Hopkins v. Reeves
| Decision Date | 08 June 1998 |
| Docket Number | 961693 |
| Citation | 524 U.S. 88,141 L.Ed.2d 76,118 S.Ct. 1895 |
| Parties | Frank X. HOPKINS, Warden, Petitioner, v. Randolph K. REEVES |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
Respondent was indicted on two counts of felony murder under Nebraska law. The Nebraska first-degree murder statute defines felony murder as murder committed in the perpetration of certain enumerated felonies, including, as relevant here, sexual assault and attempt to commit sexual assault in the first degree. Under Nebraska law, intent to kill is conclusively presumed if the State proves intent to commit the underlying felony. A felony murder conviction makes a defendant eligible for the death penalty, which in Nebraska is imposed judicially, not by the trial jury. The trial court refused respondent's request to instruct the jury on second-degree murder and manslaughter on the ground that the State Supreme Court consistently has held that these crimes are not lesser included offenses of felony murder. Respondent's jury then convicted him on both felony murder counts, and a three-judge panel sentenced him to death. After exhausting his state remedies, respondent filed a federal habeas corpus petition, claiming, inter alia, that the trial court's failure to give the requested instructions was unconstitutional under Beck v. Alabama, 447 U.S. 625, 100 S.Ct. 2382, 65 L.Ed.2d 392, in which this Court invalidated an Alabama law that prohibited lesser included offense instructions in capital cases, when lesser included offenses to the charged crime existed under state law and such instructions were generally given in noncapital cases. The District Court granted relief on an unrelated due process claim, which the Eighth Circuit rejected. However, the Eighth Circuit also held that, in failing to give the requested instructions, the trial court had committed the same constitutional error as that in Beck.
Held: Beck does not require state trial courts to instruct juries on offenses that are not lesser included offenses of the charged crime under state law. Pp. ____-____.
(a) Beck is distinguishable from this case in two critical respects: The Alabama statute prohibited instructions on offenses that state law clearly recognized as lesser included offenses of the charged crime, and it did so only in capital cases. Alabama thus erected an artificial barrier that restricted its juries to a choice between conviction for a capital offense and acquittal. By contrast, when the Nebraska trial court declined to give the requested instructions, it merely followed the State Supreme Court's 100-year-old rule that second-degree murder and manslaughter are not lesser included offenses of felony murder. The trial court neither created an artificial barrier for the jury nor treated capital and noncapital cases differently. By ignoring these distinctions, the Eighth Circuit limited the State's prerogative to structure its criminal law more severely than does the rule in Beck, for it required in effect that States create lesser included offenses to all capital crimes when no such offense exists under state law. Pp. ____-____.
(b) The Eighth Circuit again overlooked significant distinctions between this case and Beck when it found that there was a distortion of the factfinding process because respondent's jury had been forced into an all-or-nothing choice between capital murder and innocence. The fact that Beck's jury was told that if it convicted him of the charged offense it must impose the death penalty threatened to make the issue at trial whether he should be executed or not, and not whether he was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. The distortion of the trial process carried over to sentencing because an Alabama jury unwilling to acquit had no choice but to impose death. These factors are not present here. Respondent's jury did not impose sentence, and the sentencing panel's alternative to death was not setting respondent free, but rather sentencing him to life imprisonment. Moreover, respondent's proposed instructions would have introduced another kind of distortion at trial, for they would have allowed the jury to find beyond a reasonable doubt elements that the State, having assumed the obligation of proving only one crime, had not attempted to prove and indeed had ignored during trial. Pp. ____-____.
(c) The requirement of Tison v. Arizona, 481 U.S. 137, 107 S.Ct. 1676, 95 L.Ed.2d 127, and Enmund v. Florida, 458 U.S. 782, 102 S.Ct. 3368, 73 L.Ed.2d 1140, that a culpable mental state with respect to the killing be proved before the death penalty may be imposed for felony murder does not affect the showing that a State must make at a defendant's felony murder trial, so long as the requirement is satisfied at some point thereafter, such as at sentencing or on appeal. Cabana v. Bullock, 474 U.S. 376, 385, 392, 106 S.Ct. 689, 696, 700, 88 L.Ed.2d 704. As such, these cases cannot override state law determinations of when instructions on lesser included offenses are permissible and when they are not. Respondent's argument that the Nebraska Supreme Court's longstanding interpretation that felony murder has no lesser included homicide offenses is arbitrary is without merit. That contention is certainly strained with respect to the crime of second-degree murder, which requires proof of intent to kill, while felony murder does not; respondent did not present such a challenge with respect to manslaughter to the Nebraska Supreme Court, and therefore that claim is not considered here. Pp. ____-____.
