the certificate to the attorneys for the respective parties.

It is so ordered.

Justice MARSHALL, with whom Justice BRENNAN joins, dissenting.

Six years ago in Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153, 193, 96 S.Ct. 2909, 2934, 49 L.Ed.2d 859 (1976) (joint opinion of Stewart, POWELL, and STEVENS, JJ.), this Court declared:

"Juries are invariably given careful instructions on the law and how to apply it before they are authorized to decide the merits of a lawsuit. It would be virtually unthinkable to follow any other course in a legal system that has traditionally operated by following prior precedents and fixed rules of law. . . . When erroneous instructions are given, retrial is often required. It is quite simply a hallmark of our legal system that juries be carefully and adequately guided in their deliberations." (Footnote omitted).

In today's decision, a majority of this Court intimates that a post hoc construction of a death penalty statute by the State's highest court may remedy the fact that a jury was improperly instructed with respect to the very factors that save the Georgia statute from unconstitutionality. See Gregg v. Georgia, supra. Because I cannot see how the Georgia Supreme Court's response to this Court's certification could constitutionally justify the imposition of the death penalty in this case, I must dissent.

I

I adhere to my view that the death penalty is in all circumstances cruel and unusual punishment prohibited by the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. Gregg v. Georgia, supra, 428 U.S., at 231, 96 S.Ct., at 2973. Even if I believed that the death penalty could constitutionally be imposed under certain circumstances, however, I believe that respondent Stephens' sentence must be vacated and his case remanded to the Georgia state courts for resentencing.

II

In my opinion, remanding this case for resentencing is compelled by this Court's decisions upholding the constitutionality of the Georgia death penalty statute, and by well-recognized principles of appellate review. Therefore, whether or not the Georgia Supreme Court's construction of the statute in response to this Court's certification might avoid the constitutional infirmity inherent in respondent's sentence in some future case, it can do nothing to alter the fact that respondent's death sentence may have been based in part on consideration of an unconstitutional aggravating circumstance.

Under Georgia law, certification is appropriate "[w]hen it shall appear to the Supreme Court of the United States . . . that there are involved in any proceeding before it questions or propositions of the laws of this State which are determinative of said cause and there are no clear controlling precedents in the appellate court decisions of this State." Ga.Code § 24-4536(a) (Supp.1980) (emphasis added). The majority attempts to bring this case within the ambit of this certification procedure by...