Ex Parte Stephens

• Decision Date: 28 July 2006
• Docket Number: 1041861.
• Citation: 982 So.2d 1148
• Parties: Ex parte Stanley STEPHENS. (In re Stanley Stephens v. State of Alabama).
• Court: Alabama Supreme Court

982 So.2d 1148

Ex parte Stanley STEPHENS.

(In re Stanley Stephens v. State of Alabama).

1041861.

Supreme Court of Alabama.

July 28, 2006.

Rehearing Denied September 22, 2006.

T. Robin McIntyre, Opelika, for petitioner.

Troy King, atty. gen., and James R. Houts, asst. atty. gen., for respondent.

NABERS, Chief Justice.

Stanley Stephens was convicted of the intentional murder of his wife, Annie, and his nine-year-old son, Nicholas. The murder was made capital because two or more persons were murdered by one act or pursuant to one scheme or course of conduct. § 13A-5-40(a)(10), Ala.Code 1975. By a vote of 10-2, the jury in its advisory verdict recommended that Stephens be sentenced to death. The trial court accepted the jury's recommendation and sentenced him to death. The Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed Stephens's conviction and sentence. Stephens v. State, 982 So.2d 1110 (Ala.Crim.App.2005).

This Court granted Stephens's certiorari petition to review the sole issue presented by that petition: whether an incorrect jury instruction in the sentencing phase of Stephens's capital-murder trial violated Stephens's statutory right to an advisory verdict by a jury.¹ We hold that it did, and because we cannot conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that the error was harmless, we reverse and remand.

I. Facts and Procedural History

The facts of the offense are stated in detail in the Court of Criminal Appeals' opinion and will not be repeated here except as necessary to an understanding of the issue before us. Stephens and his wife Annie had lived in a mobile home in Lee County. The two had separated in early 1999. Stephens continued to live in the mobile home; Annie and their three children moved in with Annie's father. On August 2, 1999, Annie made two trips to the mobile home to wash clothes. On the second trip, her son Nicholas went with her. About 30 minutes after Annie and Nicholas arrived with the second load of laundry, Stephens drove up to the mobile home. Neither Annie nor Nicholas was again seen alive. Stephens admitted to officers responding to a telephone call from neighbor that he had killed Annie. He also told a deputy where her body was located.

The officers found the bodies of Annie and Nicholas in the mobile home. Annie had been cut and stabbed 30 times; several of the wounds had pierced her lungs and heart. A belt was looped around her neck and pulled tight. Bruising showed that the belt had been applied and that she had been struck in the face before she died. Nicholas had been cut and stabbed 37 times. Several of the wounds had pierced his lungs, heart, liver, and stomach. In addition, his throat had been cut and the underlying tissue was exposed.

Based on these facts, the State argued during the sentencing phase that the statutory aggravating circumstance found in § 13A-5-49(8), Ala.Code 1975 — that the murders were especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel when compared to other capital offenses — existed. The State also introduced evidence indicating that the statutory aggravating circumstance found in § 13A-5-49(2) — that the defendant had previously been convicted of a violent felony — existed because Stephens had been convicted of second-degree assault for firing a shotgun at Annie in 1992. This evidence was sufficient for the jury to find that those two statutory aggravating circumstances existed. By special interrogatory, the jury indicated that it had found beyond a reasonable doubt that both of these statutory aggravating circumstances were present.

However, the trial court also instructed the jury that the fact that Stephens "intentionally caused the death of two or more persons by one act" was a statutory aggravating circumstance, and that the guilty verdict in the penalty phase established that this aggravating circumstance applied to Stephens. If the offense had been committed on or after September 1, 1999, that instruction would have been correct.² Stephens committed the murders on August 2, 1999. The jury should have been instructed that it could find a maximum of two aggravating circumstances — that the offense was especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel and that the offense was committed by an individual who had previously been convicted of a violent felony. Instead, the jury was effectively instructed that it was required by its verdict in the guilt phase to find as a matter of law the existence of one aggravating circumstance — that Stephens caused the deaths of two persons by a single act — and that it could find as many as two others.³

To its credit, the State brought this error to the trial court's attention while Stephens's motion for a new trial was pending. The trial court immediately continued the motion and ordered briefs and oral arguments on whether a new sentencing hearing was required. Answering that question in the negative, the trial court denied Stephens's motion for a new trial and again sentenced Stephens to death.