102 F.3d 977, reversed.
Donald B. Stenberg, Lincoln, NE, for petitioner.
Roy W. McLeese, III, Washington, DC, for United States as amicus curiae by special leave of the Court.
Paula Hutchinson, appointed by this Court for respondent.
In Beck v. Alabama, 447 U.S. 625, 100 S.Ct. 2382, 65 L.Ed.2d 392 (1980), we held unconstitutional a state statute that prohibited lesser included offense instructions in capital cases, when lesser included offenses to the charged crime existed under State law and such instructions were generally given in noncapital cases. In this case, we consider whether Beck requires state trial courts to instruct juries on offenses that are not lesser included offenses of the charged crime under State law. We conclude that such instructions are not constitutionally required, and we therefore reverse the contrary judgment of the Court of Appeals.
In the early morning hours of March 29, 1980, police received an emergency call from the Religious Society of Friends meetinghouse in Lincoln, Nebraska. Responding to the call, they found Janet Mesner, the live-in caretaker, lying on the floor in the rear of the house with seven stab wounds in her chest. When an officer asked who had stabbed her, Mesner gave respondent's name. The officers then went to an upstairs bedroom and found the partially clad dead body of Victoria Lamm, a friend of Mesner who had been visiting the meetinghouse. She had been stabbed twice, the first blow penetrating the main pulmonary artery of her heart and the second her liver. A billfold containing respondent's identification was lying near Lamm's body. The police found underwear, later identified as respondent's, in the middle of the blood-soaked sheets of the bed; subsequent examination of the underwear revealed semen of respondent's blood type. Near the bed, the police found a serrated kitchen knife with Mesner's blood on it. Before dying, Mesner told an officer that respondent had raped her. Shortly thereafter, the police arrested respondent, who told them that although he could not remember much about the murders due to severe intoxication, he did recall stabbing and raping Mesner.
The State proceeded against respondent for both murders on a felony murder theory. Under Nebraska law, felony murder is a form of first-degree murder and is defined as murder committed "in the perpetration of or attempt to perpetrate'' certain enumerated felonies, including sexual assault or attempt to commit sexual assault in the first degree. Neb.Rev.Stat. §28-303 (1995). When proceeding on such a theory, Nebraska prosecutors do not need to prove a culpable mental state with respect to the murder because intent to kill is conclusively presumed if the State proves intent to commit the underlying felony. State v. Reeves, 216 Neb. 206, 217, 344 N.W.2d 433, 442 (1984). Although a conviction for felony murder renders a defendant eligible for the death penalty, see §28-303, the jury is not charged with sentencing the defendant; under Nebraska law, capital sentencing is a judicial function. §29-2520.
At trial, respondent requested that the jury be instructed on both murder in the second degree and manslaughter, which, he argued, were lesser included offenses of felony murder. App. 6-9.1 The trial court refused on the ground that the Nebraska Supreme Court consistently has held that second-degree murder and manslaughter are not lesser included offenses of that crime. Id., at 10. Respondent's jury thus was presented with only the two felony murder counts. 2 Although respondent raised an insanity defense, the jury rejected it and convicted him on both counts. A three-judge sentencing panel then convened to consider aggravating and mitigating circumstances. It sentenced respondent to death on both convictions.
After the Nebraska Supreme Court affirmed his convictions and sentences, State v. Reeves, 216 Neb. 206, 344 N.W.2d 433, cert. denied, 469 U.S. 1028, 105 S.Ct. 447, 83 L.Ed.2d 372 (1984), respondent unsuccessfully pursued state collateral relief, State v. Reeves, 234 Neb. 711, 453 N.W.2d 359 (1990). This Court then vacated the Nebraska Supreme Court's judgment for further...
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