II. Analysis

Under Alabama law, the jury plays an essential role in the capital-sentencing process:

"(a) Unless both parties with the consent of the court waive the right to have the sentence hearing conducted before a jury as provided in Section 13A-5-44(c), it shall be conducted before a jury which shall return an advisory verdict as provided by subsection (e) of this section. . . .

". . . .

"(e) After deliberation, the jury shall return an advisory verdict as follows:

"(1) If the jury determines that no aggravating circumstances as defined in Section 13A-5-49 exist, it shall return an advisory verdict recommending to the trial court that the penalty be life imprisonment without parole;

"(2) If the jury determines that one or more aggravating circumstances as defined in Section 13A-5-49 exist but do not outweigh the mitigating circumstances, it shall return an advisory verdict recommending to the trial court that the penalty be life imprisonment without parole;

"(3) If the jury determines that one or more aggravating circumstances as defined in Section 13A-5-49 exist and that they outweigh the mitigating circumstances, if any, it shall return an advisory verdict recommending to the trial court that the penalty be death."

§ 13A-5-46, Ala.Code 1975. In this case, the jury was instructed that three statutory aggravating circumstances potentially existed; the jury found all three aggravating circumstances existed and that they outweighed the mitigating circumstances. However, only two of those aggravating circumstances were actually available as statutory aggravating circumstances in this case. The question thus presented by this appeal is whether the incorrect instruction requires a new sentencing hearing. The Court of Criminal Appeals held that it does not, concluding 1) that the trial court did not err in so instructing the jury, and 2) that, even if it did err, the error was harmless. See Rule 45, Ala. R.App. P.

This Court decided a similar issue in Ex parte Williams, 556 So.2d 744 (Ala.1987). In that case, the State erroneously pleaded as an aggravating circumstance that the defendant had been under sentence of imprisonment at the time of the offense.

"`[T]he trial court improperly instructed the jury, during the sentencing phase of the trial, that they could consider the fact that the capital offense was committed by a person under sentence of imprisonment as an aggravating circumstance, as provided in § 13A-5-49(1), Code of Alabama (1975). It was later established at the sentencing hearing, however, that the appellant was not on probation, nor was he on parole, at the time that the crime was committed.'"

556 So.2d at 745 (quoting Court of Criminal Appeals' opinion, Williams v. State, 556 So.2d 737, 740-41 (Ala.Crim.App. 1986)).

In Williams, as in this case, the trial court realized that the jury had considered an invalid aggravating circumstance and the trial court considered only the valid aggravating circumstances in reaching its own sentencing decision. Nevertheless, this Court reversed Williams's death sentence. In doing so, the Court stressed the importance of the statutory right to a fair advisory verdict by the jury:

"The legislatively mandated role of the jury in returning an advisory verdict, based upon its consideration of aggravating and mitigating circumstances, can not be abrogated by the trial court's errorless exercise of its equally mandated role as the ultimate sentencing authority. Each part of the sentencing process is equally mandated by the statute (§§ 13A-5-46, -47(e)); and the errorless application by the court of its part does not cure the erroneous application by the jury of its part.... To hold otherwise is to hold that the sentencing role of the jury, as required by statute, counts for nothing so long as the court's exercise of its role is without error."

556 So.2d at 745.

The Court of Criminal Appeals' opinion in this case sought to distinguish Williams. The aggravating circumstance in Williams — that the offense had been committed by a person under a sentence of imprisonment — was factually untrue and therefore legally inapplicable. The aggravating circumstance in this case — that Stephens had murdered two persons pursuant to one act or course of conduct — was, although supported by the facts, invalid as a matter of law. The Court of Criminal Appeals found this distinction significant, but we do not. In both cases, the jury was instructed that a particular aggravating circumstance applied when, as a matter of law, it did not.

The State also attempts to distinguish Williams, on the following basis:

"Thus, in Williams, the jury was allowed to consider as aggravation facts that were absolutely untrue and clearly did not apply to the defendant.

"This factor, however, was not the basis for the reversible error found in Williams. Instead, the error occurred when the trial court sentenced Williams to death based on the trial court's reweighing of the aggravating and mitigating circumstances,...